I keep managing to be a little behind on sharing pics and such. This video is from Tuesday, at about 3.5 weeks old. They're 4 weeks today. I'm not making any progress on choosing one. If anything, i'm going the wrong way on it, as now i'm watching 3 instead of 2! I've pretty much decided to get a male, as i seem to get along better with the boys than the girls these days. I've also been trying to not look at Cap very much, since i know one of the puppy buyers has her eye on him. So that leaves Sweep, Taff and Hawk as my potentials. I'm going to try to go see them in a couple of days but planning to wait as long as i can to actually choose. I was happy to hear that my friend Mary Ann, who has Zac's sister Nan and also has my Gael now, is planning to get one as well. She lives close so i know i'll get to see her pup a lot, and i'm sure i can twist her arm into letting me work him some. It'll be nice to see how more than one of the litter does on sheep.
The dogs around here at doing fine. Zeke is still on restriction with a strain of some sort. I'm going to rest him for another 2 weeks, then get him back to light work. It's a good time for him to be having a mental break from training anyway, though i'm disappointed that i can't run him at the trial we're going to next week. As i mentioned above, Gael is now with Mary Ann and having a ball playing, toy chasing, boss everyone around, rollicking good time. I miss her but i know she's having a lot more fun with Mary Ann and Steve. Bill is back to some light work, coming back from a strained pectinius muscle. He and Zac are both just doing very light work and i'm running them off the ATV to get some conditioning started.
Moon is still here, though some days just barely. I swear i'm getting whiplash from the young dog roller coaster with her. One day she's great, next day i'm ready to boot her out the door, LOL! I know this is how it is with almost all young dogs, but the peaks and valleys are especially huge with her it seems. I have to remind myself she's only 18 months old and that i've only had her back here about 1.5 months too. I keep saying that she's a challenging one to train, but really i need to re-phrase that. It's a challenge to get my head in the right spot to train her. *She's* not the challenge, the *training* is. She's got talent, it's just up to me to to train her properly, and by properly i mean using the right mindset and method for the type of dog she is. It's not fair to get mad when she doesn't respond how i'd like to the usual ways of training. She can't be a different dog than she is and it's not fair of me to ask her to be. I just have to be flexible in my approach. Funny that i value flexibility in the dogs so much. This is a case where the dog will value some flexibility in me!
Our winter/spring trial schedule has changed again. I had planned to go to TX next week for the series of trials down there, but decided it was too many days away with gaps between the trials, and a bad time to be out of work with a big project in progress. Then i thought i'd go to FL for a long weekend at the Suwannee SDT but decided the long drive was again going to cost too many vacation days. So instead we're heading to a trial next weekend in GA that i'm looking forward to. I'll run Zac and Bill in the Open on saturday and sunday, and then Monday is a double lift competition with a full course including the international shed. Zac is invited and it sounds like Bill might get in as well. I think it'll be fun, if the weather cooperates. My dogs will be really, really rusty but we'll go have a good time anyway. I hope!
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