Last weekend was yet another trip up to Minnesota. Our primary purpose was another check for Viktor. As always, we try to fit in as much adventure as possible! We left Ohio on Saturday afternoon after classes and headed to Chicago. We were just a little late for an evening training Read more…
When Viktor was 10 weeks old I noticed his front legs looked a little odd. His toes were rotated out and his wrists were almost touching. Our rehab vet recommended xrays and seeing an orthopedic surgeon. We had our regular vet take x-rays and then we did a consult the Read more…
Two days after our first AKC obedience trial, Griffin and I were up in Minnesota and did agility. Griffin has not been to an agility trial for about 18 months – at the last event he did a total of 3 jumps all day (and a few months after that Read more…
If we count in months he’s not yet 7 months, but if we count in weeks he may be a bit older. Viktor still a very, very small dog. He’s only around 35 pounds -male goldens on average are 55lbs at this age! That may biased towards show dogs who Read more…
We were re-inspired to practice waiting patiently. All of my dogs are very impatient about waiting for their training turns. When we’re at the big training facility I leave them in an office up front and in the last year they’ve learned to be calm if they get left behind Read more…
Stimulus Control is an important part of training – we want our dogs to understand when to do specific behaviors. This can be part of having reliable responses and is especially important for some types of competition training. A short version: The dog should respond to the cue with the Read more…
Viktor has officially outgrown his puppy harness. We went from an extra small up to a medium. I’ll have to write about the harness separately – the Ruffwear Front Range Harness. The part around his neck never actually ended up fitting well – the strap around his body was too Read more…
We’ve had a busy few weeks. We went on our second long trip together – all the dogs went to Minnesota with me. Viktor was great. It was not surprising, but so nice- quiet in the car, happy to get out at each stop at any time of day or Read more…
This week we’ve traveled up to Minnesota to take the dogs to the rehab vet again. It’s been an adventure as always – great traveling, I had a second person (and her dog) with us this time, making me a little less stressed about some aspects of the traveling. Read more…
We’ve had a lot of woods walks and adventures. He’s still young enough to stick close most of the time, but we’re able to get in a lot of woods walks. We accidentally had swimming – he wasn’t sure that he liked that but he also didn’t dislike it too Read more…