Shedding

Dove puppies are a week old! Everything continues to go really smoothly, they’re growing like … well, little potatoes. So they’re now BIGGER potatoes, and less dramatic than they were last week. Admittedly, they had a lot going on, what with being born and everything. Now they’re pretty content and trusting, Dove has been keeping them fat and happy and very robust. There is just something about baby puppies, especially at this stage before it’s all poop everywhere. Puppies that you never have to clean up after are magical. Give them another week and they’ll start to get more interesting – but, for now, they’re super cute. Right now the smallest girl and the red boy seem more laid back, while the others are more opinionated. We’ll see if that changes.

Eagle

Falcon

Hawk (look at how much pigment filled in on his nose!)

Kestrel

Kite

Navarre was happy to see Dove, though he apparently thinks that girls that smell like puppies are super sexy. Weirdo.

Back to herding this week, with glorious weather! Oh, Spring, I do love you. I didn’t know what Navarre would do as he’s been off for a couple weeks and has started getting wound up when we pull into Scio. But he was actually trying really hard, and Ian was being really quiet, and I think that helped. They worked twice, the second time there was more yelling and Navarre was more hyped up. Now which came first, the chicken or the egg, it’s hard to say.

Ian thinks I should start trialing Navarre in the Fall, which is when I think I’m shooting for with Haku as well. I want to ease Haku slowly back into things and make sure he’s holding up before doing an USBCHA, and summer is right around the corner – when I most definitely don’t want to be trialing. I’d like to think he’s either going to be primed and ready by Fall, or it will be clear that he needs to keep things short and sweet. As for Navarre, we shall see, I’m not in any rush and certainly feel no urge to trial him until we really feel like a team, no matter how many skills he has with other people.

So Haku did his first shedding! We had looked at splitting sheep before his rehab, but never actually worked on calling through. At Ian’s we got a big group by the fence and worked on flanking him back and forth, calling him in and then sending him on to catch them. Haku thought this was super fun! I thought he’d be terrible at the calling in thing, and we really need to decide on a come through the sheep cue, as all our recall cues have been ruined by herding.  Still, he did it! Helps that Ian’s sheep just want to go in separate directions anyway though. And, knock on wood, there was a lot of running to catch all these separate sheep, and no signs of the limp!

Then we also saw Dave to get his approach to shedding. Different approach and very different type of sheep. At Ian’s we worked with like … 20 sheep? At Dave’s we looked at 6 who were vaguely fetchy. Also started in the middle of the the area and not looking at calling through in sending around, but just calling in and holding, which is the actual exercise. With these sheep in this situation, getting Haku to come in wasn’t really happening. And while Dave says that ‘here’ and ‘come’ which are commands we’ve used relative to sheep far away for like a year should ALSO mean come all the way into me, I think that seems a bit unfair to the dogs. And our ‘hand’ cue we started on means absolutely nothing around sheep. So work to do there, but really has nothing to do with actually working the sheep, so we’ll have a chance to work on that portion.

I preferred how Ian introduced shedding, was more fun for the dog. I realize that shedding is a lot of just me sorting the sheep while the dog just sits there, so that’s definitely something I don’t have a lot of experience with either. So need to work on that as well, I never actually work with sheep without a dog. That will be our project for a while, Haku is such a good partner to learn things with.

Navarre and Dave also worked on shedding, which was helpful for me to see. I felt Navarre continues to be better behaved after taking a bit of time off. I’m happy to hand him over to other people after our rather tumultuous attempt at working together. We’ll try it again in the future, but Haku is much more my speed.

As for Haku, I’m cautiously optimistic as he continues to improve. This week he went back to joining in with running with the other dogs, at the arena and at the park. We also went herding twice, once with a fair bit of running and changing direction, and it was his first hike back as well. We didn’t go too far, but he wasn’t just walking beside me the whole time, but was running about. And, funny enough, suddenly Navarre was all about having the Stick now that Haku was back. Ah, dog dynamics – but I think we’re all happy to have Haku back in the mix, things are way too sedate without him.

So, no limping that I’ve seen. I have NOT been doing his Assisi loop, which, oddly enough he would usually limp after using that. We also have not been doing as much stretching and range of motion exercises. He continues to take his supplements and, so far, he does actually seem better. Kind of a Christmas miracle. I’m cautious though, we’ll see what happens. He’s definitely lost a lot of muscle and conditioning, so I want to see about getting him back into shape before doing anything crazy. His little rear legs shaking is something that never happened before the rest period, unfortunately.

Haku isn’t old, but he’s not young. God I love that dog.