Busy days here. Win had six beautiful puppies yesterday, a result of our trip to Wales in November. Father is Kinloch Cian.
Very dark male puppy
Split faced female puppy
Win and the other female puppy. Almost no white on this one, but she’ll have a lot of tan on her when she’s grown.
Right now, we’re waiting for Jen to be mated to Epic. Should happen any day and hopefully we’ll have another litter of puppies this spring.
Chris and 12 month old GSD Devante have been working with us since this fall. Chris and Devante are training for IPO and I’m sure they’ll be superstars one day. I met them in Ohio in November and we started to work on tugging and some great games that will improve self control and lay a great foundation for retrieving and other exercises.
Just look at how beautifully they master switching between two toys and how Devante is listening to Chris to understand if he’s supposed to run and get the toy on the ground or keep working with the one in the hand. This is a great foundation for IPO and obedience. Games like these also create a dog that is open minded, listening to his handler and engages in whatever his handler tells him to do.
Chris and Devante are participating in our online retrieve month, and I’m very excited to work on a more formal retrieve with a dog that has this great foundation.
I try to find little things that will make my dogs a little happier every day. Especially for Shejpa, who doesn’t get as much training as my other two dogs. This morning, she was pacing the house and looked like she couldn’t find a good enough place to lie. Then I remembered that she loves the folding camping chairs that we bring to trials. I usually end up on the floor or in someone else’s chair, as Shejpa gets very upset if she can’t sleep in mine. So i brought one into the house and she was very happy, didn’t get up for anything <3
What have you done to make your dog a little happier today?
2013 started well for me. We went to Stockholm for an agility trial this weekend and I’m very pleased with the results. Squid won J3 both days, and was close to winning A3 as well (if she hadn’t bounced off my leg at the end of the course). She became Swedish Jumping Champion on Saturday. Shejpa ran 3 out of 4 clean runs and qualified for the Swedish National Championships in June. She placed 2nd and 3rd in standard, which was surprising to me as she often struggles on the carpet and hasn’t been trained at all this winter. Squid ran really well on the carpet. She’s never been on a slippery carpet like that before and we usually train in really soft and heavy dirt, so I didn’t know what to expect. I think she handled it well because she always knows where she’s going and jumps well so that she lands in the direction she’s going next most of the time. Dogs that don’t bend well over the bars and have to turn on the ground (like Shejpa) struggle much more. Squid needs to work on turning better out of tunnels, that’s where she had her wide turns and slipping on the carpet.
Paxa is a 8 month old german wirehaired pointer. She is going to be Thomas new pointing dog and is right now working on some foundations for her retrieve. The text in this video is in Norwegian, but I’m sure you’ll get a good idea of what they’re doing anyway.
If you want to work intensely on retrieving for a month, I recommend that you check our retrieving workshop out. Regardless of if you want to work on retrieving for obedience, hunting, tricks or service dog work, we’ll help you out where you need it.
We’re working on some really cool extra material for this workshop that we haven’t published before. We’re also working on making the workshop easier to follow than the heeling workshop (that was a lot of fun because of all the activity, but sometimes was hard to follow because of it). You don’t want to miss this!
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We’ve had a lot of snow and some really cold weather in December (with a record of -25 C, unfortunately when Greg Derrett was here doing a seminar. It was cold…).
But a few days ago, it started thawing and the mild weather seems to stick with us for another week. We’ve been able to train our dogs on sheep for two days now. And look what a difference in the amount of snow on the same field from yesterday from today.
Epic yesterday
Sarek today
Jen today
