Summer?

We have had the loveliest mild June and July so far, I’m just waiting for the heat to turn on. To be fair, summer doesn’t usually start around here until mid-July, but it’s not usually THIS nice! As I’m teaching through the summer, I’m hoping we can stay relatively mild – though I’m not holding my breath.

I do feel like with it being so cool that I should take advantage of it, so I went ahead and started Asher on his weavepoles this week. It’s just an activity that requires a lot of repetition and running, so I figured we could get the basics in place before it got too hot to do much. We had five 2×2 sessions throughout the week, he caught on really quickly. He was weaving four straight poles that were about 3 feet apart from all angles and approaches, with speed and rear crosses. As expected, getting the turn back in to the second set on difficult soft sided entries was his hardest scenario, which is why I wanted to just kind of power through the beginning stages so he didn’t practice too much winging out. The goal is to get him weaving four straight poles and then introduce him to the channel poles. Then we can work on independence and proofing with open channels during the summer, and go back to closed poles when he’s a bit older. It will be interesting to see what kind of weaver he is, it’s always been Navarre’s most difficult obstacle, very hard for him to bend through them.

We also did a bit of sequencing, but he was just not into collecting this week, so we had to really break it down – which annoyed him greatly, all the stopping, and the little bastard jumped up and bit my arm. I was not amused. He also got kicked out several times because he just can’t stay stationed when I run the other dogs these days – he is SUCH a teenager at the moment.

Well, I should say SOMETIMES he’s a teenager, he was actually being surprisingly well behaved this weekend. We had a special Asher agility day, getting to join a group of other young dogs at a lovely outdoor agility field. Asher has never been in a class or worked around other dogs, never done agility outside and in fact has never done agility outside of our arena – so a lot of big milestones! I had low expectations, but he actually did pretty well. We started out doing some 2x2s and played a bit on a low dogwalk to the manners minder. The problem being with both of these behaviors they’re pretty new and both of them he’s in the middle of training them. He doesn’t actually think of them as ‘agility’, so he did them but wasn’t really relaxed and focused like he normally is. With the dogwalk especially he was pretty tentative and not really into ‘thinking’ skills in this new environment. He liked the coursework though, which is what we’ve done the most of, so he was much more relaxed and into that. He was doing some funky ass jumping though, don’t know what was up with that. We definitely need to get him out and about, back before the pandemic we had a couple baby seminars that ended up getting cancelled, and obviously nothing much will be going on for a while, so I need to just find opportunities to train in new environments.

What Asher did do well at the agility play day is station on a downstay when it wasn’t his turn and I wanted to go take photos. I’m actually somewhat surprised he was so chill watching the other dogs doing agility, as he’s certainly not like that for ME when I run other dogs. But I think Asher is not going to be a dog that wants to run with other people, I tried to have Nancy run him so I could take some agility photos, but he wasn’t having any of that. He would play with her, but he is kind of a mama’s boy, actually. Which I kind of knew, but I guess I figured he’d also grow out of that. And baby dogs are growing up, both him and Flee chilled out next to each on a downstay while we had lunch, just watching us without being pushy and obnoxious like SOME dogs would have been (looking at you, Navarre …). Our puppies are growing up, it won’t be long until they’re doing agility like real dogs. But not yet, I really want to finish that dogwalk and get rid of the manners minder, hopefully we can work on it this week. But judging from his performance at the play day, we’ll have to go back a few steps.

Was super proud of Asher in herding this week, Ron was down this weekend and while I was feeling somewhat frustrated with our driving and him really understanding the task, Asher made me look like a liar and was doing some lovely work. So, yeah, driving independently across the entire arena, flanking from the across the arena, dropping right in on his ‘there’, doing inside flanks and basically being super awesome. It continues to feel so weird that I don’t have to argue with him all the time, even with Haku I had to argue. Asher is just such a good boy! He does still occasionally get ‘stuck’ with his driving, and while we were DOING inside flanks, we need to actually TRAIN them. It amused me greatly that he was taking the flank verbal that I asked for even when I said the wrong one – when did he learn his verbals? We were working with the new heavier sheep, and I think that helped him understand a lot better what he was supposed to do. Our homework is looking at those inside flanks and continuing to work on driving. He continues to look good otherwise.

Navarre also did well, I have to remind myself that we have only been working together for a few months. It really bothers me when he eats sheep poop when working, I know it’s stress/displacement behavior and I want to help him. Ron was not concerned and says that it will go away, and it was funny his young dog did the same thing. Navarre is just such a different dog these days, actually trying to be right. I have been tentative about putting any pressure on him because of the behaviors he has been showing, but he actually seemed happier with more pressure and clearer expectations today. Got him slowed down and backed off (eventually), and, yes, shockingly everything goes much better then – and then I think HE’S more relaxed because things are in control. Shocking thought. So need to maintain that pressure and expectations to help him be successful, and hopefully that will continue to be build confidence because he’ll have more control. So counter-intuitive to me …

Speaking of confidence, Navarre THOUGHT about biting a sheep today! It was somewhat warm and the set we were looking at had been out for another dog and we were working some inside flank exercises where it was just back and forth with the sheep – and this one sheep was just done with it all. Sheep can tell that Navarre has nothing to back him up, which is part of the reason he just does everything with speed, so she kept challenging him. And he did some nice work moving her, and at one point by the gate his little lips were lifting and he was THINKING about a nose nip, but he keeps doing the frantic rush and run past, which just shows that he’s insecure and lets the sheep win. Still, he’s doing better, my big soft squishy marshmallow of a dog, he doesn’t have any natural inclination to hurt another creature, and I love that about him. Sheep know it though …

So our homework is to work and insisting he gear it down and think in all the places, and then working on zigzag fetches down the field and just really showing him he can move those sheep wherever he wants to. He was a happy boy.

As for his mysterious medical issues, he’s been off the pain meds for almost a week now, he is still peeing normally, or really BETTER than he ever has. He used to do the ‘big pee’ after herding every time, but now he just pees normally afterwards, and in all situations these day. So … hm – how long has this been going on? We go back in to see the vet this week and I hope to get some x-rays of his back and see about where we should go from here. His mid-back mowhawk remains the same, while his lower back mowhawk is gone. Maddy says since he’s been off the pain meds there is a lot more inflammation and swelling – she feels up by the base of the spine and through the groin. She doesn’t think it’s an illiospoas injury, but really doesn’t have any guesses as to what this all could mean. But anti-inflammatories definitely reduced a lot of inflammation/swelling – but we still don’t know where it’s coming from. The mystery continues. Now, keep in mind Navarre continues to act perfectly normal, I don’t see any signs of stiffness, lameness or favoring. He does look exceptionally roached, but he does have a giant mowhawk … so I don’t know.

I kept the dogs relatively quiet this week, no trips to the park, though we did a bigger hike and then a smaller hike this weekend. I’m just paranoid, but I think we’ll go back to our normal activity next week, unless the vet says otherwise.

I had a really sad thought the other day, if I hadn’t have gotten Asher the only dogs I’d have right now are Haku and Navarre – and they really don’t like each other. I’m so thankful my big red puppy came into my life. He wasn’t planned, but obviously meant to be. Both Haku and Navarre play with him, he really helps keep it balanced around here. We all very much need a girl around here though, and I continue to think I’d like to add a puppy in the next year or so. Without Bright the house seems so empty the boys need a bitch in their lives to tell them what to do.

I am now worried that getting a Bright relative is going to give me way too many expectations for that puppy to, well, be Bright. Which intellectually I know that she won’t be Bright, but it will be a lot of comparison. Randomly, a litter was announced overseas that will be a repeat breeding of a dog that I’ve had a serious internet crush on from day one. So I did contact the breeder, but with the world being in such chaos at the moment, I just don’t have any idea if it something that can even be done right now. I’ve never seriously considered a dog from overseas, it has a whole set of complications anyway, so we’ll see. I think it would be a really fun litter, and it never hurts to see if we could make it happen. I do think Asher will very much enjoy having a dog close to his own age, just like how Haku and Bright were such good buddies, I hope that we can find a girl that will be Asher’s buddy as they grow too. He misses Bright. We all miss Bright.