Every Dog is Different

Can’t believe that Fig is already 11 weeks old! In many ways she has definitely lived up to what I thought she’d be like, in others I’m still a bit perplexed. I’ve had puppies that weren’t that interested in food, but not to the extent of Fig. And it’s not like she WON’T eat, especially if it’s something novel and there is competition I can usually get her to eat something, but even then, she very often will just walk away. Even the raw food, when I felt she was just too damn skinny and she needed to eat, three meals of raw in a row and she was done with it and just walked away.

My new kibbles have arrived, and in predictable fashion she’s kind of interested in a new food for the first couple meals, then she’ll just pick at it. She’s definitely better when you hand feed her, which is not real convenient. Sometimes she’ll eat kibble that I leave with her in her crate, but sometimes not. She does not seem more hungry when she goes for a longer period of time without eating. She is not getting more interested in food now that she’s older.

I broke down and tried smelly salmon treats, which she thought were good … one time, then she’d just spit them out. Cheese is the same, she’ll eat it … if nothing else more interesting isn’t going on. Occasionally, usually when I’m feeding the other dogs, she gets SUPER excited and jumping around and waving and looks like she really wants to eat … and then I put the food down, and she just nibbles on it.

Hard to train a puppy that doesn’t eat, but I had sort of assumed she’d get over this phase with time, but we’re going on 4 weeks here, this puppy needs to be worked with. I’ve never had a puppy this long that knew so little! And she’s smart, and fun, but I’m just going to have to accept we will not be training with food. Though it is funny that the things she has learned, she learned them quickly and she does offer them, but I can’t keep her attention for training anything new, she is off looking for new adventures.

Now, playing with toys, she’s got plenty of stamina for that! She loves to chase, loves to tug, drives to dead toys, switches toys without an issue and kind of retrieves. She is a fun dog to play with! And I have accepted that, at least for now, we’re going to have to train with toys and environmental rewards. So that will be novel, and we may have to save all the cute puppy tricks for when she gets older. For now, she needs to learn to stay, come, kennel up, wait at doors, and handle restraint. Oh, and housebreaking.

The good news, while she’s a fiercely independent little thing, she does respond to praise and, to a lesser extent, pressure to get to her to STOP doing things. Like annoying the other dogs or throwing herself bodily into the sliding door when she wants to come inside. So new adventure, we’ll see how it goes.

We had a relatively quiet week, I do think she was feeling a little under the weather earlier in the week, she had a little eye discharge and just was not her normal troublemaking self. She’s over that now though, back to full Figgy Speed. She did get to be babysat during one of my Thursday classes were everyone filled her up with all their novel treats. Luckily, her stomach appears to be pretty bombproof. I was surprised she did not scream and carry on when the other dogs were running though, go figure!

I also let her run around with the other dogs in the arena a bit, after ‘tiring her out’ on her own playing. I worry as she has no self preservation that she’ll run into things chasing the other dogs. And she did take out a pvc jump, totally oblivious. So she probably won’t get to have that outlet, unfortunately. You pretty much need to be 100% focused on Fig when she’s out and about.

We went on another puppy hike today, with another border collie puppy the same age as her! This puppy started out a little overwhelmed by my crew and crazy ass Fig, who was stiff and posturing. I was worried Fig was going to be a total bitch, but actually they ended up doing pretty well together. I had to remind Fig to chill a couple times near the end, but they were both tired and cranky at that point. Fig was happy to let the other puppy maul her though, so that was good to see. Kind of funny though, Fig zipped right through the cute puppy stage is already turning into a no-neck cinderblock – BC puppies are just not very cute! Well, Fig isn’t – but this other puppy was so cute she could have been an aussie puppy! Fig said she makes up for it in personality. I imagine she’ll be a very attractive adult, but, yeah, the awkward fuglies are already upon us.

That Fig certainly never gets tired, she’s going to be the sort of dog you have to force to take a break. The other puppy got carried a lot – Figgy was like the energizer puppy. Afterwards we went herding and I thought she’d be way too tired to go play with sheep – but she was rearing to go! So Figgy had her second go at sheep and was even more keen and adorable than she was at 8 weeks. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she loves controlling sheep – really fun to see.

As for herding, Haku got to practice his AKC moves. Carol would not have been happy with us, I really TRIED to do everything as fetch, but with the light sheep we were WAY better at doing it with driving – and it’s way more fun! The driving went better than the fetching, we mostly struggled with the turn at the post. I could not seem to make myself stay at that post, I kept dancing around. But I was also looking at trying to be consistent with Haku, as he kept ASSUMING he knew what I meant. We were both a little shaky with our flank directionals today. But, yes, technically Haku did the ‘advanced’ AKC herding, as I handled everything from the post. It was still fun, and Haku’s outruns were much better. So that was fun to do something specific instead of just working on skills. And I didn’t have to holler too much.

As for Navarre, I gave him to Dave with a rattle paddle. Whenever I’m particularly discouraged with Navarre everyone always has to remind me how much better he is than Haku. At least, with some things. They keep telling me how they would prefer a Navarre to a Haku, but I think they’re crazy. Navarre will never have a problem moving the sheep though, that’s for sure. We had never actually used the rattle paddle before, I thought it would be more effective, but it was about the same. Navarre behaved himself though, Dave puts a LOT of pressure on him – way more than I do. But the thing is, Navarre doesn’t get discouraged and, yes, Dave gets results as he’s not going to say, “Eh, good enough.” Navarre would probably do a lot better with a Dave.

We had a bit of break in the hot weather this week, which I was very thankful for. I think there will be more cancelled classes next week as we’re looking at another stretch of at least 5 days in the 90s. It’s summer alright, but the dogs enjoyed an early hike today with swimming – and lots of seeds in their coats. Summer. Hm.