Bad Blogger!

I haven't been keeping up with this lately. But I have good reason. At the end of October we had our open house here and we stayed very busy getting ready. Then the last couple of weeks have been so rough that for a while Vivre very nearly became an only child. My older dogs still aren't right. I am having to watch Yoda, my gsd mix and Apollo, my golden mix, when they are together. They had a huge fight and still aren't back on track yet.

Any way Vivre has always been ridiculously easy to shape. Even with the relatively little free shaping experience I have she picks things up so quickly. Making huge leaps over several small steps. I gave up on every being able to wear her down mentally with shaping, but I finally had a session where she tried things wrong! Okay why am I so excited? Because it means she finally has the chance to learn to keep trying new and different things when something doesn't work.

After years of saying "Why waste time training tricks? Train something useful." I am eating those words and looking for new stupid things to shape. Not only because it is more fun, I mean no pressure who cares if I mess it up? But because it helps Vivre learn to learn and to learn to use her body in a deliberate way. So I just stop and randomly shape things, like climbing straw bale. The other night I took her out and started working on getting her to go around an over turned bucket. This actually isn't completely useless since it will help with the blind search as she gets older, but the context will be different enough that I am not too worried that I will mess something up. It was the first time she couldn't figure out what I wanted. And trust me that doesn't imply exceptional shaping ability on my part. She is just that good. She tried walking up to the bucket and turning toward me, she tried sniffing it, heck she even tried lining up in heel position with the bucket. Actually she had better heel position with the bucket than she ever has with me. I did get her going all the way around it, but I was using treat delivery to help. By the end she would walk one circle around the bucket and come back to me. The light still never came on, but she was definitely having to work her brain to figure it out.

I have actually been getting more training done, but doing it all outside, but it is going to start getting too cold for that soon. I took some new pictures on flickr a few weeks ago, but they are very similar to the last. Though there were a few where she was actually standing still. I need to do better about posting. That hopefully will make me get on the ball. I also really need to start tracking again. I don't know why I dislike tracking. I think because I really have no idea what is going on in the dogs head. Or the dogs nose for that matter.

When Poodles Attack!

What is it with little dogs? Why do they never seem to realize their size? Vivre and I were coming back from our walkabout today and I realized that my aunt had all her little dogs out. I'm watching carefully as Vivre goes running over because her new foster pug mix isn't supposed to be good with dogs, though he does fine with hers. She is running around with the others just running happily behind. At first anyway. Then her little poodle does his thing and jumps up and nips at her face. Talk about turning ugly fast. That got him and the pug chasing after her biting at her heels, my hands are full of halloween decorations I was putting up and Vivre is running from these little dogs. We start yelling at the little ones trying to get them to leave her alone as I run to go get her, she finally realizes they aren't leaving her alone even when she tries to leave and starts to turn on them and tell them to back off. And you can't blame her for that. Marti gets most of her little guys called off, as I get Vivre's collar and start toward the car (which was closer than the yard) and I am having to pull her around me while this 14 year old terrier mix keeps trying to bite her legs. She could have eaten this dog in one bite. She jumped up in the car as soon as I got the door open and we put the little guys up so I could finish getting her home.

I never see bigs dogs do that. She really wasn't doing anything wrong, though she was fast and bouncy even after her near constant running and exploring. I can see how she may have made them nervous, but even when she tried to back off they wouldn't let up.

She watched them cautiously through the fence and who can blame her. None of them made contact, but jeez. So I guess the lesson here is make sure Marti knows when we are going for our walks, and if I see the little dogs turn around.

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.