Five Months!

Gah, somehow four months is super young and five months has an air of maturity about it. And it’s true, there is something a bit magical about five months. It may be a touch of maturity, but I think there is just that sense of cresting that big first overwhelming wave with a puppy. They need EVERYTHING when they arrive at 2 months, and it’s such a huge task to go from basically an infant to a somewhat productive member of society.

Tricks and fun stuff aside, there is all the crate training, housebreaking, socializing, manners, self control, to wait their turn, to understand that their behavior is what makes things happen in the household. Asher is somewhat of a good citizen at this point.

He’s really only had one accident in the house (maybe 2? I don’t really remember …) and that was when he was tiny. I don’t know if he’s ‘housebroken’, but he knows peeing outside is what needs to happen to come in for the fun stuff, and as long as you take him outside a lot it’s just not been an issue. He is getting better and better at PRETENDING to pee, which was pretty comical at first, but his acting skills are improving.

He sleeps through the night and never gets off the bed – if he wakes up before me in general he just chews on one of the (many) toys that the dogs have littered all over the bed. At bedtime he is one of the first dogs in bed and settles down for snuggling. He also kennels up without an issue and is MOSTLY quiet in a crate. But we almost never use it at home, and in fact I moved his crate back into the walk in closet as it was just sitting next to my bed unused for weeks. He likes his crate in the car and seems very comfortable hanging out there while I teach and travels great.

So, yes, he’s easy to live with … mostly. He is a very destructive little bugger – but as long as he has something to chew on, he’s happy to choose appropriate objects. He usually ends up just laying next to my chair if I’m working on the computer, though he is quite happy to entertain himself. He’s getting more and more snuggly, enjoying shoulder rubs, belly rubs, ear massages and full body cuddles. He likes being near me, but he’s not at all clingy, and is happy to also chill outside – even without the other dogs. He almost NEVER barks, though he can ‘talk’ a little when excited – it’s how you can tell he’s over-aroused. Compared to his very vocal siblings (they talk A LOT), he’s very quiet.

He is good at waiting his turn, he chills with the other dogs while I get their food ready, he’ll chill on the couch when I train or play with another dog (without complaining!). I haven’t attempted it in another environment though. Asher does not think the world revolves around him. His stay is strong, his recall is strong. Neither is bombproof yet, so he’s not quite ready to graduate from his collar, but strong. We haven’t worked on loose leash walking at all, and it’s not on the list at the moment. I just don’t spend a lot of time walking him on leash, and I just kind of manage the issue. We ARE working on heel position now, so we will, eventually, work on heeling on leash too.

The dogs continue to thaw towards him. They find him kind of annoying, but in a totally expected way. Bright plays with him and seems to really enjoy him, but still gets after him if she feels he needs it. Navarre just ignores him (like he does with most puppies after they’ve lived with us for a while), and Haku is the only one that is still more upset with him than he normally is. Maybe he just got used to snarking at him after doing it for months. He’s still MUCH better though.

I just adore Asher, he’s easy to love. He’s such a nice balanced puppy, he’s both very sweet and people focused, but independent enough not to be clingy or obnoxious. He’s super fun to train and loves the process, he’s not overly soft or overly oblivious. He’s not too pushy and he finally seems to be grasping the concept of, ‘Hey!’, which he just didn’t think applied to him for a long time. So for things like chasing a cat or jumping on my head, he now gets that I don’t want him to do that. Which is an odd concept to have to ‘teach’, but he didn’t seem to have any sensitivity to that kind of thing as a tiny puppy. Maybe that’s why all the dogs hated him … He’s got a huge amount of ‘try’ in him, he wants to figure out the puzzle in training.

He throws his body around way too much, which I don’t appreciate it. I feel like he’s doing it a LITTLE bit less, but he still definitely leaps before he looks and throws himself around without thought. For a lot reasons, we’re waiting on a lot of agility until he’s older and can show me he can do things thoughtfully. We continue to work on a lot of body control and awareness – that’s the stuff that’s the most hard for him when he has to actually THINK about what he’s doing. But he’s slowly getting better at it. This week we finally achieved a proper sit up where he was thinking about using his core to hold the position. This has been a slow process, but he also needed to build up the muscles and really learn how to do it CORRECTLY. I’m very pleased to see him doing it nicely, and once he really seemed to get it it’s transferring quickly. Now, we haven’t gotten back his waves on cue yet, but we’ll get there again. We also went back and revisited his ‘frog’ this week, which I had forgotten about (along with spins, those fell off the radar too!). Frog is hard for him, but he can stretch that rear out when he’s really concentrating. Once we clean up his backing up to higher objects our next project is individual back leg lifts. If Asher ends up a shitty jumper, it’s not going to be because he doesn’t know how to use his body correctly, we have a plan.

He loves toys, he loves to tug, to chase, to retrieve. His tugging is kind of comical as he’s a pretty aggressive tugger, but he also seems to have inherited Navarre’s ridiculous habit of throwing his paws over the tug toy, which turns him into a pretzel. He loves to train with toys, so far he hasn’t gotten sticky or overaroused. He’s fast and somewhat bendable at this point – I think he’s going to be a really fun agility dog, as that boy loves to run, loves to play and isn’t afraid to put his whole heart into it.

Asher has LOTS of tricks, and he loves his tricks! He’s so easy to train at this point, he’s really figured out the game. The plan is to focus on some obedience this month, try to get some heeling in place, introduce fronts and finishes, go-outs, stand proofing, recalls, scent articles. We are still laying off the toys until he gets some more teeth – good lord, that puppy has none! And hoping to do a little bit of herding so we can start to get some of that foundation work out of the way. Once I feel like he can do some basic herding things we can start looking at agility flatwork. So we’ll see how long the herding thing takes.

His teeth have sucked all the air out of his ears this week, they’re limper than they have ever been and look ridiculous at the moment. But those molars are finally coming in, and his sister has canines too – the boys don’t yet though. Sister Flea is also going through a fear period, so it will be interesting to see if the boys follow as she seems to be maturing faster at this point. All three local puppies went on a hike together this week, and it was interesting to see how they started forming a little ‘gang’ for the first time. Instead of each kind of doing their own thing, they explored together in a little pack – and they were EXPLORING, I don’t know if they were spurring each other on, but way more offroading than they had done before. They are getting somewhat more coordinated, and showed some nice skills jumping little logs … sometimes. Such silly looking puppies they are at the moment, when are they going to start resembling dogs? The boys are getting bigger heads, but Flea is still about the same height. They are getting along better too, though Ravi was feeling rather cocky today, though he mostly took it out on his sheltie housemate rather than the other puppies. Flea and Asher seem to be doing pretty well together, despite Asher still being a dick and doing drive by head bites. Dickhead. I hope they grow up to be friends, it’s so fun to watch them together – you can definitely tell they’re related!

I made a very crappy video of the puppies playing in the woods, but they will grow up soon enough and with the rain pictures were not going to look good! So excited that Fall is here though, bring on the rain!

Watched some of the USBCHA semi finals today, that was fun but not inspiring. Herding just has so many variables, and so much of it just seems FRUSTRATING rather than fun. I am not inspired to ever have the goal of getting to that event, but it was really fun to watch it done well. Though there was a whole lot of it not going well. And all people that struggled with penning made me feel better about my last trial.

Back to teaching next week – the dogs are going to be so excited to see agility again! The break was nice and I’m all ready to go back and try new things.