13 Weeks

Sitting like a dork, but pretty little ears!

Still growing like a weed. Last weekend the little purple harness fit perfect. This weekend it is almost too small - we'll have to move up to using Spencer's harness!

This weekend we rocked demo doggin the warm up drills for my Saturday agility classes (just flatwork, not really a drill per say.) Usually I'd use a student dog, but since I have a handy dandy untrained dog of my own now, I can demo with her and work on tiny bits of stuff with novel new distractions!

We also did some fun shaping after class. Starting to shape retrieves - or at least rewarding the return of the ball to the human. It makes it a better game when you actually bring the toy to the human instead of running off to chew on it. (At least in the eyes of the human.) We also did some bang game stuff, which was very adorable and precise. Very nice 2 foot "pouncing" on the end of the board and no worries whatsoever. Handy how all the pivot/perch/feet on the thing work has translated into her putting two front feet on everything!

Today we all went to agility practice. The boys were wonderful. Spencer has remembered how to weave again, which is nice. Hopefully that will hold over into competition since our next trial is coming up in March. Baxter reminded me about some of our weaknesses with threadles, at 8 though, there isn't a whole lot of retraining that I'll be doing with him. Mostly I modify my handling to what he'll get right - and that works too. Such a good boy. Love my Fluff.

Nike hung out and didn't scream in her kennel. Then we did some recalls and just chased our human around. Relationship building is still very much a work in progress. Despite being a herding breed and smart, Nike is also very independent. So far training isn't a lot different than training my non standard breeds at this point. Very much a case of convincing her she does want to do this thing with me. Or rather, make it easy to do what I ask and reward heavily for it. 

Super high value human! Hard at times. Actually harder than my boys to be honest, but we're learning together.

Legs, legs more legs and now, lots of tail too!

Learning the ways of the indestructible squeaker ball

No back feet!

One Month (and 12 weeks)

Time flies. I've had Nike for a month now, and things are starting to fall back into place and come together. She's 12 weeks old now.

Penny is pretty okay with her, but wishes she'd stop playing so rough now. The boys are slowly starting to accept her and tolerate her better. Once she's got her shots and we can go run off leash I hope she and Spence will discover that they can play chase and that should cement a friendship. 

12 weeks. I need to figure out a better way to stack her!

She's grown like a weed and is now (visually) taller than the other dogs. It may just be puppy fluff, but she looks larger than Spencer already!

She's not a fan of being contained in the xpen - especially since she can't get to the other dogs. However, she is fine kenneled. So she's been coming to work with me and just staying kenneled in the car. That way I can play with her at lunch/feed her lunch and I play with her at the end of the day before we drive home too. So far with the mild weather this has worked great. In the summer I really hope she'll stay quiet in her kennel so I can continue to bring her (it'll be too hot to crate out of the car all the time, but if she's quiet no one cares if she's in the office.)

Self stacked(ish) 12.5 weeks

She is still a very confident little thing.

At puppy play time on Thurs she figured out bullying with a worried Coton. He was a lot of fun. If you bounced at him, he'd run away and you could grab a mouthful of his fur and play tug with him ...

It was also the first day for a 11 week old Mini Aussie. He was twice the size of her! Pretty little black tri with a much nicer head than she has. It was quite funny to watch her gravitate to him.

Finally she ended up having a great game of bitey-face with an older Corgi puppy. It was pretty cute.

This past week she's made appearances at agility since she now has 2 sets of shots and I am slightly less paranoid. With all the melting and dog poop everywhere we haven't been out walking or socializing much and I wanted to work on that, especially since one of her sisters is having some issues with people.

On Tues she came to TA and hung out/ did some shaping in between my runs with the boys. She did really well with both and generalized to working in a new environment. She's not always keen on being touched by strangers. I'm not sure if that is just reserve or if it is just because strange people have no value to her and she is rewarded for turning back to me. Regardless, strangers now feed cookies for the time being. 

I'm not too worried about people having more attraction than I do - what I am concerned about right now is her vacuuming food off the floor at puppy play time (I keep having visions of Penny.)

Pretty puppy profile

She's got "blushing" coming in on her cheeks!

Yesterday I took her to an agility trial to socialize as well. We met many more people and ate lots of cookies. She was very brave and outgoing. Such a fun little puppy!

First time in a comfort flex harness, she fits Penny's harness without any adjustments now. She's also graduated to a "real dog" collar. The tiny puppy collar was too hard to find in her fur and since loose leash walking isn't a thing yet I was worried about how thin the collar is on her neck/trachea with pulling and bouncing like a crazy thing. I will say that I am pretty proud of myself for not buying any new collars/leashes or harnesses for her (yet.) I have so many old ones she can wear those until she stops growing so much!

Crazy? Who, me??

Recalls!

 She did great at the agility trial as well. Met people. Heard noises. Learned to focus on me in this environment too. Did some more shaping. Met a friend's Kelpie puppy who is a week older than she is. Met another friend's Shetland "pony" (17.5" Sheltie.) She thought he was great fun despite the size difference. She is very much a rough and tumble little puppy! We worked on calling out of play (with cookies in front of her nose, but still) Had some moments of brilliance where she thought about leaving but didn't. Good girl!

Herding Breeds

Nike is my first herding breed. She's also my first purebred dog (the Lhasa and Poodle my family had when I was kid don't count.)

I can already see where people could run into issues with higher energy herding breeds. Especially people who maybe have not had a dog before or aren't sure about training. She is a handful. Small does not mean lazy or low energy that's for sure!

I'm also beginning to see just what the addiction is for sport people. When they want to work. Wow. The train-ability is incredible. Coming from my "non standard" breeds, it's jaw dropping and Spencer is very smart.

Pretty and smart!

Nike has learned about shaping and the clicker with me from the get go. But, to let you in on my dirty little secret ... I'm not putting a lot of emphasis on pet dog manners yet. Really I don't care if my dog jumps on me - the other 3 do, what's one more? I also don't care overly much about biting my clothing - especially with Nike. She doesn't really want to tug yet - if tugging on my sleeve makes her happy, I'll work with that until I can transition it to a toy. Maybe we get a CGN, maybe we don't. Not a really big deal.

I don't want my dog to sit there in a shaping session and offer attention instead of interacting with an object. I also don't want to break her backing up, which is being shaped and not on cue yet.

 So in our first puppy lesson, I wasn't working on "handler focus/attention." I want my dog to DO things, not just stare at me when I don't offer any information on what they should do.

On Saturday our first real puppy lesson was on loose leash walking/nose touches. Do you know how is hard to do any kind of walking, let alone on a loose leash without any handler focus? We struggled quite a bit with focusing on the other puppies and ignoring the human on the other end of her leash. It didn't help that she wasn't very hungry having eaten a TON of cookies for nose touches.

So I changed up my plan a little.

Not having handler focus is not setting my puppy up to succeed in class. Especially considering how she loves other dogs. I don't need her to practice ignoring me to look at/try to get to them. So I've modified handler focus (like I've done with pretty much everything taught in puppy class!) Attention is the thing we do on a mat. 4 feet go on a mat and you offer attention for cookies. Sitting, laying down, standing - whatever you want. Just be on that mat.

We have done 1 and a half sessions on this. For 3 handfuls of kibble.

Tonight in class I plopped our blanket down and Nike was a rock star. Absolutely ignored the older higher energy puppies who really wanted to play with her. Howling, shrieking, flailing puppies? Not a problem - they're not the game. The game is stare at mom for the click then eat the cookies. Tons more handler focus. After playing the game with the mat and the clicker for 5 min at the start of the class, she's watching me as we move as well. It's crazy how quickly she picks things up. I love it!

Very impressed with my little one (and my training with her so far.) Clickers for the win!