Meet the new puppy.

Are you ready for some supper adorable puppy pictures?

Well here you go!

Puppy in a cup.

It's Puppy time!

Puppy attack!

Not my puppy not exactly but he is part of the extended family. By that I mean he is  my mom's  new puppy and I figured it was about time I introduced him. She has had him for a little over a month but as you can tell because I just finished writing about the dog show in June I am a little behind in updates.

Puppy pose.

This is Napoleon, called Poe for short. He is a Yorkshire Terrier puppy. My mom requested they not dock his tail she really likes it when Yorkies have there natural long tail.

Puppy racing.

He is an adorable little guy really brave and friendly. He has the wonderful classic puppy personality that has never met a stranger he loves everyone and just wants to go go go. He loves Sadie and Simon and does not really seem intimidated by the large size difference. He will chase them around it takes a lot of effort to try to keep up with such larger legs.

Puppy Kisses.

For some reason he has decided that Simon is the best thing ever, Simon doesn't like it but he puts up with the attention. Po will climb on Simon  when he lays down and I even caught  him snuggled up next to Simon but they moved before I could get a picture. I make sure to give Simon a break if he seams to have had to much of the attention.

Puppy and his hero.

Sadie on the other hand likes him just like she has with every puppy she has ever meet. She plays with him and will even lay down to be more on his level. I have seen her crawl on the ground army man style so she is as close to on his level as she can get.

Puppy jumping for joy.

June Trial Part 3.

Simon with all the ribions from the trial.

Over the next few days Simon did better than I had hoped. However he did show me a lot of things we need to work on and his performance was not always ideal. I also think three days of a trial was a little overwhelming for him and towards the end although he still seemed to enjoy hanging out with me and exploring he didn't seam very motivated to do the exercises.

Working on relaxing.

In the end we received six qualifying scores. Four in obedience and two in rally. This meant that he had surpassed the requirement for his beginner novice title in obedience (you only need 3 qualifying scores but I had entered for all four days of the trial so I figured it would be good practice for him) and we had two out of three legs for his rally novice title. We hadn't prepared as much for rally as obedience and it showed. Also during the first and last day I made some handling errors that ended up costing us.  Still it was better than I had expected for first trial for both of us and it was a good experience.

Relaxing, napping same thing.

The big things we need to work on is improving his focus especially when heeling. He would lose focus sniffing, lagging and forging. Most of the higher levels will require off leash work so we will really have to improve. He also had a bad reaction to a German Sheppard while we were there puffing up and growling. I talked to the owner after apologizing for his behavior and she thanked me saying that her dog was about to have the same reaction when I moved Simon away. The dog was giving Simon some pretty hard eye contact before but I hope to get Simon to a place where he doesn't react like that in the future.

My friend and her show/sled dog Keegan. 

Other than our own stuff Simon and I enjoyed watching the agility dogs and the conformation dogs.
I had friends in both so it was fun to cheer them on and relax when I wasn't showing with Simon.

My other friend and her Borzoi Ranger. 

Also I figured some training to settle in strange situations was a good idea, He did pretty good most of the time in what I would consider really weird situations for him but occasionally we had to move back so he would behave and could settle down. I really enjoyed the experience it was a great place to show and the support I had from all my friends there was amazing.

Some photos from dog watching.

Afghan

Standard Poodle

More poodles.

Portuguese Water Dog.

Irish wolf hound.

Samoyed.

Cane Corso.

June Trial Part 2.

Thursday was the first day of the trial and I wanted everything to go well. That morning we woke up super early and when to the dog park for a hour so Sadie and Simon could play. After that Nik walked Sadie while I hooked Simon up to the bike and we did about two miles.  I was doing my best to make sure Simon had some of his energy used up and he would be on his best behavior. I was a little terrified that he might be naughty in a public setting.

I had been to this trial before because it is really close to my home. But this would be my first time going as a competitor not a spectator. I really love this trial it takes up most of the Blackfoot fair grounds and always has so much going on. They have conformation, agility, rally and obedience. They also have places for people to camp on site and grooming stations for the conformation people.  Because Thousands of people go to this show they have a ton of awesome vendors as well. All kinds of dog leashes, collars, treats, grooming supplies, dog beds, crates, as well as food vendors for the humans.

As I mentioned before I knew a lot of people at this trial and I was lucky to have some friends that let me put Simon's crate and my stuff in there tent so I could leave it/him and know he would be safe. We got there pretty early in the morning and I set up my stuff and then we walked over the to Livestock building that obedience and rally would be in. I checked in for both of them and walked Simon around the area to get him used to it. We had a few hours before we were due in the ring so I walked Simon around the whole fair ground so he could go the bathroom and get any extra energy out. We also worked on some attention games I was trying to keep his focus on me. I also ran into a friend from out of town that I didn't know was going to be there who offered to come watch us in the ring.

When it was time for us to go in the ring I was pretty stressed and it didn't help that I was scheduled back to back in obedience and then in the rally ring. Obedience was first and Simon did a fantastic job considering the new situation. His stays and recall went amazing. The one thing I really would want to improve is more attentive heeling. We then went straight to the rally ring.  I hadn't prepared for rally as much I thought I had and we didn't do very well in the ring that first day. I wasn't sure what all the signs meant I didn't know there was a map I could have looked at before and I felt rushed and stressed. We didn't qualify in rally but we did in obedience. I got to talk to a lot of my dog training friends after and they congratulated me on on first qualify score in obedience as well as offering tips to improve our rally performance. I was told about the maps and given a book that explained what every sign meant. Also  offered to walk me through any of the signs I still wasn't sure on the next day.

June Trial. Part 1.

I am going to be splitting up the story of the June trial into a few parts. 

This first one kind of sets the stage for how we were doing going into the trial.

   
In June Simon and I entered our first obedience and rally trial.  It was my first time handling any dog in a trial and I was super nervous. My biggest fear was that I wouldn't be able to get Simon to focus at all in this incredibly distracting environment and we would embarrass ourselves. I was worried we might even do so bad that we would be excused from the ring which can happen if the dog is naughty enough. I was really stressed about how he would react to all the other dogs and people; we had never been in that situation before. Of course we have taken training classes but the Blackfoot, ID show can have hundreds of people and thousands of dogs. That's all new to us and I was worried about how Simon would react and how I would be able to handle him and communicate with him.

One thing we really had going for us was that because the trial was so close to home for us a lot of our dog club friends were there. I bet there were almost 100 people I knew there so I got a lot of pointers and tips. It was also nice to have the reminders to breath and relax. I can't say enough how much it meant to me to have that level of support. I had people checking on me all day and I never felt alone.

Simon and I had been working together a ton leading up to the trial. Two to three times a day every day just for 6-10 minutes to do everything we could do to get ready.  Simon was doing pretty good and was enjoying working with me to the point that he was acting like my shadow keep an eye on me for when we were going to work next. It was nice to see that he was enjoying working even if it was just for the chance to get a reward.

Even with all the prep I wasn't sure how the trial would go. It is held on a fair grounds so it has all sorts of wonderful animal and food smells as distractions. And Simon tends to be a sniffer if he is distracted or unsure. My main goal

Making a list so I can check things off.

I have had a ton of dog stuff happen and life keeps getting in the way of writing about it. I figured I would list it out and get to them in order as soon as I could.

Simon and I competed in our first Obedience and Rally trial.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Sadie and Simon had there first experience with Barn hunt.

 Paquette spent a few nights with us over the 4th of July trying to relax from the fireworks.

I took my first Rally class with both dogs.

I had a bit of a life crisis and decided to deal with it by walking in the hills with Simon.

My dad came into town and spent two weeks staying with us. While he was here he helped me make dog beds for the two pups.

It has been a great few months. But now I am going to start making the time to write about all of the wonderful things that we have been up to.

Also if you would like to see more frequent pictures of the pups check out our. Facebook page or our instagram page.

Time for a little bragging.

I have been making a point to work more with Sadie in a positive way. Sadie doesn't look like it but under that big block head of hers she is actually a very sensitive dog. If you get angry around her she will get worried even if you are not actually upset with her. Originally when I was first learning how to train Sadie the classes suggested a lot of corrections. And I will say 1 1/2 year old Sadie was kind of a crazy dog and that helped us get to the point where we could walk her. But when I started working with her one on one recently I noticed that she would go between overly excited about the treats to nervously sniffing the grass or messing up when she wasn't clear what I wanted her to do. Exasperated at all the issues I was having with the dog I thought was pretty well trained I let out a sigh and grumbled to myself a little bit. Sadie then started throwing up all sorts of appeasement and avoidance behaviors and I found that she was so stressed now that I couldn't work with her at all.

I took her back in the house and did some fun hand touches to end the training on a positive note. Sadie was happy but I was not I thought we had a good strong relationship and I found that as far as training went I was wrong. Thinking on it I hadn't worked with her much since we picked up Simon. Nik had taken her to some classes recently but other than that she hadn't been worked with much. And almost nothing with me in over a year. As I cuddled my Sadie girl later that night I made a promise to make a point to work with her more. Sadie and I had gotten very used to spending most of our time together cuddled up and getting pets and loves. She was an easy dog to skip because she has fantastic house manners. But I knew if I wanted to get our relationship to where I wanted it to be we needed to work on being the team I wanted us to be.

With what had happened when I had tried to work with her I knew I needed to kind of start over and work with her from step one.The first thing I did was I stopped feeding her breakfast from her bowl I would feed Simon his breakfast in his kennel and Sadie and I would work using her breakfast as a reward. To cut down on the distractions and issues we starting working just in the house. My main goals were to improve her lose leash walking, her heel position and get more solid on her stays and in doing so build her confidence in her self and in me. She has always been a smart responsive dog so she took to this right away. After a little while of working in the house I took her outside and worked just right in front of our house. When she was doing better with that I moved it to walking around our block and now we are walking further to places she hasn't been before. During our walks we will take breaks to work on downs and sit stays. I also reward her for eye contact and walking on a lose leash.

 In the around two weeks we have been working on this her improvement is remarkable. I can now walk Sadie with just her buckle collar and expect lose leash walking most of the time. Granted we are just walking around pretty mellow neighborhoods but it is still a big step. Her response to any tension on the leash is to look and me a walk towards me. She is more willing to leave distractions such as other dogs or kids on bikes than she was before. Her stays have become pretty amazing wither her holding a down stay for over 3 minutes. We also went to a park with Simon I wanted to get some pretty pictures of them and Simon was naughty and Sadie was fantastic. We had dogs barking at us from fenced yards and Simon pulling on the leash and I could get Sadie to walk relaxed at my side and I didn't even have a treat in my hand. 

Moving forward my plan is to take a long walk from our house to a busy park a little over a mile away. If she keeps being good we will walk around the park and do some fun agility training if at some point it becomes to much and I can't get her to focus we will just turn around and walk home. I plan to slowly do this to the locations with in walking distance so that she will have had an easy first bit and part of a walk already before she is challenged. Using the method if  is working for us we will be able to walk to a few parks, a school, petsmart, and around the local zoo. we might even try to walk to agility class and then we would get a ride home with Nik and Simon. 

I am so excited with how good she is doing. She will be doing agility with Nik so it is helping me better balance working with Simon and Sadie. Someday soon I would like to be able to walk both of them at the same time and have them both behave. We are not there yet but is my goal for the summer.

Dangerous dog.

I have come to the realization that Bacardi is a very dangerous dog.

You might be shocked to hear it I mean who would ever think of this happy go lucky sweet playful dog as anything other that friendly.

But that in fact is the problem.

She is dangerous to me because she makes having three dogs look so easy.

 We have been able to adjust to having her as part of the family even temporarily with no problem.

She get along great with Sadie and Simon and is not destructive or messy. Honestly having her around is not much more work than just having my two dogs.

The most difficult part of having her is just the fact that we leave her food and medicine at her house so you have to drive there at least twice a day.

 And her house is like a block away so even that is not hard.

Barcardi it's been great having you stay with us we are going to miss you when your family gets back.