Ouch!

On Tuesday evening I took Molly for her usual off lead run before training class and as she was running she suddenly yelped and sat down chewing the back of one of her back legs.  It looked like she had been stung in the muscle of her leg and it clearly hurt a great deal as she was limping quite badly.  I let the trainers know we were going home and went and gave her a piriton which hopefully helped a little.

Several days on she is still occasionally not putting full weight on the leg so either poodley dogs are very wimpy indeed or it was a bad sting.

Despite that though I came out of the back door yesterday to find this:

.... and yes that position is every bit as precarious as it looks.  She is balancing with her back legs on the side of a paving slab and one of her front feet on the garden bench - and she is eating grass - despite there being a garden full of grass she has had to somehow climb there to eat that particular bit of grass!!

Getting it wrong

Things started promisingly with a visit to the KC agility festival to see some proper agility dogs and also meet up with Sian, Rhomi and Rocket.  We had a go on the small agility course for non-agility dogs to have a go at and Molly did really well, mostly listening and having a great time.

It was our KC good citizen test on Tuesday and despite lots of practice I was not totally confident Molly would do a minute stay.  She was very bouncy - but worked nicely and did everything else I asked of her so I was pretty pleased as it is just four months since I got her and they have been a pretty difficult few months without too much focus for dog training.  Slight extra difficulty for the stay exercise was us being placed next to a large mastiff type dog we had not met before and Molly was not sure of.  Anyway....



.. I asked her to lay down and stay - walked the required five paces and she stayed there - but sat up to have a scratch which means she failed the test.  Oh well!!  I was pleased with her anyway and it just means we need to stay in the class for a while longer until the next test.

Wednesday evening I decided to take her for a nice relaxing walk in the fields by Old Milverton.  I seriously understimated her desire to hunt and when she heard some rustling she vanished into the crop totally and I had to call on Marianne and Andrew to help me find her.  Lesson learned and we are back to working on the long line in areas which may be tempting.

Our final training experience of the week was Thursday and agililty.  I guess I should have predicted really - but after the fun she had on Wednesday she had no wish to listen to me at all and spent her evening doing what she wanted - which was more than a tiny bit embarrasing!!

Stubborn - or maybe not!

Last week at training, at one point I asked Molly to sit and she ignored me, even to the extent that she looked away and did her best to avoid looking at me.  After another couple of asks and moving her off the spot to ask again she did eventually sit and I did not think much more of it.  Until this week at exactly the same point in the class and the penny dropped – not bright these humans sometimes!!

We were about to do a recall so I had taken her lead off and was asking her to sit at my side.  She has no objection to the recall part of this exercise but dislikes me moving away from her a great deal so was obviously using her brain and realising that the only time I took her lead off and asked her to sit was when I was about to move away from her.  Not sitting was as good a way as any of voicing her protest – as was her lovely heelwork when I then tried to walk away from her.

Next week our good citizen bronze test with a one minute stay – hmmmm – I have a feeling we may not pass!!

On a brighter note at agility we were actually promoted into a group who show "potential" - I suspect in our case that may well be potential to create mayhem and chaos - but as long as we have a good time sounds good to me!

Andrex puppy?

Maybe it was a mistake allowing Molly to watch tv as I think she must have got ideas from watching Andrex adverts.  It was really warm at the weekend so I had all the doors and windows open to try and get a draught through the house.  An unsupervised Molly is not always a good thing - although she was rather enjoying herself.

Fun with friends

We went for a return visit to the Wedge at the weekend and met up with a friend and her new puppy.  Molly had a great time running through the fields.

Grace puppy was brilliantly behaved- as well as stunning!

Leo was his usual handsome self

and Poppy was enjoying herself too - especially the queue for treats:

Unfortunately the excitement of the wedge was too much for Molly and she decided to vanish into the bushes for rather too long a couple of times so we are going to have to revert back to the long line for a while in such exciting territory.  Please note - only one dog needed to be on the lead

 
Things have been progressing rather better with stay training and this evening at training class she managed a 1 minute stay for the first time.  Our test is in a couple of weeks so hopefully if I keep up the work we can pass!

To stay or not to stay

That is definitely the question!
We have been going to obedience classes with the goal of getting Molly the KC Good Citizen Bronze award and now have a date for the test on 16th August.  I am fairly confident about the majority of the test but at the moment the 1 minute stay is a major hurdle for us to overcome.  In the grand scale of things if she is not ready and fails the test then it really does not matter - but I would like us to be able to take it and pass so we need to spend some proper time working on stay to give us a fighting chance. 
I have never had much problem with teaching stays in the past so as ever suspect the problem has been caused by the two legged part of the partnership but I am trying hard to break it down into the seperate parts and teach properly.  I have gradually been building duration - but I don't think I have done anywhere near enough building distance so need to work on this so she is comfortable in classes when I leave her.

Just to add extra spice to our life when I went to agility on Thursday, our fourth session, we were put into a different group and told we were going to be taking a test to see if we were ready to move up a group.  It was by far the most complex course we had ever done and her first run was fab.  Unfortunately after that a spaniel came over from another class to play and after that she decided that maybe she wanted to run and play rather that doing what I asked her to.  I suspect we may have failed our test!!  But Molly had a very good time indeed!!

Friends

I met up briefly today and we included a quick walk for the dogs where Molly got to meet a few of her friends.  Firstly the new guy Sidney taking everything in his stride.

Then the regular pack from her daycare, Dan, Sally and Cash - please note, they are doing the active playing and chasing the ball, Molly just mooches and makes sure she does not get trampled underfoot.

and finally just Molly - running free and happy as a dog should be.

This evening we were invited round to a friends for dinner.  It was Mollys first proper posh dinner invite so I was alightly unsure how she would behave.  I think she charmed our hosts, despite trying to jam her head under the back gate to see if she could get out, chasing and catching a bee where we had to intervene to rescue them both from being hurt, and running upstairs and refusing to come down until she had checked out every room. 
I judged it the right time to leave when Molly started to empty the waste paper bin, eat the pot pouri and prod the glass vases with her paw to see them rock - I thought it better to leave before disaster struck!