Teenager

Haven remains charming, but definitely more opinionated as she becomes a teenager as she nears 6 months. Recalls are optional and she’s definitely way more interested in checking out the world these days. Been a little spookier, as seems normal this age. Her bounce back remains strong, even if she is a little weirded out by something she is usually fine in a few seconds. Her alarm barking in the yard has improved, but she still sometimes can’t help herself. She has finally recognized that yapping like a chihuahua just makes all the fun go away.

Training remains super fun and we’ve been having a blast. Definitely a bit more sensitive about things these days, you can see when there is any sort of conflict or confusion she’ll sort of check out – maybe sniff, maybe run around. When she’s confident with the training she remains totally on task. So that’s helpful to see, no pressure if she disengages, just gives me information to break things down more. In general she’s willing with work through things and try something else, but if it’s not clear the second time – nope.

Finally trained the silly crossed legs trick – yet again, it took FOREVER. Asher was the same way – though I thought it was just because I free shaped it. With Haven I used a foot target and it SHOULD have been simple – but it took three days and she just had no clue for the longest time. It is pretty freaking cute now that she has it though. And because I’m a glutton for punishment, I trained the other side too – took another 3 days, but I’ll admit it’s really cute to have both. Finally got both back leg lifts, the first took like a minute to train, the second leg took like 2 days – she REALLY only wanted to lift the first one! But she’s got that now and enjoys it. Revisited handstand on the wall and she can do that without a prop now – still a little wobbly though, worth revisiting in the future to see if her core strength improves. She got the bow in no time, once again, very cute. Side legs is still on the list. Running out of the basics for body tricks though. I do LOVE her little nose through my fingers trick – that got her doing all the things we hadn’t been able to with her weak ass hand touch. She now really drives to the hand and holds position from wherever – it’s my new favorite way to train hand touches! Easier to add duration and no palm nipping like can happen with the hand touch.

Agility-wise, put her left and right wrap cues on a jump (and hence introduced rear crosses), and added a jump cue to a (very low) jump. She knows the tire too. Obviously didn’t do much of that, but I like to introduce it when they’re still young in a happy way. Got her started on the running contact platform, which when I introduced before she would only get on and stay on, so she was having fun with that. Been working on lateral sends to tunnels, introduced tunnel threadles, tunnel on verbal only, opposite motion sends. Introduced threadles, just because we were doing them in class and she was handy to use what it looks like in the beginning phases. I use Haven to demo quite a bit in class actually, she enjoys it and doesn’t seem to mind that I’m not really actively engaged because I’m talking to the class. The other dogs tend to be terrible demo dogs – Bryn especially, she likes my 100% focus. As Haven can’t be left in the yard while I teach, I don’t want her to sit in a crate all day, so I try to take her out every couple hours or so and we play a little in the arena while students are walking. It’s amazing how much you can get done in just a few minutes when you do it several times a day! And, of course, she loves to say hi to everyone – wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

Still working on getting her big girl teeth in, and she weighed in at 15.2lbs at her 5 month birthday. She also got measured (officially, by a judge!) at 15.5 inches. I am guessing she’s going to end up around 16.5 inches and … 18-20 lbs? We shall see. She’s been getting her beautiful flowing hair on, and I think she’s looking quite attractive. She remains very mature for her age and is jumping the arena wall obnoxiously regularly. Yesterday she jumped on top of a tunnel and from the tunnel she launched from there over the wall. Ridiculous. And, yes, I got her adjusted at the chiropractor this month, she was a bit out. Dork.

Otherwise I’ve been focusing on being very consistent with making sure she doesn’t have any accidents in the house. Which, sadly, means no more sleeping on the bed. But she doesn’t seem to mind sleeping in the crate next to us. She’ll get her freedom back eventually. She remains easy to groom and do her nails. She’s a lovely heeling dog and walks politely on the leash (despite having no training in that regard). We HAVE been working on getting her to pull in a harness to a reward, which she is gradually getting on board with. Also been working with her circle work and getting her to drive around my body better. She’s definitely finally running full out on the property with the other dogs, which is really fun to see. The tiny puppy stage is definitely running out, my puppy is becoming a dog.

We did go on an adventure to check out a freestyle competition (Rally Free, or whatever). It’s so cute! I went for some training inspiration, but I actually think I’m going to try training for it. There is nothing not to like, it’s adorable tricks and happy dogs. The ‘rally’ portion is also really fun, with tricks and heeling on both sides and just way more fun than actual rally. It gives me some more concrete trick goals to work on, and I do love working on tricks. Right now we’re going back and trying to get everything on a somewhat reliable verbal discrimination. Ha! This will take a while. And also have a bunch of fun freestyle moves to train as well. I don’t know if I’ll ever really do anything with it, but I think it will be fun to play around with while Haven grows. And all those tricks, discrimination, verbal cues and heeling will only be good for agility anyway.

In other dog news, we had our burst of actual agility. A UKI trial followed by a marathon of seminars, trials and other events. Just Asher and Bryn, I haven’t started bringing Navarre back yet. I will get started on that this week (he’s been cleared by the chiropractor). First, the two day UKI trial at our arena was really fun. Once again, I signed up for everything with the assumption I wouldn’t actually run it – but I did run everything. Lots of good experience for the dogs, and Asher is slowly getting more consistent. We aren’t there yet, but he’s trying really hard.

Asher actually ended up going high in trial, though it was a bit ridiculous as it involved just telling Asher to lie down and wait for 10 seconds while I ran 80 feet across the arena to catch up to help redirect him to the last jump, but we qualified, where no one else did (and in jumpers!). Yes, I perhaps should have used that stop on the dogwalk instead of the last minute lie down, but hey. I wasn’t alone with just not getting places. This judge really liked the ridiculously long lines across the arena where you can’t get any distance to help. Even the very spry were struggling with the distances. They were fun courses, overall, but, yeah – give us a bit of a break here! Asher even ended up qualifying quite a few times, which is novel. It even got him out of Senior and into Champ, apparently. And mostly his non qualifying (all those speedstakes!) were like one bar or one refusal – nothing earth shattering. Was proud of the Asher, once again, not perfect, but getting better.

Bryn had a good trial overall, I mostly stuck to FEO – that toy makes a difference for her, even if we were mostly just running the courses anyway. But Saturday I started FEO, went a couple for real (that she qualified in!), and then back to FEO. Sunday I tried to start without the toy, and it didn’t go well, so we mostly ran FEO after that. Still, she did some really nice stuff. Not there yet, but so much better. Taking obstacles, doing her behaviors, trying really hard. Only a few places where she got fired for ridiculous flanking. She had fun, and I had fun with her. Progress, one step at a time.

Then we had a big week of agility, starting with league, where Asher’s jumping has been off for the last couple sessions (stuttering). So that always makes me worry. Then I took the day off to do a full day with Susan Koldenhof, as we had a lot of fun at the last one a few weeks ago. However, this seminar definitely went in another direction that was, uh, less fun.

Don’t get me wrong, for the dogs that had the skills and the handlers that could do it, this flowed nicely. But forced layers and constant obstacle discrimination and never, ever taking the next logical obstacle … oof. This is a type of agility that my dogs definitely don’t have the skills for. Now, it was still fun to play with. We took it pieces at a time and it was fun to see them get through each challenge. After a certain point Asher got real weird though, and started refusing to do backsides. He’d go to the backside, look at the jump, and then backtrack and come back and take the front. And there was no convincing him otherwise, so I listened and didn’t push it. He tried REALLY hard, this was definitely above his paygrade.

Bryn remains super happy at Sarah’s facility. Don’t know why, but she was a trooper and gave it her all. She did some real nice things, and I was super proud of her. Once again, this was over her head for the most part, but she did some lovely pieces that I wasn’t expecting. She was using her brain and trying so hard. This was definitely more fun than going to a seminar that was too easy – I just wish I had my dogs better trained to feel like they had the skills to really do these. I do find this kind of thing really fascinating, but I don’t have a dog for it right now.

The small evening UKI trial we went to the next day after that was a bit of shit show. Asher was still refusing to backsides, and was frantic and not confident. We ended on some FEO with a toy. Bryn we mostly just did FEO, and she wasn’t super successful either – but still did some nice things. She’s growing up, that Bryn!

Finally, after a rest day, we had one more seminar back at our place. I was not the most focused at this point, so much agility! Ran Asher at 12 inches, and he did backsides – and was trying really hard. Was happy to see him confident again. We’ll work on regaining that lost confidence, we don’t have anything else coming up right now. Mostly ran Bryn, who was not being super flanky, which was nice. I entered her in the ‘commitment’ session – but we didn’t seem to work on commitment, so I’m not quite sure what the point of that session was. Bryn had fun, we worked through things, she is getting better. Not quite there yet.

I think Bryn is ready for and I’d like to run her through the shape up drills. I do think she can do this kind of thing now, and while I don’t think she’ll be super easy, the more trained skills she has, the easier she is to run. So I am definitely planning for focusing on that during our winter break – and I’ll see what I can set up in the meantime. As for Asher … I don’t know if that would be a good idea with him. More work on jumping in general, but he’s good for the OCCASIONAL backside, not too many and nothing too weird. Local UKI is just our speed.

We don’t have any trials or seminars on the schedule at the moment. Unfortunately Haven’s 2nd puppy seminar got cancelled, and I’m sad for that. We’ll keep an eye out for other opportunities. We definitely need to keep working in new environments, she can be hard to get known behaviors in new places.

Heidi has been taking Bryn herding, which makes me so happy. That’s all I want for her, is a chance to do what she loves. Her and Heidi seem to make a great team, she listens to her and doesn’t get all obnoxious. I’m stepping back from herding right now, there is nothing there I feel like training at the moment. I do very much want to get these agility dogs trained though, so I can go to a seminar and not feel like I’m making excuses. I want to feel like we can actually focus on the AGILITY, not jumping and flanking issues.

Carol did take Navarre and Asher to an ABHA trial, and both boys got their level 3 titles – and Asher came home high in trial! I was so happy they got to play, especially Navarre – so big thanks to Carol for once again making my boys look good. Heck, she even put a novice rally title on Asher while he was there with the video option they have! Carol has put more titles on my dogs than I have at this point 😉