Legs Everywhere

Asher continues to grow in new and exciting directions. His latest is to get REALLY long and skinny – so he’s basically a giant head on stilts. So much legs! Maybe 18 inches now? But the big news is that he finally seems to have figured out what those legs are FOR – that boy can run! He’s not terribly good at stopping or turning, but when he turns it on he can really move these days. It was one of those funny overnight transformations when he went from a sack of potatoes tripping around to floating across the landscape with his already gigantic stride.

So this is good and bad, as now he is getting bigger, faster – and did I mention no brakes? Asher is going to need a lot of schooling in not slamming into other dogs. And me. I always forget that stage when puppies aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing and can run into you. My dogs learn quickly not to hit me as I swear like a sailor if they do. I also swear if they hit each other, so they seem to quickly figure out how to look where they’re going. Asher will hopefully eventually learn that … but most definitely not yet.

We went on a nice, adult dog hike this week with Maddy’s dogs – and Asher was fine. It’s only around puppies that he’s a dick. And those puppies can be much bigger and older than him, but if they still have a puppyish quality, out comes his dick side. Asher LOVES terrier puppies though, he got to hang out, behind a fence, while we played with a litter of cairn terriers – SO CUTE! And he thought so too, in a posturey dickish way.

We also hiked with sister Flea, they are 19 weeks old now! I think, it’s time to start counting in months, they’ll be 5 months old mid-September. Flea and Asher were better, only had to separate them a couple times, mostly they didn’t get too overaroused, but still some of that. It seems better and better every time they hike together. Keeping moving helps! Also having Maggie, Nancy’s very dominant bitch, along helped too – she put up with no nonsense and Asher respected that right away.

Bright continues to thaw a little towards Asher, playing with him a couple more times – but still VERY strict with him. He seems to respect that, but she still thinks he needs a lot of discipline – as do the other dogs. Navarre I think has thawed, maybe with Asher getting older, maybe just with time. He doesn’t like him, but he’s not so upset that he’s here. So better at ignoring him. They have a weird relationship, the other day we were all in bed and I was reading, puppy was chewing on a toy tucked in next to me and Navarre gets on the bed and comes over for love. Puppy ignores him, doing his own thing and I give Navarre all the love he wants. Then Navarre starts licking Asher’s ears and Asher just kind of freezes and lets him do it. And even without Asher doing ANYTHING, Navarre did his disgusted ‘chew on your muzzle in a clear sign of disapproval’ move and then would go back to licking his ears. I just have no idea what’s up with him.

Introduced Asher to some sheep with Dave, not because he really needs to, but I did want him to have a positive experience. I do think he needs maturing all around, but it was interesting to see him really contemplate the sheep. He tried moving them a little, but mostly just watched them in that very thoughtful way he has. I really appreciate that, I’m hoping he got some of his dad’s thoughtfulness in herding. While herding people seem to appreciate Navarre’s ‘push’, I’d really rather have something with a bit more control. So it was a positive introduction and the first time he’s really acknowledged and interacted with sheep. Now to wait for him to grow up. The hard part about saying I’ll do herding before agility is that you really can’t do much in herding with baby dogs, but there is a lot of flatwork and other things you CAN do with puppies for agility (but, quite honestly, is also easily trained when they’re older).

So Asher’s focus continues to be tricks and body awareness and obedience. Which, at 4 months old, is really the only thing he’s old enough to do anyway. But if he was going to hate sheep, that would be good to know so we could focus on other things – but can’t really say anything about sheep yet.

We did introduce the concept of heeling this week. I have never had much luck with getting dogs to understand using their pedestal pivot as a come to heel exercise. It’s amusing trying to put myself into that picture now, he just bashes me out of the way. So we’ve just been shaping the heel position (on both sides). He’s kind of getting the idea, and has a nice rear end pivot. Navarre was so difficult to teach to heel, and his heeling remains erratic, I hope to have a better time with Asher. Asher just enjoys training obedience way more than Navarre ever did – it was one of those things that Navarre thought was stupid, and he still kind of does.

Asher’s position changes are getting more precise, we’ve ALMOST lost the wave on his sit and he’s able to move through the positions at a distance smoothly. He really is a fun dog to train. We’ve also started to introduce articles to his scent discrimination. He’s very successful with the scent discs, but gets too excited with the dumbbells. He’s starting to get the idea though.

The big news is that Asher can now wait his turn, he MOSTLY patiently waits on the couch while I’m working another dog. And even if he does come off he immediately gets back up when I ask him what happened to his wait. I love his attitude when training, he doesn’t get sulky or worried, he loves to learn, never wants to quit and thinks it’s super fun to problem solve. He hasn’t had an issue with overarousal either, he really seems to have a great personality match for me and training.

Out of curiosity I had Dave work Navarre again this week – no weirdness whatsoever. Dave was super quiet and relaxed, but I don’t think Navarre was at all being sensitive. He was, as always, being pushy. We talked as usual about how to handle that, as he really wasn’t responding to Dave’s ‘there’s’ either. Navarre just needs SO MANY ‘lie downs’ for all his many issues. It’s lie down for going too fast it’s lie down for going too close it’s lie down for changing direction, it’s lie down for ‘there’, it’s lie down when he’s wrong, it’s lie down when it’s actually appropriate for him to lie down. SO MANY DOWNS. Still, his ‘there’ should be ‘THERE-lie down’ instead of the opposite. And Dave thinks it’s okay to get Navarre out of his downs with a ‘steady’ instead of a ‘walk’, as Navarre thinks walk is such a high energy activity, which is different than what I had been told before, where you shouldn’t use ‘steady’ unless you can actually change his pace. Still, what I CAN use to get him up quietly is ‘there’. So to get him to stop and come in it’s now ‘there-lie down … there’. Bonus points to Navarre, he was actually doing quite well with his (small) outruns today.

Well, it was relaxing not to work Navarre, I’m hopeful we can get some actual practice this Fall and get more comfortable with each other. I thought I might also look into some of the other herding venues that sometimes have local trials, ABHA and ASCA, as that may be something that Haku AND Navarre could do. It’s hard to train for USBCHA without a lot of access to sheep and BIG fields.

Agility! Things are happening, it’s like a miracle, USDAA is actually making some changes. Once again, I imagine too late to be meaningful, but they actually are getting rid of their up contacts! And are ASKING FOR INPUT about changes like the table and the spreads. That’s kind of unheard of, so maybe some change? I actually plan to go to a USDAA trial this Fall. Shocking. It will finally be Navarre’s Masters debut, and I had forgotten that Bright was in performance 16, that will be fun. I’m trying to think the last time I went to a USDAA trial was – a year ago maybe? But the judges sound fun, I’m hopeful for fun, open and safe courses – which is all I really want. And still waiting to hear about AKC nationals for 2021, if they happen to go back to Reno I’ll try to qualify my two. If it’s not, well, I’m less inclined to roll the dice on AKC trials at this point. They CAN be fun, and they can be both awful and so stupid. Also not sure about WTT, which is another option. But I think Navarre needs another year under his belt before I feel real confident with his abilities. And we, uh, kind of skipped this year. We’ve been to two trials, but we’ve played with a LOT of puppies.

I miss agility! I have scoped out some options this Fall, AKC has changes coming as well. I don’t really need fix and go, I just want to actually, well, go. Then the one trial down in Salem that I had decided to go to coincided with the obedience trial conveniently at my agility arena – go figure! So I entered just one day of that obedience trial, and the plan is the enter a day of agility as well. I’d like to THINK Navarre only needs one more attempt to finish his CDX, but he may take 20, one never knows. As for Utility, I’m not sure. He has days when he finds it fun, and some days where he’s just rolling his eyes at me. We shall see.

Year of the puppy has been so much fun, it’s crazy how many puppies there are at the moment – and are yet to be! PUPPIES EVERYWHERE! I’ll admit, the terriers are FUN, and Asher thinks they’re great – they can take a beating. I continue to be really happy I ended up with Asher when I did, as I may have fallen for some other puppy because they are SO CUTE (and so much harder than border collies!). Really, other than the other dog thing, I am so enormously happy with Asher – you never know what you’re going to get.

Haku was up with Carol this weekend at an AKC herding trial – which I think may be his last, for several reasons. This is the last opportunity until next April, and it’s hard to say how he may be doing at that point. Then apparently he was just a hot mess up there, not responding to cues at all and just doing whatever the hell he wants. So that’s new, and he did that with me a while back too. I don’t know if it’s age or what, but they had done really well together before. They actually had to just leave the course it was so bad. So Haku’s AKC herding career may be at an end, and without something for us to work towards, and with his erratic behavior, he may be officially retired. I don’t know if Haku is ever going to be ready for retirement, time will tell. He’s actually been getting so worked up waiting his turn to train on the couch that he’s biting the other dog’s feet and working himself into a squeaky lather. So I’ve just started putting him in another room when I train, and everyone (including Haku) seems more relaxed with that. We tried training some new behaviors to finish up his trick titles and he was just awful, he is SUCH a difficult dog to actually train. Love him to pieces, but he has issues in that regard. 10 is not old, but he’s definitely changing – and getting harder!