Tuesday 15 February 2011

Laika update


Well Laika will be 16weeks on Thursday. The above picture was taken at 14.5weeks. I think she's going to be quite a big girly! I'm pleased with how she's progressing, she is really good out on walks and has a nice recall, at the moment I only call her if i'm fairly confident she is going to come (she stays fairly close to me or follows Asher so I hardly ever NEED to call her) although this is generalising to more and more situations quickly, sometimes she actually quite surprises me! She is interested in people and other dogs, she desperately wants them to talk to her but if they ignore her she is quite happy to walk on past without jumping up or following them. Of course jumping up is a big problem if people do talk to her because they speak to her in cute baby talk and most of them then wait for her to jump up before they stroke her, very annoying! But then i figure thats there problem and i'll work on her not jumping up when people stop seeing her as a cute puppy!


Her drive for a tuggy is pretty awesome and it improves all the time, she really picks up her pace when she sees it and she tugs VERY enthusiasticly. We've now got to the point where she will keep tugging whilst Asher is doing crazy exciting things around her which I didn't think would happen for a good while as she is quite focused on him. She's seen and picked up a tennis ball on a couple of occasions, none of them really planned and I didn't really make a big deal about it. I'm still deciding how much interest I want in a ball so i'm going to wait til after the RR seminar before I progress any further with that. I have done a couple of very short retrieves of her squeaky latex ball back to her tuggy where she has exchanged really well.


I'm still finding her drive for food a bit of a problem, although I have seen improvement in this in the last few days. However tbh I don't think she is that much more interested in the food she just wants to interact more. I had a particularly frustrating few days where on most training sessions she got bored after a couple of minutes and wandered off, I was horrified! So I gave her a couple of days off and started back with high value treats, since then she has been a lot better and is now working with her kibble mixed in with a few tastier bits. She knows quite a few things now but I really must start teaching her a wait, I find it such a boring thing to teach though!


I'm finding keeping her activity level down very very hard. Her stamina for such a young pup is ridiculous and when she goes on walks with Asher she just runs and runs. At home she is constantly on the go, she loves to climb and will clamber up on everything, she terrorises Asher (who bless him is normally so chilled at home!) and has crazy times where she runs at literally 100mph around the house and does box turns off the sofa. The only upside of this is that she does seem to have very good coordination and balance for one so young. I was very excited last week as for a couple of days in a row she fell asleep outside her cage TWICE (both times only for like 45mins but its a start) lol. I do just about manage to stop her doing too too much but I will be very glad when she is old enough to do full length walks!


Despite her craziness she is very sweet and very funny! Oh and she has now lost 2 teeth bless her :-)

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