Lusi's manners!

Lusi is attached to me with her leash while I am on the
 computer- she settles down with her "Orka".

There's only so much unmannerly conduct I can take in the house, even allowing for the fact that it is too cold to stay out in the yard for long and our walking isn't at the level it had been during the summer.


At 7 months old and with just a few days off from classes for the holidays, Lusi is beginning to rule the roost and seems to have her own little "Occupy Toronto" thing going. She is such a quick learner and in just a few days off is learning she can do her own thing! It is time to adopt a multi faceted approach until we are back again in classes and able to maintain our regular exercise routine.


I have just done a short indoor leash training session with her during which she was remarkably good. Much quicker in responding to the commands than previously, even in our classes, and she surprised me with her comfort in the stand-down transitions. But as soon as I said "Break" to end the session, she engaged in a tiff with Remy the chihuahua who had followed in our tracks during the training and so was also hoping for a treat. Wanting both of the carrot pieces, Lusi was not even willing to negotiate an exchange. So I put her leash on her and made her sit on her mat by the computer desk where I could watch her as I worked. Her reprimand was followed shortly by my husband's return from the pet store with a new "Orka" toy for power chewing! Ahh finally peace reigns.

"SWOT" our training program.

Lusi at 7 months

It is January 1st 2012 and we are all set up now on our blog ready to document our training in the coming year!


Lusi is now seven months old and seems to enjoy almost any activity. We have made a good start in walking/hiking, puppy obedience, puppy agility, tracking and even a little, very, very, gentle cross-country biking, that is, until it started to snow! Socializing Lusi with the horses in preparation for training her to work at axle as a carriage/coaching dog has also been part of our program.


The past two weeks of setting up the blog has also given me time to review all the training we have done since Lusi was a pup. (It was really amusing to see just how tiny she was in those first early photos that Carola took of her at one week old and then again at four weeks old): The blog developed surprisingly well as we started to recount our training endeavours over the past five months- it gives a sort of bench mark of where we are now- and of course, there were lots of photos and videos of our training to add as well!


As I began to gather everything together I began to see different threads emerge. It was rather like doing a SWOT analysis, a review of our training Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats. I think that having this idea of working between our strengths and weaknesses will help me as we start to get more serious about our obedience training this year. 

A short review of early puppy training. Part 1

 This is a short review of the early puppy training we have done since Lusi came to live with "THE MEASURES FAMILY." Of course it goes without saying the incredible job Carola Adams and her family at Dutch Kennels did in raising Star's litter of ten puppies, (seven boys and three girls).

Lusi's litter mates at 1 week old

When we arrived to collect Lusi at 8 weeks old, she was ready to explore her new world, beautifully socialized with children and quite accustomed to strangers patting and cuddling her. The 1500km journey from New Brunswick to Ontario went well with Lusi showing little if any anxiousness or stress. 

"Lusi" at 4 weeks old.

Once home, Lusi settled in with Remy, our chihuahua by her side as her constant companion and the other two chihuahuas showing varying degrees of welcome, depending on the situation.

Remy and the "step-over" dog gates!

Getting ready for a puppy: Size does count, sooner or later!
Looking back I can see that I was quite fortunate in having Remy, our chihuahua, join our family early in the New Year of 2011. It had been a long time since we had had a puppy in the house and the decision to take him to puppy classes provided a great grounding in "positive" training methods. It also meant that we had had to puppy proof the house, reconsider "house rules" and go through the process of "house-training" all within the same year as we acquired Lusi. So it was that we were better prepared for a larger breed of dog like Lusi than we might otherwise have been and our puppy training knowledge was more current!


But of course there were some major differences, notably size, that although as an 8 week old puppy these were not immediately obvious, they had certainly become notable by the time Lusi was a few months old.


If you were to ask me what was the single most surprising thing about Lusi I would have to answer, "It was how quickly she grew!" I was sort of prepared for her to grow quickly but I had mis-calculated just how quickly she would become a sizeable dog! Fortunately we had replaced some of those step over dog gates that had worked so well with the chihuahuas, with taller ones, either metal or plastic-mesh retractable ones. I can distinctly remember going through all the online information about dog gates trying to figure out which ones would be the best kind for each location.

Lusi at 7 months old and  
the "jump-over" dog gate!

We opted for a plastic retractable gate in the hallway. It proved to be efficient only in the way it blocked the access for humans...the little dogs learnt how to squeeze under it and Lusi learnt how to jump over it from a standstill.


Fortunately we are always home with our dogs or they are travelling with us, so we were not faced with a serious issue of "containment." Our primary objective was to prevent the dogs from having a complete run of the house and instead to coral them where we spend most of our time anyway.


Gradually Lusi learnt to respect the retractable dog gate and yesterday she waited patiently for us to finish our Christmas festivities without scaling it to join us for "Turkey dinner".