Growth spurts

My bean sprout is taller than Soda!!

Displaying those loooong legs...

My puppy grew! Last week he was still 47cm and then I looked at him the other day and I realised that he'd shot up like a bean stalk. I got the measuring tape out and discovered that Sonic is now 50cms. However I still don't believe he'll go over 53cms no matter how many people at agility tease me with "he's gonna be a 600 dog"! He actually looks increadibly athletic and gazelle like. I would imagine that he will be quite a lean, light dog rather than heavier set like his father. Both Gillian and Kriszty reacon that Billy and Secret are hitting growth spurts of their own so it must just be that time!

This week we haven't done anything particularly exciting or new. The weather has been so hot that it makes it hard to do a lot anyway. He is always great fun to train and is enthusiastic about everything we do. When he spotted the table set up at training this week he dragged me over to it in the hope of jumping all over it! I still spend a lot of time working on his reactivity to things. When it's dark and he sees dogs in the distance he is still prone to alarm barking at them. So I've been incorporating the LAT game to work through it. This generally helps him to get over it.

I've probably spent most of my time working on stays. I set up the progressive grid last Wednesday and only actually did it once. While sitting at the start he resisted the urge to race over to another dog that was going past, which he obviously really wanted to. Rather than complete the grid I went back and rewarded him for controlling himself on the start line. It seemed a far greater achievement than running the grid. Plenty of time for the jump grids in any case.

I'm heading down to Capel next Saturday for a sheep working seminar. Sounds like a few agility people will be going also. I'm sure that Riot will be very excited to be on sheep again so it should be a fun day. We just have to hope that it's not stinking hot...