Six Months!

If I could have an infinite amount of dogs I’d love to have my sighthound someday. They were my first doggie love and I really do enjoy them. The last few weeks I’ve gotten to run three pharaoh hounds in class while their handler is out from injury. OMG, so much fun! I’m a big fan of the ‘stronger’ sighthounds as opposed to the more delicate and sensitive ones. A lot of the afghan hounds I’ve liked have had that stronger personality, and the pharaoh hounds as well. Some fun dogs and I have really enjoyed playing with them. Maybe someday I’ll end up with one, you never know.

Everyone is excited because USDAA nationals is in California next year, but in order for me to qualify I’d have to travel to trials, and I’m never been much into that. And AKC remains silent on 2021 nationals that was SUPPOSED to be in Reno, but I learned is most definitely not going to be since they don’t have a crating area any more. Alas, that was so convenient! So may not even be ‘west’ for that year. It did give me some incentive to actually trial if there was more of a goal, as there are a lot of local AKC trials, but not looking good. So still no big goals for next year, not sure where WTT will be either.

Asher is six months old! And, weirdly, the shortest pup in the litter at the moment. We measured him at the trial at 19 inches. Meanwhile, his sister in CA is 20.5! Sister Flea is also taller than him, as is Ravi at 20 inch – and brother Friday in FL is the size of a house, 45 lbs at six months and 21 inches. Now, the puppies don’t LOOK that big, and the girls have to be slowing down soon, that’s crazy that they’re taller than the boys. Asher has definitely gained a lot of mass recently, he’s like having an adult dog on the bed at night now. I don’t know how much he weighs, but he’s no lightweight. All the puppies are finally growing some hair, so neck and butt fringes are coming in. They are getting a LITTLE less awkward looking … but still very much big floppy puppies.

My tiny puppy is definitely past the baby stage. At the moment he’s both more focused on me, and less. When we’re out and about he’s always got his own weird agenda where he just goes WAY out running and sniffing continuously, he sort of looks like a bloodhound on the hunt. I have no idea what he’s looking for, he never STOPS and sniffs, just runs around like he’s looking for something endlessly without finding it. But he’s also super happy to come in and play when invited, and he’s getting more and more cuddly. He does run more with the dogs, but, knock on wood, has not really been doing much body slamming since we had a very serious talk about it a month ago or so. Knock on wood, Asher seems a little more open to suggestion than Navarre – who took quite some time to get over his body slamming phase.

Thankfully, I think Asher’s happy to be a ‘satellite dog’. Navarre is the dog that WILL get the toy unless I tell him not to, and the other dogs are perfectly happy to just chase next to him and wait their turn. Essentially they find being NEXT to the action to be just as fun as actually doing it. Asher seems to be fitting into that role, which makes it easier as I don’t have to make sure that he’s not going for a toy he’s not invited to get. He does still enjoy his frisbee rollers, and he CAN bring it back, but enjoys running around showing off with it. So we do about half and half.

Our training has slowed down now that we’re past the basics but not really ready for more advanced work. He has lots of cute tricks, has a much better idea where his body is and shows some pretty good self control in some situations. Things that we’re now working on (or should be working on), many of which aren’t super fun:

• Stationing with Excitement: Just started trying to leave Asher on the table when working with another dog in the arena – ha! He can do it at home, but so far I’ve just had to put him away at the arena. He CAN do it, until he doesn’t, then he’ll run back up on the table – and then keep doing that. It’s like he’s playing tag and he runs back to the table and thinks he’s ‘safe’

• Loose Leash Walking: As he kind of now can heel, it’s time to start insisting on not pulling my arm off

• Not Body Slamming People: Oh my is he terrible at this, but he’s getting too big and he PUNCHES you and rebounds off to go run somewhere else, it’s not even a greeting. So, yeah, finally getting that under control

• Brushing: Whoops, forgot about this – still need to fix this! Though the Dove puppies have MUCH less hair than Dove and Navarre did at this age. We did a tiny combing the other day without total freakout, and I ‘brush’ him all over with my hands frequently

• Toy to Hand: He’s terrible at dropping the toy as I rewarded a lot of spitting and hitting my hand when he was young

• Scent Articles: He can do very well, have not put it together as a retrieve yet though, just pick up and hold

• Heeling: He likes this! Navarre always thought it was so stupid, so it’s fun to train again

• Tugging: We laid off the tug while he was teething and are just now getting back into it, we need to play tug more!

• Flatwork: Going to attempt circle work again WITHOUT body slamming me

• Pedestal Work: He’s doing really well with this, he’s sticking the pedestal sends and can send from any position and wait for release and come back into me or send out to another one

• Mat work: We haven’t done much with this, but he’s targeting it with his rear feet and we’ve progressed from turns to running across and hitting it from all angles

• Around an Object: Just introduced wrapping a bucket

• Cavaletti: He needs to think about that long, ridiculous body

• Skateboarding: Meant to start this one when he was younger

He remains super fun to train, just a lovely balance between enthusiastic and thoughtful without any real softness or worry about being incorrect. He loves to problem solve and never wants to stop training. Having so much fun with him.

Dogs continue to get along really well. Navarre and Asher still playing and having a great time in the yard, though Navarre has yet to play with him inside. Asher and Bright play inside, and it’s weird how it’s usually BRIGHT that is the one pushing Asher to play. Haku is less annoyed by him, no over the top disgruntlement anyway.

We went to an agility trial! I had been very much looking forward to this USDAA trial, our one USDAA a year. We may go to more next year as it looks like there may be more local ones being offered because of nationals. OMG, challenging courses – I can’t remember the last time that happened! We kind of sucked! This trial was all about WIDE open courses, long lines, sprinting, straight tunnels and SO MUCH RUNNING. I, uh, have not been doing that much running this year, and you really CAN’T do much running in a 60 x 90 arena. Not like this, holy cow. They had extra big rings and really used that space. I really enjoyed the courses, but we had our issues, that’s for sure.

Navarre reverted back to his puppy days. Maybe it was the big wide spacing, maybe it was the excitement of all the other border collies that we don’t normally see at trials. But he was being a floaty baby dog again. He did some nice stuff too, but he was harder to run this weekend then he has been for a while. Combine that with more complicated courses where I couldn’t stand there and babysit him and we had our share of silliness. He had a VERY good time though! Oh, and he actually MISSED a dogwalk contact, which I don’t believe has ever happened in competition, so that was an event. So did Bright, but that was not surprising. Really though, he did some great stuff, just not quite ready for prime time. Our lack of practice this year showed.

Knock on wood, Bright didn’t knock a single bar this weekend! After our last show I was really worried, especially as the surface there was TERRIBLE. She was jumping sixteen and didn’t look uncomfortable, though she did slip on the marbles that was the surface. She did great and picked up the slack when I just couldn’t get places … mostly. Both dogs do have a nice go-on that we got to practice A LOT, but Bright did do some weird things too.  To be fair, we HAD to do a bunch of rear crosses, which we rarely ever do and she was a superstar.

I tried not to enter too much, but I entered too much. To be fair, every course was pretty exhausting by itself! By the end of the weekend the dogs were fried and so was I. When both dogs imploded on the second round of steeplechase I called it quits on our last run. Still, we ALMOST did all the runs, which I didn’t expect. It just felt good to go to trial and get to run interesting courses that I can’t set up at home and see some really talented teams. I do love agility, and it was nice to actually DO some agility, even if we couldn’t seem to pull it together for the full courses most of the time.

Herding has been going well, Navarre has been much more responsive since we got back from Idaho. Well, much more responsive with OTHER PEOPLE. I think having to work with me made him appreciate them more! That boy loves his herding, and he still drives me nuts when I try to work him.

Haku, on the other hand, just gets better and better. We continue to look at penning as it’s a fun, easy activity without too much wear and tear on Haku. And it’s got a measureable goal as to whether we did it correctly or not – I like that. We are not expert penners, but we’re better. And we stuffed about 15 sheep in a pen the other day. I don’t think you get more points for penning more sheep, but you should. Haku is trying so hard and loves the work.

Asher played with some sheep again and definitely finds chasing them fun. No actual herding yet, but he did finally start circling. He likes his ‘aways’, not so much the come-bye. Just building excitement until the herding instincts kick in. He took a little bit of pressure from Ian the other week. I don’t think it will an issue though.

We have some potential big changes coming, so maybe I’ll get to have more access to sheep at some point. We shall see what the future brings.