Since Laev was nine or ten weeks old, she has gone to sleep with The Toy. This was a special toy, an orange fuzzy die chosen by Shakespeare from a basket after his first Rally… 

Schutzhund training tonight was fun. 🙂 No dirty bites! and no attempts, even. She’d tried that one more time, last Saturday, and apparently realized that it just wasn’t going to pay off and wasn’t worth… 

I won’t say Laev is bombproof, because she’s not. She can be suckered into a reaction by almost anything fast-moving. But she is remarkably blase about some things. This morning, for example, I was vacuuming… 

I wanted to post earlier this week, but I was too depressed. Okay, “depressed” is a strong word. But I was discouraged. Laev was simply overwhelmed by the second day of the trial and couldn’t… 

Well, she’s still a puppy. Actually, today wasn’t bad. It was a MUCH busier trial than her first outing, which I knew in advance, and she was pretty distracted by all the activity. She also… 

Laev really, really likes the cats. And not as a pillow to snuggle with. I don’t think she really intends to kill them, because she’s caught them a few times and hasn’t tried a kill… 

Okay, anyone really looking closely Sunday afternoon might have wondered why exactly I enjoy this. Wednesday night I was trying to walk Laev to the training building and carry several items as well; we were… 

Well, Laev got an equipment swap the other night. She’s working on hold-and-barks now at Schutzhund. This was taught traditionally by holding the dog back physically from reaching the decoy, who rewarded strong (frustrated) barking… 

Laev has lousy article indication in tracking — something I’m told is perfectly normal for her age, but that’s no reason to just let it go. 🙂 I also want to start teaching her a… 

We did it. We went to Laev’s first AKC trial. Laev had done an APDT Rally Obedience trial before, but this was her first AKC Obedience trial. I was not anticipating great things. In fact,…