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!