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| Sunny is so balanced and athletic, I love to watch her run. |
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| Sunny loves to play in the water - good thing because the hot weather will be here soon! |
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| What??? |
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| I got the camera out this evening and Sunny was happy to jump on the couch for a photo session. She's a natural :-) |
First the good.........Sunny continues to be an awesome pup! Training is holding steady. I have been super busy getting ready for an ASCA trial that will be at my place in just one more week - so we are maintaining skills right now. I just haven't had the time to start any new projects with her. She is growing so fast and has changed a lot in the past two weeks. She has lost most of her puppy fur. She had a bunch of long hair about her head and I trimmed that off yesterday. That wasn't easy LOL!!! Sunny wasn't very still for the ear trimming, but it at least looks better than before. Ears have been in and out of tape and tomorrow they will go back as the right ear kinked up again today. They are staying down several days after I take the tape off so I am hopeful she will have those perfect ears her mom has :-) Teeth continue to fall out. She was chewing on a pigs ear in PetCo the other day and a molar fell out. She doesn't seem to be too bothered by the process.
Sunny loves to do stuff. She will follow me around while I am working and try to help :-) She loves to train all the active exercises and learns super fast. The quieter exercises, like hand touching, don't hold her interest long. I have been teaching her perch work and her shaping skills are improving slowly. It reminds me of how Rita was as a pup. But things like side walking and running by my side, Sunny is super good at. When she is moving she is happiest - all that other stuff - boring LOL!! I know from experience that training works and she will be more motivated by food as she gets older and her attention span will increase. I know she is going to be AWESOME!!
Now for some bad..........Potty training...hummmm....I thought it was going so well. Sunny was ringing the bells to go outside and we hadn't had an accident in the house in a long time. And I was giving her more freedom in the house because of her good behavior. Then I found a rug in the bathroom where she had been peeing. Then she peed on Flint's bed and then one night I crawled into bed and it was wet OMG!!! She peed on my side of the bed. Oh boy - I was not happy. So, back to basics. No more freedom in the house. She is back to either being in a crate or on a long line.
Ms. Sunny is an escape artist. She works hard at it too. When she first came she would get her head between the gate and the fence. I put a guard there so she couldn't do that. As she got older she learned to climb up the fence and squeeze through the boards in the fence. I put chicken wire there. But she found more places. There is a new fence in the future and meanwhile I can't trust her in the back yard, side yard, hell, any yard!. She escapes to get into the agility field . She also learned to jump over a 3 foot gate in the breezeway so I added an extension to that gate so she couldn't jump over that. Sigh...........well, I needed a new fence in the back yard anyway.
Had a little eye opener yesterday. I had Vino and Sunny out together and was taking some pictures. I was tossing the toy for them. Vino has been very good with Sunny and she really needs to be around a dog that will keep her in line - none of my others will do this. Vino has been more than fair with her. So we were playing some ball games and Sunny started to grab Vino. Vino told her many times to knock it off, but Sunny didn't listen. I could see it was escalating and also thought that Vino needed to settle this so Sunny could learn a lesson. Finally Vino had enough and went to set her straight and Sunny fought back! I could see that Vino was not really doing any damage so I let them work it out. I was surprised that it lasted as long as it did - that little Sunny has a temper and determination that I hadn't seen before! Of course Vino won the argument and Sunny behaved herself after that. They have gotten along fine since then.
The funny.........Caught in the act.......Sunny does a lot of funny things and she keeps me laughing at her antics. Today I had her out in the morning playing and doing some training, but then I had a bunch of work to do. I was cleaning the dog room and was letting her run in and out while I was in there. But she kept getting under foot, in my way, and stealing stuff, so I put her out in the field with the retired gang for a while. But she kept jumping the barrier I had up to get back in with me. So I put her in a crate where I was working. A couple hours later I let her out into the back yard and went back to work. I heard a noise and went to see what she was into. I had forgotten a gate was open and she had gone into another room where Sam keeps the dog biscuits that he hands out. She had found his stash before. Well, Sunny had been in there and taking biscuits and burying them outside in the rose garden! Her face was back with dirt and the biscuit box had dirt in it and was wet and also had several biscuits missing. When she got caught she ran out the door with the biscuit and started digging a hole for the one she had in her mouth. She cracks me up!
