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Puppy update!
Feb. 18th, 2010 12:17 pmSidney is settling in beautifully, bless her. Housetraining still a little erratic, but we're getting there. (For now, she is not allowed upstairs, where there is carpet.) She's basically very obliging/keen to Do The Right Thing, as & when she understands what the Right Thing is :) Her table manners are pretty good (i.e. she stands or sits and stares longingly at us, rather than sticking nose-under-elbow) although her human-eating-on-sofa manners aren't quite there yet (stands a bit too close for comfort!).
I let her off-lead in the park yesterday afternoon & this morning, on the grounds that a) she does know her name and her on-lead / in-house recall is good, & b) she was getting relaxed enough to start pelting off on the extending lead, & I was worrying that she might hurt herself when she ran out of lead. (If we want to use it much in future, we'll need to get a harness instead, I think; but being able to let her off-lead when she doesn't need to be on a short lead would be far preferable.) It went very well! Although there were a couple of occasions where calling her over for a treat was unsuccessful: just too focussed on whatever she was sniffing at to hear me. When I got her attention, she came back happily. Hurrah.
More importantly: she runs very, very fast, and she clearly loves just hooning around in circles, although it is EVEN BETTER if she has a thing to run after. She jumped straight over some poor dog this morning: pelted over to say hello & couldn't decelerate quite fast enough, so she bounced over him instead and screeched to a halt.
Sidney: Hi! Who are you? Hello hi hello!
Other dog: Um. Hi?
Sidney: Hello hello hi hello! Are you going to run? C'mon, come and run with me!
Other dog: Um. [looks a little worried]
Me: Hey, Sidney, I think he doesn't want to play.
Sidney: OH WELL fair enough [zooom off towards me]
I am bracing myself for the expected bad behaviour/boundary-pushing in a fortnight or so (lots of rescue dogs go through this once they've settled down a bit & stop being all "HELLO I AM LOVELY WELL-BEHAVED DOG PLEASE LET ME STAY!".
I let her off-lead in the park yesterday afternoon & this morning, on the grounds that a) she does know her name and her on-lead / in-house recall is good, & b) she was getting relaxed enough to start pelting off on the extending lead, & I was worrying that she might hurt herself when she ran out of lead. (If we want to use it much in future, we'll need to get a harness instead, I think; but being able to let her off-lead when she doesn't need to be on a short lead would be far preferable.) It went very well! Although there were a couple of occasions where calling her over for a treat was unsuccessful: just too focussed on whatever she was sniffing at to hear me. When I got her attention, she came back happily. Hurrah.
More importantly: she runs very, very fast, and she clearly loves just hooning around in circles, although it is EVEN BETTER if she has a thing to run after. She jumped straight over some poor dog this morning: pelted over to say hello & couldn't decelerate quite fast enough, so she bounced over him instead and screeched to a halt.
Sidney: Hi! Who are you? Hello hi hello!
Other dog: Um. Hi?
Sidney: Hello hello hi hello! Are you going to run? C'mon, come and run with me!
Other dog: Um. [looks a little worried]
Me: Hey, Sidney, I think he doesn't want to play.
Sidney: OH WELL fair enough [zooom off towards me]
I am bracing myself for the expected bad behaviour/boundary-pushing in a fortnight or so (lots of rescue dogs go through this once they've settled down a bit & stop being all "HELLO I AM LOVELY WELL-BEHAVED DOG PLEASE LET ME STAY!".
