Whoa we have our first Rally trial next weekend!

So it looks like I've been slacking off on the picture end of things again, I'll try to take some this week and for sure I will have someone get a couple shots of us doing our rally runs. So let's see what has been going on. (Just found these, my friends took them when they were visiting.)

The first weekend in Oct. I went to a dog seminar and at times had Tara inside with me lying on her mat gnawing away at a kong and just hanging out. She never really fully settled though. We were in a room of about 90 people at gemini and quite a few of them had dogs. At least we got some practice, but its hard for a puppy that's not really tuckered out to settle in a space like that : )

I came back home that weekend and my friends Kate and Mike came up with their new daughter Emerson, who just turned 4 months old. Tara was very good about not bothering the baby. She figured out she was off-limits and never really tried to interact with her, although she was quite intrigued by the funny noises that came out of that little body. : )

We've been going on off-leash walks up a dirt road near my house and practicing lots of obedience and recalls on the way. A couple of weeks ago, we were doing this walk and Tara was ahead of me stirring up birds and stuff, everytime she kicked up the birds and started following them a little bit, I'd call her to return to me, because I didn't really want her bothering the birds and I really didn't want her getting too interested in them (which she doesn't really cause as soon as they fly up into the sky she's like 'oh, can't get them now', it's so cool that she realizes that they can evade her.). By the third time I called her away from the birds, she had figured that her spooking the birds was now a cue to return to me and I didn't need to call her again. : ) Smart girl.

But in other news her leave it has gotten weaker, as has her recall when around other dogs, I think adolescence hit last weekend, lol, just in time for our rally trial. : )

Ok, so after my friends were here that weekend we came down for our regular classes, and guess what? We've been asked to join a freestyle team! : ) I think Tara would love it. It'll probably be a lot of fun. We're not going to get involved until 2007 though, I think. We'll see how much time we have. Freestyle is something I have a lot of interest in, I think it's really cool.

BTW, Tara now absolutely loves the A-frame and it was our biggest distraction at Rally class on Mon. night, she just wanted to through herself at that instead of doing our "boring" rally work. Silly pup.

Did I mention Tara got to play with my friend Kim's crazy ACD (Australian Cattle Dog) Wylie a couple of weeks ago? They were such a good pair. Hopefully they'll get to play again.

This past week I've really been cracking down on our obedience, trying to get ready for the rally trial. It has been difficult for her to understand that barking sits and downs don't count. LOL. No barking is a tough thing for a collie. If she barks when she sits or downs, I ignore it and we have to try again. She's gotten a lot better, its just hard not to an exuberant puppy and bark. We've also been not allowing greetings at all if she jumps, just completely turning around and walking away and trying again to approach with a loose leash and then to sit for petting. She's gotten much better at that too. The hardest one of all though is to great dogs with loose leashes and to come away from them when called, but she is getting better at that too. It's the dogs she meets for the first time that she has a tough time with the recall away from, not dogs that she already knows. If she knows I'm going to practice recalls with her around other dogs she knows, she won't even go say hi, because she knows she will be rewarded for working with me.

So we still really haven't mastered stand yet, yikes! I can get her into a stand, but she only stays for a split second, I really would like her stand to be for a couple of secs, but its definitely a hard thing to teach.

This past week in MA she played with a bunch of dogs at my friend Shirley's house, a couple of 10 wk old mix puppies that are being called the muppet babies, a beagle?/boxer mix puppy that was a really nice dog and Shirley's two dogs Freddy, a crested, and Lulu (who didn't want to play anyway), a bagel (basset/beagle mix). They had a great time tearing it up in Shirley's yard.

Other things we are really cracking down on include sitting to get in and out of crates, cars, yards, etc, and staying and leaving her food for as long as I say (it's really great to watch her fly out of whatever position she is in to go get her food then when I say the magic "okay!"). She really is quite good.

Agility has also been going well, and this week we started on the dog walk, which she wasn't crazy about, but I'm sure she'll be much more enthusiastic about it in the next couple weeks. I love how she just totally throws herself at new things, I'm saying she didn' really like the dogwalk, but that doesn't mean she wasn't eager to try it and do it a few times, you could just tell by her body language that she was a little unsure, but she's eager to try anways. That's what I love about the type of training we do. Clicker Training. I really don't discourage anything she does, I greatly encourage anything that I like that she does. She always has a choice. She always chooses how far she wants to go. She's funny and so willing to try and learn and show me new things all the time.

We just came in from our wonderful yard, its a very cool day out up here. The pups were romping in the leaves and chasing sticks and frisbees and then my friend/petsitter Sarah came over with her 3 dogs, a 6yr old shih-poo Bear, her 2-yr old Dobie Zeus and her 4-month old Dobie puppy Rocky. There was a crazy 5 dog party in my back yard. : ) Tara just runs around like a maniac encouraging everyone to play with her. She and Zeus played the most, Rocky was a little shy with her at first and came around more at the end. Rocky and Tara are the same size right now.

BTW, do any of you know how much your puppies weigh? I measured Tara at the withers last weekend and she's just about 20 inches, I think she weighs about 35lbs, but I'm not sure. I don't if she's gonna gain 20 more lbs before she's an adult. We'll see, she's going to be a tiny collie I think. I still pick her up and always will. : )

We also met a boxer puppy the other day in town who's the same age asTara that we might have playdates with. So yeah for puppies in Maine, they don't seem to be easy to come by.

In other news, I'm really trying to get a full-time doggy-daycare/boarding/training/pet-sitting program going up here in Maine, as I am very sick of commuting to MA. I just wish there were more places to train up here. So I'll probably always go down to MA some. Hope you all are well.