More Cell Phone woes

My cell now has no back, and no front and I still have to use it on speaker phone. Why can't she chew on remote controls like a normal puppy? I am going to make a special cell holder on my cork board and just slip my phone in there when I come in. If I can make that a habit then I will get a new phone. I just hate to get a new phone that will also get eaten.

I took some new pictures on our daily walkabout. I'll stick them up on flickr when I get done here. I even managed to get one of her standing still. That is rare. She noticed today that water moves! She still doesn't want to get her feet wet, but she would just watch the streams rushing around. Jumping from one high spot to another so she can watch the water. It was hilarious.

So far I'm not seeing a lot of behaviour changes. I was dreading adolescence and now it looks like it is waiting to ambush me just when I let my guard down. I did notice that while shaping new behaviours she doesn't work as long as she used to, but then she always surprised me with her puppy attention span.

I'm not tracking like I should be, I need to get on that. She tends to want to just race past the hot dog bits I need to not let her go on until she eats the food. So I am making a goal to really get tracking this week.

Busy Week

We have had a very busy week here. The sanctuary I work for had its annual open house yesterday. We had four days with out rain to try and get everything done. Vivre spent those days out in the yard with the big dogs. I would bring her in a work and play in the evening once work finished, but she was amazingly easy this week. She has always settled herself well, as long as she had had enough exercise during the day. I was a little worried that just being outside with out me being there to interact with her wouldn't do it, but she got to run and bark at all the people who were running around helping.

Which reminds me, everytime I think we are starting to get past our stranger thing she would do something that would make me doubt, but this week she had three different people come up to her one at a time and she just happily greeted everybody! I was so tickled. In fact one woman, who Vivre had barked at for a solid five minutes the first time she met her a few months ago, just watched in amazement when her daughter went over to the fence and Vivre was just as happy as can be.

I pulled out some new tennis balls this week and after giving Vivre one to cart around the house I took the other out and started tossing it to Yoda. At 10 he isn't big on chasing them, but he loves to catch them. Every now and then he would miss and Vivre would try desperatly to figure out how to get both tennis balls in her mouth at once. It is hilarious to watch, she just can't stand the thought that somebody else might get the ball.

I am going to try and find my tape measure to get a new height for her. She is still so small, but then I am used to large dogs, so she may not be quite as small as I think she is.

Not a drama queen

When Vivre was little I used to refer to her as Sprite's little drama queen. She was prone to screeching at the smallest thing. Apparently that isn't the case any more. Since I live way out in the middle of no where about once a day I take Vivre out of the yard and let her just run. She can get lots of excercise in the yard, but she can really open up and go when I let her out. She tends to run full out then start launching herself on and over obstacles. Those last pics I put on flickr are of her puppy zoomies. Anyway after her zoomies I was about to take her and turn her out in my aunt's excerise lot with my aunt's hound when I looked down and realized that my arm was covered in blood. Vivre has cut her pad going over something. It didn't even slow her down. No yelping, no limping, no evidence it even bothered her. It bothered me. There was a lot of blood.

Now I realized that I need to train her to accept doctoring. She was not happy with the wipe I pulled out of the first aid kit. Not at all.

She worries me some, this same day when she was launching herself over the picnic table she miscaculated and whacked her leg. She worries me. She still has puppy bones and she isn't even the slightest bit careful. When she is worked up I have to walk her down the steps or she lauches herself off my four foot high porch. Apparently all of her siblings are the same way. As soon as she gets old enough that I don't have to worry so much I plan on setting up some safe obstacles for her to launch herself over. I swear she jumps like a cat.

New Pictures

Hey I got some new pictures today. Vivre was running so some are blurry. Here are a couple. There are some more on Flickr.

Training Seminar

We had a training seminar scheduled today. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. The first day in weeks that it hasn't rained. It stayed a nice temperature and I didn't have to worry about Vivre getting too warm.

So Vivre got to finally start tracking today. Truthfully I have been nervous to start her, because I just don't know that much about tracking. There is enough information about starting a dog on tracking I could have tried, but it was something I wouldn't have any clue how to fix if I messed her up. I'm also glad that I waited, because the additional information that the trainer shared will be very useful when Vivre starts getting a little further along with her tracking. I'm going to have to get better treats for tracking. She will do obedience for what I had, but apparently she needs something more interesting to track. I wonder if that might have something to do with her working with me, versus her ignoring me to work the track.

After lunch we start on obedience. Of course we haven't done too much obedience. I didn't even try the pivoting with the fronts and start heeling. We've only done that at home and we were training in a public park. Though truthfully she probably would have been fine. There were kids running around and riding bicycles. But we were far enough away that the dogs were all fine. Allan wants me to ask for a little more from Vivre. He pointed out that since she knows down and sit it is time to start asking more. Such as more duration, or distractions. There were plenty of distractions, but largely she is very good at ignoring them preferring to work with me. She consistently does really well working in new places, I've been very pleased with her.

Our T.D has been out of town a lot for work, so she really hasn't done that much work with him. So today was her first real session with him. She won't bark while she is in prey, I may have to put barking on cue for the hold and bark. I kind of suspect that once she is working a little more she will really start to anticipate the game and it will get easier to get her to bark. Of course while Allan was trying to get her to bark she kept looking back at me to try and figure out what she had to do for me to turn her loose so she could play. She tried sitting, for a minute we thought she was going to go through her entire repertoire, but she just tried sit and attention. She has a good bite. Now I just have to not mess her up.

I was going to take my camera and have somebody get some pictures of her working, but I had to get up early in order to make it and I am not at my best in the mornings. Oh, one other note, while I felt that Vivre was getting better with strangers and her suspicions, our trainer noted today how big a difference there was between the way she greeted everybody today and the way she greeted everybody the first time she met them. I also didn't hear her barking madly at the park goers that walked back her crate. She did really well in everything today. Somebody commented that I am really going to have fun with Vivre. I already am.

Desperate

I'm lost. What do you do with a sprite pup when you are single and sick? Besides morn the loss of your brand new cell phone? She is banging a buster cube around right now, but I have to watch her and Yoda over food. So far, (totally my fault bacause I'm not watching her the way I normally do) I have had her poop in the house twice (which she never does), and pee in my bed. Yes in between my sheets not on top over the covers. Then thinking she was chomping down on something else I lay in bed while she nearly destroyed my brand new (3 weeks old) cell phone. Actually it is probably a good thing she was crated for the night when I found it. That spared her from my murderous wrath. The sim card is gone and I can no longer hear from the ear piece. So I stuck using speaker phoneand getting a blut tooth. I can't afford ANOTHER new cell phone. This is the first one she has destroyed, but I am really, really rough on cell phones.

She has gotten borerd with the buster cube and wants to play. Ok. I'm going to drag myself to the store and get lots and lots of bones, chews and kong stuffers.

No Brakes

Wow, I can't believe it has been so long since I updated this blog. I don't remember if I mentioned, but when we got back from the beach my hard drive was dead. So I haven't been doing too much computer while I debate getting (another!) new hard drive or a new computer.

Anyway, I thought I'd just get a quick update written. Vivre has lost her brakes. When she was younger and would come charging at me I never worried because she always stopped. The bruises that are no doubt forming on my calves as I type are evidence that those days are long gone. I had her outside with me and she was doing her speed demon puppy zoomies when she comes charging at me from behind, slams in to my calves and almost knocks me on my butt. If I hadn't been so worried I'd land on her I'm not sure I would have managed to right myself before I went down. After a horribly busy few weeks involving two visitors to the refuge and 18 relatives from out of town we are finally getting back to training. I'm more focusing on CU excersises than obedience since we aren't showing for a while any way and even my TD who believes in motivational foundation still uses corrections and e-collars so I would like to have a strong self-control foundation. I don't have a firewire port on my computer, but I will try and get some video of her as soon as my aunt gets her computer fixed and I can use it to upload the files.