Vanity fair (or Tervakoski show)

Early Sunday morning I packed Jambi and Riva in to the car, picked up Kirsi (Jambi's breeder) on the way and headed towards Tervakoski. Jambi was entered in veterans and Riva came along for the experience.

My morals crumbled under pressure from Kirsi and Molli and Riva's ears got fixed. All it took was just a little dab of glue to the edge of each ear and a few seconds of holding the ear to set it. Time will tell if this will give enough support to the ears so they won't fold into rose ears later. I'm not proud but I admit I'm vain, I do like them more like this than folded to the side like Hayden's (his father).

Besides fixing ears Riva got to meet and play with plenty of dogs and people, watch all the hustle and bustle of showgrounds and even had his first lessons in gaiting and stacking for the showring.

Gunshots

Our neighbour tested his gun yesterday for the upcoming hunting season and Riva heard gunshots for the first time. I was getting the mail with Jambi and Riva and were just passing the neighbour's house when he fired the gun a couple of times. Riva cocked his head and listened to the sound for a second then continued his way, with his stump of a tail up the whole time. And the shots were really loud, much louder than the 6 or 9 mm starter pistol shots at trials so I don't think we have to worry about sound sensitivy.

16 week vaccinations

It was time to get the second set of boosters for Riva. He weighed 12.9 kg (28.4 pounds) in a rather slim condition. Nothing remarkable about the whole vet trip, he behaved really nicely and calmly in the waiting room and while the vet was examining him. His teeth have not started to change yet but that sould start soon.

Afterwards we went to meet Atlas, a 12-week-old bouvier puppy, and Elvis, a male bouvier who is a bit over a year old. Even Elvis who is huge and has shaggy hair all over wasn't too strange in Riva's opinion.

A week in a puppy's life

We have had a busy week. I went to two obedience trials with Karma, Wednesday and Sunday. Riva of course came along and had a chance to meet new dogs and people and get some training under distractions. He thought the long drives to Kuopio and Pihtipudas (~2 hours) were boring, usually he rides very nicely in his crate but now I heard a few yaps towards the end of the drive. But getting out at the trial grounds was exciting enough to make up for the drive. He is such a nice puppy, not shy or overly excited when in new situations, always polite with strange adult dogs (he gets the message when someone doesn't want to be pestered by a puppy) and happy to meet people. And even with the distractions at the trial he would play with me anytime I invited him to.

He also got his first experience at being at the kennel. My aunt runs a boarding kennel in Kuopio and when we went there for the trial I stayed overnight and Riva was kenneled with Jambi. Jambi knows the ins and outs and doesn't stress about being at the kennel and Riva didn't seem to have any problem being separated from me for one night. It was tougher on me...

Saturday we went to search training and he is really starting to get into it. When I walk him to the forest from the car I can see how he starts to seek scents and can't wait for me to unhook the leash. He has been rewarded with food so far but watching his behaviour, I think he is also rewarded very much by the find itself and the joy of meeting people. After the treats are gone, he is happy to continue hanging around with the victim for petting and praise unlike some dogs I have seen in training. However, after he grows up a bit I think we will be switching to toys as reward to get good drive. He does like food a lot but I think he is a little bit more toy/play driven than food driven.

Did I mention that I don't like motor sports?

Never have and now I have even less reason to like it. The Neste Rally was here this week and the whole Jyväskylä region was packed with rally tourists and traffic jams in the most unexpected places. With all that traffic there is bound to be some accidents and this time it came my way. I was rear-ended on my way home from work Friday. Thank goodness none of the dogs were on board and no-one was hurt in either of the cars. Still, my poor Foord is all busted up in the rear and I just got it three months ago!

What does all this have to do with Riva? Well, he has been learning to ride in the safety harness on the back seat of my mom's Mazda. He accepted the harness surprisingly easily, I thought he could have protested a lot more about being restrained like that.

Dog show

We went to a dog show in Hankasalmi today with Riva, just to visit, he is too young to show. On the first stroll through the show grounds he showed a bit of caution which is quite understandable, hundreds of dogs and people, jostling crowd, barking dogs etc. He's caution was mainly towards the dogs, he wanted to keep a polite distance from strange dogs but he greeted people very openly. After that I took him to the car to rest for a while and we did another walk around the grounds later. Then he was like he had been there forever :-).