Big brother duties

A couple of days ago we got a new family member, a smooth collie puppy. His name is Bardi and he is a son of my old smooth, Jambi. Both Jambi and Riva have accepted him well, Karma hasn't made up her mind yet but the cat has decided he is mostly harmless.

Riva is enjoying being the big brother :-).

Trying obedience

We went to a obedience fun match Tuesday night with Riva. We finished at 4/6 but I was pretty happy with our performance. Riva did everything he has been taught to do exactly as in training and even managed to pull through a couple of exercises he hasn't actually been taught. I guess I should teach him the stand command... now we managed the couple of exercises that included a stand on command with a verbal cue "wait" and a hand signal, which took some points off, but he did stop standing. I also messed up the recall so he broke the sit stay and came after me on the first try. The judge said the recall itself was perfect and we would have gotten full marks if it hadn't been for that first broken stay. And he broke the down stay just a second or two before the time was up *argh*, it was so close!

But his heeling is _just_awesome_ and he worked the whole time very happily and intensely despite the distractions and didn't get the least bit confused or unsure even when we did exercises differently than in training or something that we hadn't trained at all. And the judge was quite impressed at how he didn't break his contact at any point. I was a bit worried when we were waiting for our turn, though, my country boy did appear quite a bit distracted by all the dogs and people around the ring but when we went in and started to do our thing he was completely focused :-). It was kinda funny, he went so completely and quickly from just-hanging-around to all-work in just a second.

He is going to be a cool dog to trial when we get there :-).

Riva is rating stock!

August and beginning of September has been very busy and I haven't worked Riva much with sheep, which shows, he's rearing to go any time I pick up the crook and head to the sheep pen. Its not easy training a dog and trying to learn yourself at the same time, especially if you have a dog with plenty of drive. Trying to train my first herding dog, sometimes the progress has felt more backwards that forwards. This week I have worked him already a couple of times, more than in the last three weeks together. However, last night we took a big step forward :-).

I took Riva and we worked the sheep for a while again, it didn't go particularly well but wasn't a disaster either. Riva was still pretty "hot" and needed to run off a bit of steam before we really got to working. Luckily me and the sheep didn't have to run and after a while I could see Riva was ready to listen instead of just running full tilt and barking. Basic stuff, flanking to both directions, keeping the correct distance, a little bit of fetch. Then I left the sheep to graze for a while and we went inside with Riva. His tongue was hanging but he still would have wanted to go on.

Later when the sheep were done with the grazing I thought I would take Riva with me to help in putting the sheep into their pen for the night. I let him go to the other side of the sheep and started backing up towards the pen, realized he was working real nice and calm fetching the sheep to me and RATING, the sheep were not on top of me but following calmly about three feet behind me. I turned around and started walking forwards and let Riva take care of bringing the sheep after me. We went all the way to the pen, about 60 meters, still nice and calm and put the sheep in. I was so happy I just couldn't leave it at that (had to tempt faith...), so we took the sheep out of the pen, still nice and calm, did a little walkabout with Riva fetching the sheep after me and me walking forwards (watching him from the corner of my eye), Riva still rating & balancing nicely behind the sheep, and finally put the sheep back into the pen.

Wow, he can really do it! I guess he just needs to be worked more to get him to settle...

NTF-1 deployment news

A couple of news articles from the Lincoln Journal Star about the deployment of Nebraska Task Force-1.

Lincoln search and rescue team prepares for deployment
Lincoln search and rescue team on the way

First rubble training

We had our first rubble training yesterday. We started easy, building up motivation and the exercises were familiar to Riva so it was really easy for him. Still, the environment was new and I was really pleased to see how comfortable he was moving on the rubble right from the start.

I also got a message yesterday that the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue task force Monica and Zima, Riva's grandmother, belong to had been deployed because of hurricane Katrina. We wish for a safe trip to them!

Herding pictures

Hansu put up some herding pictures on her homepage. These were taken in May and that was Riva's first exposure to ducks... and they survived it ;-). The other dog in the pictures is Xena, you can read more about her at Snowtime's pages.

Riva & Xena herding

Thanks Hansu!

Massage by Minna

Riva had an appointment with a physical therapist on Wednesday. I suspected that there might be something wrong because he was so one sided in flanking around the sheep and sure enough, his right side was a lot tighter than the left. This is consistent with his trouble in flanking to the counterclockwise direction where he would have to flex his right side. The probable cause for the soreness is Karma, who likes to play rough and to tackle other dogs at full speed :-(. The good news is that the problem had not had time to develop into very bad. Riva seems to have responded well to the massage therapy and seems more relaxed now. I'm curious to see how much difference this makes in working sheep to the more difficult direction.

I got intructions on how to stretch him after more strenuous exercise to prevent similar problems in the future. We are lucky, a friend is a professional animal massage therapist and a very good one, too. She has also worked with the Finnish agility world championship team.

Herding clinic with Maarten Walter at Kalajoki

The second week in July we attended a five day herding clinic with Maarten Walter. I like his way of teaching, it has helped me understand a lot of what herding is and how it works. It helps to understand what you are looking for, especially after you have to start training by yourself without the instructor next to you... Maarten concentrates in training the handler to train their dog, not on training the dog itself.

You also learn so much from watching other people and dogs work. It also helps a lot if you can get yourself on video and can later see how it went, where you did a mistake and where you had your timing right. While you are in there with your dog and sheep, there is usually plenty to do so you don't have much time to think, even following someone else's instructions is sometimes hard ;-). Watching myself from the video, there was a time when I counted Maarten repeating an instruction three times before it registered in my brain and I followed it.

Riva did good and I was especially impressed with how he dealt with the training pressure, he kept on going even when I messed up and put to much pressure or pressured him at the wrong time. Also, five days of training without any time to digest all the new stuff was a lot for a started dog. Anyway, when I got my act together he did really nice, responded nicely to pressure when necessary but did have some natural distance in his flanks so didn't need that much pushing out and even showed some square flanks. He was a bit worried about losing his stock so he was overwearing in fetch a bit and didn't settle at the balance point but that should come with some experience and training.

The first couple of days went into getting ME to learn what to do. The third day I had a clue but I tried to force things too much and it wasn't pretty and it wasn't fun. On Thursday, the fourth day, the pieces suddenly fell into their place, I was at the right place at the right time. It felt incredible! The sheep, the dog and me doing this dance where everybody knew their steps. For the first three days Riva had been pretty one sided, he circled only to the clockwise direction (I never remember which is away-to-me and which is come-bye). The most he had been going in the counterclockwise direction was 1/8 of a circle (I checked from the video). On Thursday he suddenly went to the counterclockwise side several times pretty effortlessly. I had already started to suspect that he has some kind of a back problem going only to one direction but I guess it was me who was one-sided... Still, the counterclockwise direction is our weaker side so we will have to work on that.

Friday went along the same lines, making sure I had the basics figured out. I even learned to see the way he dipped his shoulder on his flanks when he was going to dive in for a bit of a grab and even got my timing right in putting pressure on him just when he was going to do that and push him back out to his flank. I was pretty proud of that :-D. He wasn't bad about the biting but he did try to do some, he definitely wanted to hit the sheep's heels and I also saw him going in at the heads a couple of times, but no wool pulling or biting the sides of the sheep. I also saw more tendency to dive in for a nip in the counterclockwise direction which is the weaker side so I would expect him to stop doing it when he gets more comfortable when working.

I have most of it on video and will post clips, sometime. (I still haven't edited all of the videos that I have from May...)

Before the clinic I had made arrangements to finally get some sheep, something that I have been planning to do for three years now. They came the week after the clinic, three Finn sheep wethers. So far they have mostly been clearing the bush that has been growing on my lot (I'm not that much into gardening) but when I get some proper fences we will start working.

Weekend activities

Boy its been a long time since the last update...

We had a busy weekend. Saturday we had the third and last show of our "grand May show tour" . There were 14 aussies entered and Riva was the second best male :-). I showed him myself and he behaved very nicely. He was the third best male two weeks ago in his previous show but then I didn't get to show him myself because, at the last moment, I was asked to work as judge's secretary. So a friend of mine showed him. In the first show, three weeks ago, the judge liked him a lot but we got excused and didn't place, because I couldn't get him to gait properly during judging, he was pacing (like a camel). As soon as the judge excused us and I was walking out of the ring he changed to a perfect, clean trot....

Anyway, after the show we headed straight to Savonlinna (a small town in eastern Finland) to visit a friend. The younger of her two dogs, Tanhu the lapponian herder, and Riva are puppyhood friends but haven't seen for over six months. Still, they were instantly on the same wavelength when they saw each other. You can see some pictures at http://tanhu.myphotoalbum.com. The dogs got to play to their hearts content and we owners got to gossip. All too soon it was time to continue out trip and on Sunday we headed to Kitee (an even smaller place even further east). We had a committee meeting and after that Pia invited us to work on their sheep and ducks. So Riva had his second time on sheep and between the couple of "yehaa" moments I think he did pretty good for a young dog. He worked quite wide, I can see Hayden's influence. There was quite a bit of barking, propably a sign of insecurity but I would expect that to lessen when he gets more exposure. In the beginning he was also distracted, eating sheep poop etc. but the longer he worked, the less he went "off". Then we headed to the duck pen, eventhough I was a bit sceptical. Riva's speed and ducks sounded like a disaster... Anyway, we went in and first Riva was on leash. Surprisingly, he approached the ducks very calmly and went around keeping his distance. Then we tried it off leash and he kept working really nicely, keeping his distance. A couple of barks but not nearly as much as with sheep and he responded nicely to pressure also, eventhough he really didn't need much pushing out as he was naturally wider than some. I have it on digital video, I'll try to get it downloaded and edited as soon as possible.

Can it be this easy?

Its been a while again...

We have been training formal retrieve in obedience lately. All I can say: can it be this easy? If things keep progressing like this, Riva is going to have super obedience scores :-).

I have mostly been working on the retrieve with a clicker but I did cut a few corners. When we were practicing holding the dumbell and after I had clicked him to take the dumbell into his mouth, I helped him by putting a couple of fingers under his jaw so he would hold it a few seconds. And after we were far enough to put the dumbell a couple of meters away and he wanted to go off running and playing by himself before bringing the dumbell to me, I put him to a light long lead. When he noticed he could not take off, he started to bring the dumbell straight to me.

Winter pictures

We had a photo session with Mataleena Pesonen (www.matsku.net) last weekend. Pictures turned out really good :-).

Here's a preview, I'll update our own album as soon as I can.

Measuring estimates

After weighing Riva at the vet's I decided it was time to measure him also. Propably not a very exact measurement, without a proper wicket, but an estimate. So, equipped with a tape measure and a ruler, my mom did the measuring while I stacked Riva and tried to hold him still. The measurements averaged around 55 cm (21.6 inches). I hope he stops growing pretty soon.

At the vet's

Today we had Riva's first real visit to the vet's, he has a bit of an eye infection and we went in to show that. I also weighed him on the good scale and was a bit surprised to find out that he weights 25 kg (55 pounds)! Not a gram of extra fat but he is just built pretty solid.

First Show

Riva's first show was finally last Saturday. He went BOB Puppy under judge Sharon Frances from Canada. He showed himself very nicely in the ring and took all the hustle and bustle of show grounds in stride. What a great boy!

Bath

Preparing for his approaching show debut it was time for a bath. Actually, his first since leaving Monica's. Propably doesn't rank very high on his list of favorite things but he took it like a man :-D, much better than brushing which he detests.

Match Show

Riva and I went to a match show yesterday (January 6th is a public holiday in Finland). It was his first real show experience, he came along to a couple of shows last summer, but he wasn't shown. This time we were in the ring and testing the things that we have been practicing for his conformation debut at the end of January.

The show was in a big supermarket parking garage and full with people and dogs. Eventhough he was a bit overwhelmed in the beginning, he wasn't really afraid and after a while he was quite comfortable despite of the crowd and noise. I have always liked his very polite and appropriate manner of approaching strange dogs and he showed that it hasn't changed. He doesn't go rushing to a strange dog but greets very politely and if the other seems to be likeminded, is ready to strike up some play. But it the other is less friendly, he is smart enough to just let them be.

He also performed quite nicely in the ring. Stacking didn't go quite as well as in practice but reasonably, he stood very nicely when the judge examined him and we managed a pretty nice gaiting routine around and back and forth. I got some good showing tips from a couple of more experienced handler friends but I still have things to learn in how to show him to his advantage, he's a very different dog from my smooth.

Long silence

Well, we have been just living a regular life = nothing special to report. Riva has now been spending days loose in the bedroom for over a month and has still behaved, mostly. A few new teethmarks have appeared in the handles of my two dressers (easily replaced) and he shredded the foam matress I put for him (he prefers to sleep on the floor, apparently he is hot) but apart from that he has behaved himself.

I have started to see a more serious side of him that reminds of his mother Ally. He is not a happy-go-lucky, goofball puppy anymore. He has learned that inside you are supposed to settle down and rest, he doesn't try to entice Jambi into playing inside anymore, like he did when he was smaller. Outside they still have a blast. And he is starting to stand up for his rights. The other day I gave the dogs rawhide chews and, as usual, Jambi finished his in record time and started to skirt Riva and his chew, just in case he could steal it. Riva lifted his lip to tell Jambi "this is mine and I will defend it" and at that point I told Jambi to get out of the room to let Riva finish his in peace. Jambi is a maniac when it comes to anything edible... Riva doesn't defend food or chews or even real bones from me, though.