I’m way, way behind on updating. Maybe if I’d had internet access….. Dern phone company delayed hooking up the new account for over a month, and I steal bandwidth from public networks and friends. Anyway….
Yesterday I laid a 100-step track with two turns, grass a little under knee-height, and food in a little over 1/3 of the footsteps. Laev had no clue what we were doing there. Worst track ever. Today, we did a ~80-step track in short grass with two turns and food in about 1/2 the steps, and she was much better, if not perfect. She was very distracted by the nearby horse, even though she was really focused at 9 weeks while tracking 50 feet from an entire paddock of sheep.
Which brings me to my next comment — I’m not sure I like this 12 week period. 😉 This is tecnically her second fear period, but in this pup that manifests as increased awareness. Fear period = noticing more things in general! and reduced ability to focus on me. So now she piloerects while going toward something new, is all. 🙂 Yesterday I had relatively little puppy focus while working away from home. What happened to the adoring tiny thing who couldn’t take her eyes from me two weeks ago? Heck, what happened to my tiny puppy? She’s enormous! I swear she doubles in size every time I take my eyes off her.
I was gone over the weekend, so she lived in the kennel run for three days or so. She escaped it. /sigh/ We think that moving the kennel just prior to leaving loosened some of the screws so that she could work them loose, so that when my mother arrived some hours later to feed and check on her, she was trotting about loose. Not good! I arrived home to find my part of my agility dogwalk strapped to the kennel door to secure the puppy. We fixed the kennel though and it held her tonight, so….
I really need to get someone to photograph and/or video some of our training sessions. I’m sure I could benefit from reviewing them, and I want a record of what we’re doing now. Just got to get my husband home at a reasonable hour, so we can get some training done while he’s available.
We did get some very nice comments on her ragwork at Schutzhund last night. Good puppy. Needs to bark more to get the rag to move — she’s dead silent — but very nice work. 🙂
