Happy Half-Birthday Rocky!

Today is Rocky's half-birthday, he's six months old today. Well, we don't know his exact birthday, but the date the pound gave us when we adopted him, was the 16th September.

I weighed him on Tuesday and he was 15.4kg, only400g off Snoopy, so he's catching up quickly!

Here he is on day 1:and here he is with Snoopy this morning:

I need to get a photo of him next to Noel-John's legs, so you can see the size difference in scale.

them ears, again! and a training update

Puppy ears sure are amusing, here's a pic I took a couple of nights ago, they have changed again! I really hope they prick again!!

Snoopy and Rocky are best buddies, here's the two of them sharing a small dog bed on the deck, yesterday evening.

Training update:
We've been having problems teaching Rocky to walk on a loose leash, it's very frustrating!
So I sent a long winded email pleading for help, to my friend Emily who is Pepper & Folly's human.
She sent me back a very helpful email, including a telling me to have a look at Kikopup's leash walking video on YouTube. We'd been attempting something somewhere along these lines, but it needed fine tuning.
Here goes me admitting our mistakes....
Unfortunately my husband had been told that he can't expect a puppy to walk nicely on a lead until they are a year old!!! I knew this wasn't correct, and had to find examples of how to show him this, as he respects the trainer who told him this, it's understandable for him to trust what he's taught. Therefore, Rocky was being allowed to pull on the lead (yes, = reward... I know, I know).

So yesterday evening, I took Rocky onto our patio and did some training with him, ala Kikopup's video, we progressed to our front yard, out the gate, and back and forwards along the footpath in front of our house.
This was at rush hour, so there was traffic backed up on the other side of the road- we had an audience! Including a lady who was talking to me out her window, while she was sitting waiting for the traffic lights to change; she told me what a lovely pup he was, and how well he was doing - YAY!! :)

I'll try to get a video of how Rocky's loose leash walking is coming along.

The week that was...

A few snippets from our last week

Last night, I made Rocky a new collar, hubby was telling me that he NEEDED a new one (never mind the fact his previous one was perfectly fine, and still fitted him...).
That said, I do think the new camouflage collar suits his dark sable colouring very well.
This morning I tried to take a photo of Rocky modelling his new collar, which proved FAR more difficult than I thought it was. This is the best I could do:
Yes, he is biting my hand!

Rocky's become hubby's cricket team's mascot, here they are arriving at their game last Saturday, they both look very pleased to be there.

In other Rocky news, he finished his puppy preschool course this week, even came home with a certificate (woop woop!). He now knows how to sit, about half the time he knows how to lie down, same with retrieving/fetch, he's also learning to walk nicely on a lead - which is proving to be the biggest challenge for us so far! And he's learning to 'wait' - but not established yet (given the hopeless collar photo above!). He's also learned 'mat' - which means to go to the mat in the lounge, and stay on the mat. Also, he's learning that he's not allowed to rough play with Snoopy in the house, if they start up, they have to go outside - generally one will go out, the other will follow.
As of Tuesday, he is 5.5mths old, weighing in at 14kg now, and is about 4cm shorter than Snoopy (at the shoulder)

Every morning, Jerry comes and has snuggles with me after he's had his breakfast (he tends to get fed at 6am when I get up to go to the loo). This morning he didn't want to get out of bed when I did:

And we can't not have a photo of Snoopy, so here she is posing, she's such a gorgeous girl, altho I am somewhat biased!
Snoopy was great at agility training this week, me, not so much! I am so uncoordinated and kept doing rear crosses instead of front crosses and getting all confused.
Her contacts are coming along really nicely, and we've been practicing them at home on steps around the yard. Along with that, I've also taught her to 'bow' - which works in nicely with her contacts. I was impressed, I taught her to bow in about 5min at agility training on Tuesday night!
Our club has a ribbon trial agility show on Saturday, though the weather is meant to be terrible, there are severe weather warnings in place for Auckland! Should be interesting!

Babies for the weekend

We had babies visiting for the weekend, not human ones, or canine ones, but cute little feline ones, and their mummy too.
A friends friend found them in her backyard and under her house, so my friend went and helped her catch them all.

Then they needed a place to stay for the weekend, before going to the SPCA. As I work for the SPCA, mine was as good place as any for them to stay, and it meant they could start their seven days stray time which they have to have, before they can be adopted out or desexed.

Mummy cat is beautiful, though very skinny - feeding four babies and she's pregnant again already, must take a toll on her. They munched through 500 grams of kitten food from Saturday to Monday afternoon!
Very hungry kitties, though mum was very industrious, and when they were found, they had a packet of bacon and a packet of sausages open that they were eating from! Mum must have stolen them from somewhere!

Here's the babies having a sleep together, they were all very shy to begin with

This little one was the most scared to begin with, by the end he would come upto me slowly, he'll be tame in no time :)

This wee one was also scaredy, but I could pick him up without my hands being torn to shreds!

My favourite. He (lets just say they are all he's... I didn't bother to check them) was scared on day one, and after half an hour of me sitting with his Mum and giving her cuddles, he decided I wasn't so bad after all, and was the first one waiting to be let out and have cuddles after that.
SO CUTE!!
and again

Their beautiful mumma. She is just the sweetest thing, so friendly and sweet. I'm sure she will find a new home in no time at all :)
Yes... I was very, very tempted to keep Mumma cat, but somehow managed to say no [this time]

Freaky Friday and a Recap of the Week that was

This morning, I went downstairs to let the dogs out of their bedroom [laundry] and couldn't find Snoopy! She wasn't in the laundry or the back yard!
I was panicking!
So I sprinted upstairs to get some shoes on so I could go out hunting for her... and there waiting for me in the lounge, was Snoopy!
Naughty girl... she must have somehow fit through the cat door in the middle of the night, and decided to spend the night in the lounge!
Hrmmm!!

On a better note....
Snoopy doesn't know how to fetch, she generally doesn't enjoy playing with dog toys (except for stuffies which she loves to destroy). Our guess is this is because of her upbringing, growing up in a pack and never seeing toys or being played with until she was 20mths old.

I recently discovered Dr Sophia Yin's website and found a blog entry about teaching dogs to fetch, so I decided to give it a try, tho slightly alter it (I don't have a fancy treat feeding machine like she does, and Snoopy didn't know how to pick up a ball!)
A week down the track, I can now roll the ball across the ground and Snoopy will go and get it, and bring it back to my hand! This is HUGE progress from a week ago. She literally wouldn't even put it in her mouth. Last night she was so excited that she had the hang of things.
I'll try to get a wee video sometime over the weekend.

And Snoopy and I had our first agility training for 2012 on Tuesday evening. We've been put in the Elementary A training group, which seems pretty well suited to the level we're at. Snoopy's more onto it than me, I often trip over jumps or Snoopy - need to learn to look where I'm going. Anyway, Tuesday evening, Snoopy was a superstar!
Other than not holding her starting 'waits', she did everything I asked. The waits can easily be worked on. She even did the first 2-on-2-off contact I ever asked of her.
We've got a new trainer for this group, and his methods slightly differ to those previously. That's okay, we'll get there - horses for courses and all that!

Rocky also had his second puppy class with NJ this week. I'm told he was a very good pup too, and the trainer commented on what a quick learner and onto-it pup he is :)

Though... NJ tells me Rocky SAT ON a staffy puppy who was being very naughty. Hmmm!
Rocky got what was coming to him on Wednesday at work with me.... One of my colleagues has a lovely Foxie x English Springer Spaniel by the name of Tilly. Tilly is used to silly young pups, and they get TOLD if they try to push Tilly around. Rocky was being silly, tried to dominate Tilly, Tilly told him off, lay him down, and sat on HIM til he behaved.
I do believe this did him the world of good, as he didn't try any monkey business after that.

All in all, a pretty good week I think!

A video for Thursday

Jerry and Rocky were chilling on the 'dog mat' in the middle of the lounge last night, just hanging out.
Then Jerry decided it was time to play. I was armed with my iPhone, and started filming:

They are so funny, and Jerry is oh SO tolerant of the dogs, particularly Rocky... Snoopy frequently gets swipes with claws out!

The many ears of Rocky...

When we adopted Rocky, his ears were like this:
We are assuming that they will eventually be fully upright, like they were for the whole day yesterday:
he looks hilarious!
Last night, it seems his ears got a bit tired, of a full day of being upright... HAHA:
He looked SO dopey!!
Except today, his ears are like this, with his right ear half folded over:
They really can't make up their mind what they want to do!