Finn had a fright last night. He likes to go to the garden gate and look up and down the road to make sure everything is alright before he goes to bed. Last night when he went out there was lots of REALLY NASTY shouting from up the road so he ran indoors and hid at the top of the stairs!

'If I close my eyes they won't get me'

'

I'll tell Tara, she will save me!'

Training Update

Just thought I'd give a quick update on how our trial training is coming along. We've been working quite hard at our obedience and he is actually enjoying it. He seems to be watching me more on the heelwork and I'm managing to interupt our walks with brief interludes of heelwork, although not on the beach as he is more interested in the little spurts of sand that get kicked up as I walk. Although this is very useful for keeping his attention away from young children and other things I don't want him interfering with it's a bit frustrating when I want to vary where we do our training. Our stays are not 100% reliable yet, although I am managing short (about 10 seconds) out of sight down stays. Recalls are good and yesterday we managed a retrieve using a dumbell instead of a toy. I've put string round it as he wouldn't pick it up before although he was quite happy holding it.

On the agility side of things, I had trouble persuading him to go over the long jump if I wasn't actually moving as in our normal agility I am always running with him. The weather helped as we haven't had the equipment out while it has been so stormy so we came back to it fresh today and low and behold he got the idea that he CAN jump long by himself! Now I must work on lengthening the distance he has to jump up to 9'

To avoid confusion between our normal agility training where he has to jump one obstacle and go straight onto the next as quickly as possible and our trials agility training where he has to do one obstacle and wait for me to go to him I am using different equipment and not training both things in the same session.

We don't appear to have any problem with the high jump and I am only training the scale at Caroles for safetys sake- and because I don't actually have a scale!

Because he seems to lose interest in finding things after he has brought me his favorite object I am trying to use several identical objects for him to bring out of the search area. We have some lovely squishy plastic rings which he absolutely adores so until he gets the idea of going for several items we are using these. I introduced the clicker for this indoors tonight and he thinks it's a great game although he loses the plot a bit after 2. My friend, Ann, says dog can only count 1,2 lots more, whether this is true or not 3, 4 seems very difficult!

Windy Days

We have had some really windy weather just lately, it has sent Finn absolutely hyper. Here are some pictures of Finn on the beach at Aberporth, playing in the surf.

We've had a couple of magic moments in the last few weeks. One was at Newport. We had just finished a walk along the river and were about to get in the car to go to work when someone standing the other side of the bridge said 'We're watching an otter'. I quickly put Finn in the car and joined the crowd lining the side of the bridge and there not fifty yards away from us was an otter playing in the river. We must have watched for about 10 minutes while he caught a fish, then he woked his way round a bend in the bank and I went to work. Naturally I didn't have the camera with me.

The other magic moment was at Ciebwr, again we were on our way to a farm, and this time I made myself late watching a mother seal come out of the water and make her way to her cub lying motionless on the beach. As she got near the cub moved and we watched as she took it back to the waters edge. It's the first seal cub I've seen. Again I didn't have the camera but this is a picture of Ceibwr bay taken a few weeks ago