...ready for action !

Monday, February 1, 2016

12.5 weeks

And growing fast.. we have long legs now! She is such a sweetie, and really fun to play with/train. She is still not a big fan of food, but she is able to train for kibble for her morning session when she is hungry. As long as I keep it fairly active.. she is a big fan of the movement. She is doing reasonably well in her body awareness but doesn't have really anything on cue properly yet, so I get a lot of offering whatever we last worked on. She can stand on all 4 paw pods, back up, back up onto something and we started teaching R/L paw 2 days ago which she picked up in one session. We are also working on having nice position in sit and down, sit is coming along nicely but down is still a work/flop in progress.



Her recalls are pretty good, unless my other dogs are out and she is in sheepdog mode. I don't call her when she is running with them, unless I am close enough to enforce it. She is a little rocket in her restrained recalls but I have stopped doing them for the moment as she doesn't have enough body awarness to decelerate/stop once she has the toy and tends to slip/do a somersault, even with me letting the toy go. Retrieves are still a work in progress.. we work on that everyday. She finds it fun to run off with the toy, of course, although by using a conveniently stashed papillon I am using a bit of jealousy to ensure a quick return when she does bunk off. I just introduced a tiny bit of 'jumping' in the last couple of days.   I don't do a lot with my puppies but figure a little bit won't hurt. The vids below show the total number of reps she has seen.





She had a tiny go at a small grid at 4ft apart and did pretty well, we have to train in the park as the garden has just had new lawn laid and she was a very good girl with her focus and sit stays



She is also a bit more confident out the front, although still doesn't like it when cars drive past. We will continue to work on that. The park is being utilised to the full to find nice dogs for her to run with...most of the time she has been enjoying this. We did have a run in with a golden retriever that attacked her Mother 2 days ago, luckily Rosi was OK but a little bit shaken (as was I, no idea WHY the dog was off lead as it was clear this is not the first time he had done that). Zen sensibly bolted inside, but was OK coming back out afterwards to play.

Rosi is well and truely back in work now, and I am loving having her back. Her enthusiasm and love of the game cannot be beaten, in my opinion. She has lost all her baby weight (that, uh hmm, may have taken awhile given how much weight I put on her..) and is jumping full height again. We were supposed to trial on Saturday night, but the trial was cancelled due to bad weather. I am focussing mainly on her jumping form and trying to get her to shift more onto her hindquarters rather than be so on her forehand all the time, and this is also a work in progress. We are currently doing Ann Croft's jumping course and while the exercises are nothing new, it is nice to get someone else's eyes on her. She continues to adore her daughter and plays with her all the time. Love my Red Dog!

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