9 Weeks

Life with a puppy is always a little unreal for those first few weeks. It’s a big adjustment for the puppy, and a big adjustment for the rest of the household. There is always a new routine and so many things that you don’t normally do. You don’t really know what each new day will bring because you don’t know your puppy yet and what his needs will be.

Asher is slowly settling in and we’re getting to know him better. He’s certainly, uh, rambunctious. Hard to say if that’s who he really is, or he’s just being a puppy. He definitely seems more busy than Navarre was, and less cuddly (though still very sweet!). But I think that could change with time. Asher just seems much too busy for cuddling, and can be quite a shark. He’s very limp when he’s napping though. And I think it’s adorable he doesn’t mind being held like a baby. He is a very trusting soul, and I hope I never do anything to spoil that trust. On that note, haven’t really gotten a chance to work on restraint and handling. Did I mention the shark thing? It’s on the list.

We did do a bit of a crash course to at least start some of the Silvia homework. He can get in a box now! Weirdly, he’s way more about getting into a box than on one. Getting into the box took one short session, getting on a large platform he still just attacks the platform. He can frog, but it’s not at all an offered behavior. He loves a good target, though now he can only pounce on it into a down, which is cute, but not really what she wanted, I think. His recall remains pretty good, but I try to only use it when I’m pretty sure he’s going to come anyway.

Overall he’s definitely grasping the concept of training better, though remains only mildly food motivated. He finally seemed to have the magic moment that he realizes his behavior is driving the training, he’s now offering more and more. Baby puppy attention span, of course. He has now started:

• Sit

• Down

• Frog

• Get In

• Get On

• Paw Target

• Roll (his favorite, for some reason)

• Hand Target

• Crate

• Wave with Both Paws

• Recall on Name

• Back

He also does quite a bit of bouncing around like a maniac, I appreciate the enthusiasm. So far he seems to do better with latent learning. A quick session of rapid rewards, jackpot the best and then go play. The next time we come back to it he seems to get it. If I keep trying to work on repeating something he did in the same training session, he doesn’t do as well. I have been working on pure shaping with Asher, which he really needs to learn to be truly operant. I’m spoiled by my dogs, I don’t have to do that with them. But Asher is really starting to learn to offer behavior. Sometimes.

We usually do two small sessions of training per day, which is for his ‘meals’. He’s much better at eating when it’s a training behavior, not so much out of a bowl. I worry that he’s not eating enough, but if you just sit him down and TRY to get him to eat – no dice. Now, trying to KEEP him from eating out of the other dogs’ bowls, that’s a challenge. Obviously, they don’t approve.

At the arena I’ve been using the freeze dried raw food as snacks throughout the day, which he finds very valuable and is a majority of his food intake at this point. I try to bring him into classes several times a day to see the people and dogs as well as have some short play sessions while students are walking the course (and so he can pee, of course!). He likes to say hi to everyone, but is still surprisingly concerned where I am. I’m not used to that in a border collie! So he’s ‘lost’ me several times as he went to say hi and I left to the other side of the arena and it doesn’t take long for him to start really looking for me once he realizes I’m not there with him even if he’s surrounded by five other people. At the moment, at least, he has a higher value for me than other people.

He’s a fun dog to play with, pretty much happy to play with whatever, will switch from toy to toy, from food to toy and toy to food. He’s getting faster! We do a lot of calling and running away and he can catch me pretty quick now. He tracks food and thrown toys exceptionally well for his age, he has since he came home. He seems to have a pretty natural retrieve, and I’ve been trying to foster that. We play lots of two toy games, and have just introduced throwing a toy and then calling back for a hand touch and another thrown toy. His favorite toys remain tiny plush toys, I got him some more of those. The tiny hedgehogs are a house favorite, and good for Asher as he can’t chew off pieces as easily. Oh, and Asher is a big fan of squeakers, which is funny as Navarre really isn’t to this day.

Housetraining goes well, though I wouldn’t really call it training. I have long since given up trying to ‘train’ this, there are clean dogs and there are not, and you can’t really rush the project. Knock on wood, Asher remains very clean. He doesn’t want to soil in a crate, he doesn’t pee every five minutes, he lets me know when he needs to go and he has caught on that peeing outside means we get to run inside and play. He MAY be asking to go outside sometimes, it’s hard to say. If he ever sits or hangs out near the door, I let him out. What he does after that is up to him. I just take him out frequently when he’s inside, make sure I have my eye directly on him and if he ever stops partying I put him outside. He doesn’t stop partying very often. At night we have done a few nights in the crate next to the bed, he’s fine with that and will whine if he needs to go out. He usually sleeps on the bed, assuming he can settle down, and whines if he needs to go out. However, there have been two mornings where I woke up to a puppy partying off the bed. I didn’t find any accidents, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. MOSTLY he sleeps until I get up though.

Recalls continue very solid, we went hiking last Friday and I wasn’t at all worried about him wandering off. He thought that was great fun, we just did a tiny hike as he’s so young and big and awkward. He did go swimming though! I was really surprised, he only went in twice, the first time MAY have been accident, but the second time was deliberate. But then he got cold and just ran around on the shore. He loves the water trough and has graduated to ‘digging’ in the water. Some day I’m sure I won’t be impressed with this, but for now I’m really happy to see he seems to be on track to be a good water dog.

We have been mostly focusing on just exposing him to places I go during the week. He loves the arena and we’ve run around at the field there, he’s very relaxed hanging out in his crate in the car while I teach. We’ve been to the park, though it always seems to be hot while we’re there (so he doesn’t do much). He had fun at the park though, he’s very keen to chase some areobee rollers and while he was curious about the other people there, he stuck close. He did get to have an adventure in downtown Salem, we took him out to eat with us. I wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to settle, but he did great, no issues with the traffic or people or new environment and settled down on his mat. His first time on leash though, someone should train him about that. He DOES have a collar now, which he still finds annoying, but we’ll probably need at some point. His puppy follow remains strong for now though, so I have yet to use a leash.

He continues to like sleeping UNDER the kurunda beds we have on the porch, though I can’t imagine that will last long. His brother weighed in at 18 lbs recently, god knows how much Asher weighs. I’m not going to worry about it until I take him for his next vaccination. There is an awful lot of ‘OMG he’s so huge!’ when people meet him. I’m still hopeful he’ll slow down though, he’s already so much less infantile than my other dogs were at this same age, I’m saying he’s advanced and did some pre-growing. Hey, it could happen.

Not much luck with Asher and other dogs. My dogs are mildly less annoyed by him now, Navarre has done some involuntary tugging with him and Bright is softening towards him as well. They will ALL correct him, and hard – even Haku. They all think he needs discipline. Sigh. So he’s starting to get more bitey and annoying with them, which is not going to help matters, his chance to win them over when he was tiny and sweet is fading. Then he’s an ass with other puppies around his same age, he postures and stands over them and gets all serious and stiff. With adult dogs that might be friendly he finds them too overwhelming so he tends to ALSO get stiff and and retreats. With other breeds he’s very suspicious and doesn’t really respond to their friendly playful gestures. He likes herding breeds a lot more. He’s made no friends. I think I may have found my puppy’s issue, I think he may be a dick. Go figure, one of the reasons I thought this would be the best choice was I was pretty sure they weren’t going to be dicks! Well, we’ll see. It would be nice if he could have some good interactions, but he’s pretty much spoiling all my attempts here.

He’s okay with the cats, he can get rambunctious but will settle down when scolded by me or the cats. He, unfortunately, has discovered he can fit under the cat gate to the cat room, which is annoying. He has not yet pissed off Dragon though, knock on wood. For the most part I just put the cats up if I know he’s going to romping inside, as I don’t want any bad experiences on either side.

Time goes by so quickly, I can’t believe he’s already 10 weeks!

Meanwhile, I took Haku out to just work on downs around sheep at Heidi’s place … and he couldn’t do it all. Not with verbals, not with whistles, not close, not far. It was almost like he couldn’t hear me, though I’m pretty sure he could. He couldn’t do flanks either, it was just like the issues he had at Ian’s during the week. Haku didn’t seem overly stressed, but he did seem puzzled by my reactions more than anything. I don’t know what to make of it, but maybe this is the sign that he’s done. I am going to bring him in to the vet when I take Asher in for his next vaccinations in a couple weeks. Haku’s muscle wasting has gotten worse and he certainly looks older than I think he should. He’s not even 10 until next month! I don’t know, maybe there is something that is going on that we can fix, like thyroid or something. Or maybe all the weirdness is because of the puppy, it’s a big adjustment.

For comparison, I took Navarre out on Heidi’s big flock of sheep and he was being all surprisingly good and listening and trying and responding to whistles … somewhat. Not so good with his away whistle, and my whistling is a lot worse when I’m trying to make it louder. And maybe it was because I wasn’t actually trying to DO anything with the sheep, but I was really impressed with what Navarre was doing for me. Well, for a while. Navarre definitely does better ‘fresh’ and then gets worse as he goes on.

Navarre’s obedience debut is this weekend! Three days, but, thankfully, we show early in the morning. We have practiced a bit and I think we’ll have a fair shot at it, though it wouldn’t surprise me if we had bobbles. Hopefully not trainwrecks, just bobbles. Nothing is going to be super precise, his fronts are loose his finishes are wobbly, he forges in heeling. But he can, technically, do everything assuming we don’t have any mistakes. Would certainly be nice to get his open title in one weekend, but I may be overly ambitious.

And I entered an agility trial! Just one day,  I liked the judges and I think it would be good for Asher to see that as well. Entered Navarre at 24C again, though I still have no idea where tryouts are next year. I’d also like to know where the west coast nationals will be held …