21 Weeks
I have been trying to get Rio to some busier places this week, hence our park trips and village walks. It’s a bit difficult as due to our walking locations, social night-time walks feel too uncomfortably unsafe (even if they’re perfectly safe), so we’re limited to daylight strolls. Sadly, not many people around during the day compared to evening or early morning, and as flyball training was cancelled last week we missed our social weekend too. I’m hoping Rio can come join me at agility on Tuesday for some socialisation but it takes pre-planning as I need to help set up and get Emma to take the Foundation class.
We’re working on shaping a nose-touch (or ideally mouth-grab) behaviour at the moment. Rio loves mouthing people or dogs (yes, need to stop that!) but she has a very strong preference for her paws when we’re shaping with objects. Thanks to some help from Cat (DogRadical) and Vicki (Giruff) we’re making good progress but it’s definitely the most challenging thing we’ve done so far as it’s not really working with her natural inclinations.
Wait training is ongoing, REA is ongoing, but both looking good. Need to start her on the chute for flyball sometime this month.
Almost all her baby teeth have gone, the last few molars went this week. Ears are all over the place, I love watching puppy ears change. Currently we seem to have drop ears in a morning and then by evening we’re back to airplane, but this week the drop ears have been around a lot more. Maybe she will have proper Aussie ears?!
Rio also has a tiny scab just to the right of her nose at the moment, which I have little sympathy for. I accidentally dropped a peice of pasta on Kim, which bounced and landed next to her paw. Rio ran over, shoulder barging Kim out of the way to get to it. Wrong move! Kim did not approve and told her emphatically so. Kim didn’t actually mean to catch her but Rio panicked and tried to reverse unexpectedly. Kim was apologetic to everyone after all the screaming and Rio has reverted to super-respectful behaviour, and I am a terrible owner because I’m not at all sympathetic. They’ll all survive!