Puppy agility, birds and Irene

On Friday evening Swing and Hank participated in a puppy workshop that was geared towards agility, but you could use any of the exercises as groundwork for any activity that you want.  We had three areas that the puppies worked through, one area concentrated on flatwork (recalls, having the puppy "check in" and learning to wrap around a cone in preparation for tight turns around jump standards); the next was the jump area where the puppies first came to your hand while your body was facing forward, and then you put your body sideways and had them come in and then do a turn.  The jumps were then added as you can see in this picture...

Hank doing the bump jumps

The third area had all kinds of gizmos for our puppies to work on balancing and body/feet awareness.  We used FitPAWS balance discs, wobble boards, FitPAWS peanuts and planks.  Since Swing has been introduced to the balance disc she took to all of the obstacles very well.  We spent about 45 min in each area with a break for puppies and handlers.

Coming to the handlers side

My little point and shoot digital isn't the best for movement shots but I did get this video of Hank working the jump, which was suppose to help him learn to push off of his rear while jumping but also an exercise to help the handlers see which direction our puppy was most comfortable with.

I wasn't sure that our little guys (12 weeks old on Sunday) would last the entire 3 hours, but they were troopers and made it to the end.  They even had enough energy to do some rough-housing before we headed home.  Thanks go out to Judy, Deb and Cathy from Dauphin Dog Training Club for putting on the workshop.

On Saturday Swing and I met a friend to introduce her to birds.  She wasn't as keen about the pigeon at first, it fluttered and moved too much for her so we brought out a pheasant wing and within seconds she was running around with it before deciding that she'd like to pull the feathers out.  Once she was super in to the wing Jim taped it to the live bird and then she decided that it was interesting.  The pictures that follow show her investigating the bird and then doing a play bow thinking she could get the bird to play (and that bird was not interested in playing with a puppy!).

 First contact with the pigeon

Not sure what to think of that bird!

 Well maybe I'll take a sniff

How about a game of chase?

We came to the conclusion that she is just a bit young at the moment to expect much so I came home with a bag of wings and I'll pull one out once or twice a week to help her develop some prey drive.  And we'll share the wing with her brother who I am sure will grab it and take off the first chance he gets!

Dodge also had a go at working birds.  Jim was kind enough to pull out two remote launchers and a couple of homing pigeons for us to use.  Dodge was introduced to birds at 5 months and he's been in a bird field and run up on birds, what we wanted to do was teach him to find the bird, stop (or point or whatever) and wait for us to release it.  There was no doubt he has a nose (good grief he has his TD and is working on his TDX, he better have a nose!) and we came upon the first bird fast and I had to dig in my heels to hold him back from the launcher.

 Line is taught, he really wanted that bird!

I was able to loosen the line here, this was the fourth attempt

It was fun watching him work even if he was a bit confused when I had to pull him back off the launcher.  Maybe we'll explore adding bird work to our repertoire this fall.  After all, small game season is right around the corner!

Irene has come and gone and thankfully my family and friends fared well.  Central PA saw some rain and wind but nothing flooded in our area.  She did make the weekend interesting and hopefully all of the other M&M siblings are safe and sound.  Have fun with your puppies this week, Swing will be getting in to as much trouble as she can, but isn't that what being a puppy is all about?  :-)