Pupdate: Almost 9 months
I just made this group public, so hopefully you don't have to even be on facebook to see the photos- let me know if that's true, please! https://www.facebook.com/groups/AvidAussies/
Otherwise- recaps since fleety's first swim.
She's a water hound. Love. It. We go to some ponds almost weekly and she's the first one in and last one out of the water. Fetch is coming along (with competition, it's more appealing), but she loooooooves to swim just to swim.
Agility foundations- working on it- we started jump grids this week. I've assisted with 2-3 foundation agility classes totaling somewhere around 18 students. I don't think I've ever seen a pup ace their first jump grid. I'm not talking striding as much as never even thinking of doing anything but going over the jumps. They always cut out somewhere. Fleet's never done any jump stuff but we went ahead and set her at one end of the 5 jump grid to see where we would need to backchain it. She aced it. She does a weird stride on jump 4, but she has only done the grid a total of 10 times now over 2 sessions. I need to get better at setting them correctly. But wowza! With those 10 reps, she's not gone anywhere but through the grid. She makes some things seem so easy.
Lifeskills- She has been at 3 trials now. One wayyyy back when and one in May and one in June. Trial crazyness? no biggie. The dogs and people may as well not exist. She tugs, she shapes, she plays, she settles and transitions between all of those beautifully. One was indoor, one was outdoor. Annnnddddd at the outdoor one... we got to play with Quick and Fix!!!!!! (Formerly Henley and Pearl). Yep! all the way from Minnesota and Wisconsin. I got to puppysit Quick for a couple nights and Fixie and Jen and Rodeo came down for the trial.
Fix is a sweet, spunky little girlie that's all about her momma. She recognized me immediately. She's playful and just a good girl. There were 3 8 month old puppies that could free run in the huge, unfenced fields by the agility rings with good recalls. I'm proud to say that they were littermates :) Fix stayed off leash with her mom for most of the trial when she was out and about- always stayed within about 30' even when having zoomies with Rodeo and always a second a way with a super happy recall.
Quick.. you couldn't ask for a sweeter boy. He surprised me with his size- same size as Khy! Very happy, sweet, biddable and outgoing. He played quite well with me and was very eager. He got to be fawned over by lots of aussie people (so much support for tails, I was amazed and pleasantly surprised). He even got a couple "too bad you're a merle" comments from people with merle girls that were looking for a match. He rocked the hotel room with us and begged me to get up so he could go outside after he had an upset tummy (bully stick on an empty tummy didn't go over so well at 2am). Gam was a bit of a macho man with him and he simply avoided Gam. So much like Khy and Joey in that aspect- Will not start a fight and will not engage in the stupid behaviors. He got crammed in the very very packed car with Gam, Fleet, Khy, and Jessica's Zappa. We're talking 5 dogs (3 @ 45+ pounds, 1 @ 35 pounds and 1 @ 30 pounds) in the space of 1.25 rectangle costco beds. For 2 hours. Not including during the HUGE thunder/lightning and hail storms during both saturday and sunday of the trial. Yay for none of them being thunderphobic. Khy is, she will shake but Fleet and Quick and the others were as cool as cucumbers. Once we got home, he remet Luna and Explorer (intact male #2 of the visit). He got a bath so we went through one of the kennel yards and he was accosted by Cousin Coal (Joey kid), Cousin Flynn (Murphy kid) and Grandpa Joey to make intact males 3-5. They all tried to get frisky with him, he calmly avoided their advances. Then he went and met Kaye and Ace (Gam 80%+ brother) and 2 little white fluffy dogs. He went up to Kaye to say hi and then ignored her. Ace was VERY rude and when we saw Kaye wasn't going to do anything about it, he just stayed close to me to keep Ace off of him. He was a rockstar. Just a solid pup. It was very hard to see him as a puppy because of his size and coolness with the world.
I can't wait to see them again and see the other pups too! The updates have been great overall. I'm just so excited to have gotten to see the pups again so soon and in person.
Miss Fleet after a fun ponding hike last weekend.
