Sibling Rivalry

Secret & Sonic

The pups are now just over 18 weeks of age. I recently measured Sonic at 45.5cms at the shoulder (just wiping sweat off brow...) making him noticably bigger than Secret and now also slightly bigger than Billy. When Sonic and Billy were playing at training this week both Gillian and I agreed that Sonic is now even more solid than Billy. It's interesting that Sonic is the only one who is remaining more like his father. All the rest seem to be carbon copies of their mother with lighter bone and finer faces. Considering that Sonic was by far the smallest male puppy in the litter it's quite bizarre that he is now the biggest. Although I do remember Sam saying that Sonic wasn't always the littlest but he was too busy to eat, preferring to be off exploring and playing.

Last weekend I was fortunate to be able to attend a jumping workshop with Cathy Slot from Queensland. Cathy is very involved in ADAA and has been lucky enough to have spent 7 days in Canada at Susan Garrett's Say Yes Training Centre and work with Susan Salo. The jumping workshop went for three days and covered all the basic jump grids that have been developed to teach dogs to understand jumping and learn scope. All the jump exercises that Cathy showed us can be done with puppies using jump bumps instead of normal jumps. The idea being that by the time they are old enough to start the adult grids they will already have a solid understanding of how to control their bodies and make decisions on judging distances. It will certainly be very interesting to try and I'm very glad that I've had the opportunity to start this with a pup who has done nothing. As we watched the dogs over the weekend doing the work shop the ones that improved the most seemed to be the dogs with the least experience. Now I just have to work on Sonic's sit stays so I can set him up on a start line and I've also been working on getting him to watch a toy before I release him to it. That way he will look at the jump in front of him rather than look at me.

Over that weekend Kriszty and Secret came to stay. Needless to say both Secret and Sonic spent a wonderful weekend non stop playing. I still find it amazing that they are so similar although I think that Secret is much more over excitable than Sonic. Not a big surprise though as I generally find that boys tend to be a bit more laid back. I don't believe that over excitability means that a dog is any more driven or translates to drive so I feel kind of relieved that I live with Sonic! Calmness is a good thing...They are both very sweet pups and both love a good cuddle which is really nice.

Sonic has also taken to following me around. So now instead of Murphy being the only one who feels the need to follow me from room to room Sonic is coming along too. He seems to prefer to hang out with me in the house rather than go outside with the other dogs. He really enjoys going to training however I realised this week that I'm trying to do too many things with him during the course of the night. So instead of trying to work on 6 different things of an evening I need to just pick two and focus on those. Otherwise he will be able to lots of things really badly and I would much rather have him know fewer things and do them really well!