20 Weeks

20 weeks?! How did that happen? Rio continues to be fun and chirpy and naughty and noisy. She’s about 16-17″ tall and 13.30kg. Her puppy fluff is slowly mutating into sleek adult fur, which basically means she has a darker stripe down her back about 4″ in width.

She’s still not very comfortable with children but there is only so much I can do about that as I don’t meet children very often!

She is getting better at being left alone. I decided we were pandering a little too much to her whims; we had been letting her out of her crate whenever she asked to go outside to toilet, but I figured we needed to start getting her to hold it as I had a feeling she was using the asking-to-go-out as an excuse just to get out her crate. Two minor tantrums, no accidents and suddenly she can hold it all night and can stay in her crate for 2-3hours whilst I go out. Amazing!

Dylan and I got back to agility training this week after the Christmas break. I needed an easy week back to see where I was at (not very fit/dying after 10mins springs to mind) but I also wanted to experiment with working on Dylan’s jumping when I wasn’t moving. I’ve read recently about ETS dogs who improve when there is a lack of handler motion so they can focus on jumping only, rather than getting distracted by running handlers. Dylan doesn’t have ETS but it seemed like it might be good to try, and it did help. It’s not a naturally comfortable handling style for me (Kim always always wants me to race her) and there are times when I need to run to get into position, but on more complex sequences I need to look at reducing my forward motion.