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.