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| Gemini and Shannon in Malibu! |
Gemini is now 4.5 months old and her teeth seem to be falling out of her head. Already her permanent central incisors are coming in and she is a chewing machine. Luckily the butcher at Safeway cut up some marrow bones into IG size rings so she enjoys frozen bones and I enjoy preserving my fingers and my sunglasses. Last weekend Gemini went with Twig and I to our first out of town agility fun match. As she isn't soft crate proof, I set her up in her little ruggedized varikennel. She was a great girl inside the crate. She hung out and slept like a seasoned trial veteran. However, once outside the crate, she found all of the people, dogs and whirl of activity to be an amusement park made just for her. She jumped and raced around eager to be part of it all. It would seem that walking calmly on lead would be an impossibility in that environment. So I settled for simple sits and downs a midst the chaos.
I'm finding that right now although I'm happy with our progress in training, I'm also a bit scared/worried now and then. I feel that there's lots of holes. Lots of stuff we should be doing. Lots of stuff we haven't done. Lots of stuff "everybody else" seems to have done by 4 months of age. Shouldn't a 4 month old puppy be able to walk around an agility trial and behave? Maybe, maybe not. I certainly haven't taught her "how to behave." In fact, I've purposely allowed her to be exuberant and curious. I've encouraged her to be bold and even a bit brash. My thinking is that in 2 years, when she is racing around the agility ring, nothing will frighten her and she'll be able to do teeters in a thunderstorm! Or maybe she'll just be unruly.
I've always admired Silvia Trkman and her dogs. It's so obvious she and her dogs run with heart. From time to time I turned to her website to look at videos and read her training advice all the while wishing I could shrink the world and take lessons with her... as it turns out, the internet has shrunk the world and long distance classes are a possibility. Twig and I audited the running contacts class and I really loved it, so when the opportunity came up to enroll Gemini into her puppy class I jumped on it. Class has been great. So far we've done 3 lessons and are working on the 4th. Its given me a bit of an unconventional road map for puppy training and it includes things I never would have thought of -- for example teaching Gemini to slam a cupboard door shut so she learns that she can initiate movement just like slamming a teeter down! And it's fun too:-) Most of these things I've never trained at all let alone doing it with shaping. We certainly have our struggles but it's been fun to work through them. Lesson 4 has all sorts of challenges for us, and it has some super duper fun things. One of the exercises involves naming those moments our puppies have where they run about with insane speed and joy. Just imagine how great that would be to have that speed and intensity on tap whenever I used the magic word. Now to think of what I'd like to call it...
Below are some videos of Gemini's class homework.
Lesson 1 part 1
Lesson 1 part 2
Lesson 2
Working 4 in and play time
Lesson 3 part 1
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