Long overdue update!

Boy has a lot happened since I last updated! Tara has now had her second puppy play class and two obedience classes! She is so smart and so easy to train. We have really got loose leash walking down so well, I’d almost call it a heel, and her sits and downs are really good too. She’s also targeting my hand really well, actually that’s the first thing I started clicker training with her, maybe I’ll start her on targeting lids today so I can start sending her away from me to do things. I’ve been reading about tracking and also thinking a lot about her cgc. I think the only thing that would be tough for her to pass on her cgc is the brushing. Boy does she hate to be brushed! We are working on it, but wow, she is not enjoying it, especially her head and back end, especially her legs and bum area. I know I’m skipping around her, but I’m just typing whatever I think of it when I think of it. Her ears, well I’m not sure what to do about them, for like a week they weren’t tipped, and now they are again, I have to get a pic today and post it online to show. If I do need to tape her ears, I’m not really confident about me ability even though I have a lot of notes! So if I need to do it, I might need to find someone who can help me. But right now they are tipping again…. so we’ll see!! She and Orion play really well for the most part, although I think it’s finally dawning on Orion that this pup just might not be going anywhere. She still listens to him when he tells her off about a special toy or a bully stick, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last. Diet wise I switched her over to a brand of kibble I was more comfortable with, Solid Gold their lamb puppy food and we have just started adding raw in again, this time raw lamb. I tried to switch her earlier, but combining her housetraining with some loose stools due to diet was really affecting my sleep! So now she is comfortably sleeping 8 hrs or so on her own downstairs in her crate, and we have decided to start experimenting again. Right now I am only feeding her lamb meat in the morning in hopes that if it causes any gi problems for her, that those will all be done with by the time we go to bed! Right now she is pawing her buster cube around and working for some kibble. I really can’t get over how smart she is. She is SCARY smart! I’ve been telling people that she’s a border collie in disguise! She premeditates things I swear. She’s very wise when playing with dogs, and if Orion goes flying one way around the table she’s smart enough to stop in her tracks and wait for him to come around the other way, she figured that out in the first few days we had her. I weighed her when I stopped in at the vet’s Thurs. to schedule her next round of vaccines, and she weighed exactly 14 lbs. Although she seems to be growing rapidly to me, I guess most of it is height at this point. In puppy class she’s too good. She runs around mostly calmly and plays very well with all the other puppies. There was one puppy that was really rough last time though and tried to be a jerk to her and she really let him have it. So far it seems like she has really good instincts about what’s okay and what’s not. (I wish she’d add brushing to her list of okay things though!) In puppy class we practice recalls by calling them away from play, which Tara is wonderful at, but everytime I’d tell her “okay!” to let her go back to play she’d just stick like glue to me, like I was more important and she’d rather hang around me. She’s so funny! It was hard to get her to leave my side so that I could call her back to me! We also did dog to dog greetings with the puppies on leash. The dogs were supposed to walk up to each other, sniff for a few secs and then we were supposed to call them away. Well Tara, would walk up to the dog, ignore the dog as it sniffed her (all while sitting and staring at me!) and immediately come as a I started to call her. Show off! I assist in classes at Gemini where all our classes are and I was told to stop making everyone else look bad! She was so good though, it was all her! I’m not going to complain about a dog that has attention that’s too good, there’s no such thing as too good attention! Her eye contact with me is just unbelievable. If we are in class and not working though and I’m ignoring her, I’m sure she would lie down and bark at the other dogs to try to get them to play with her, so mostly we just keep working. It’s amazing that she can focus on me for an hr straight at such a young age. She is so food motivated, and so happy to be praised or played with too. I can’t wait to start really getting involved in events with her. It’s going to be so much fun to have a dog who wants to work. (At least until adolescence hits! LOL) She’s beautiful, friendly, affectionate, outgoing, smart, trainable, agile, has a good temperament, plays well with others and is eager to please. So far so good. I hope I’m not jinxing myself by saying how good she is. : ) We have yet to go into the city, but I’m planning on it this week, to get her exposed to all the different sights, sounds and smells there. I’m sure we’ll get to see many interesting people. Also my friend came up with her 3lb Chihuahua puppy, Maisy, last weekend, and Tara did very well with her. Tara has also started going on walks with Luke, a shepherd mix that I walk twice a week who is about 7 or 8 months and 35 lbs, and also has been visiting my friend Sandy’s collies Max and Margo. She’s great. So far so good! Our vet appt. is June 29 at 2:00PM. Everyone thought she was adorable when I brought her in of course! They always do! Tomorrow we are going down to MA for the day to go to a really fun event. The rescue group that I volunteer for , Save a Dog, is having their 6^th annual Paws in the Park Dogwalk. There are many other dogs, people, vendors, agility course, and all kinds of fun stuff. My friend Linz is supposed to meet me there with her Chihuahua Maisy, and of course Orion will be attending as well. It should be fun for all! The rain is supposed to go away and its supposed to be perfect weather. Maybe I’ll be smart and take some pics again. I have been slacking off with that more again lately. Oh well, hopefully writing this entry will make me get on top of it. But back to the mention of tracking, I was thinking of getting involved in that because it’s low-impact, we can’t do agility until she’s 14 months or so, not with the obstacles at full height anyway, so I thought this might be something fun for us to get started with. The Maine tracking club is based two towns away from me, so hopefully we can get involved there. Also there is a CGC test at a local petfest a couple of towns away from us at the end of August, and maybe she’ll be ready for that by then. We’ll just have to work on that brushing. : ) I’m not worried about anything else. I think very soon I’m going to order a grooming table, hopefully that will help her and me get some brushing accomplished without her chewing on me! I’ve been feeding her while I brush to classically condition that brushing is a good thing, but it’s hard to feed her a piece of kibble for every stroke that I make! I think she’s better than what she was, but boy am I dying to just brush every inch of her. I can do it quickly if she’d let me! It’s only going to get worse as her coat grows in. Anyway, we should go for a walk soon and do some training, the rain appears to have stopped. I’ll try to update again sooner next time!