Zumi 5.5 months
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Monday, March 23, 2015
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zumi
With the snow finally gone leaves are the coolest thing ever. Loose leash walking skills suddenly need more work when it's windy! Well and anytime another person looks available to be jumped on...
Since she turned 5 months old we've also let Zumi graduate to sleeping on the bed. Still needs quite a bit more work on not laying on top of faces when she first crawls in, and after the 6am pilling of the Toller, but overall doing well. To help with the smaller available bed space for us, and the fact that the mattress was at least 11yrs old, we upgraded to a new king size this week! Happiness!
Resource guarding issues still there, but zero escalation from what she was doing at 8wks. Some of it gone, like her food bowl guarding with the other dogs walking by. The rest seems to have remained at kinda appropriate doggy communication about her toy/sticks but just too quick to jump to the growl versus being relaxed about a dog walking by.
No hint of any weird social issues recently, yay! Even switches between her kibble and toys in public! Toys seem to win out over kibble pretty well, but any higher value edibles she may get overpowers all else.
Best friends still. Kitty at least finally has a job- keeping Zumi occupied.
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Training things
- Made huge progress with her formal retrieve! Since she now seeks out my hand regardless of where I move my hand I started training the hold using reverse luring. About 2 lessons of immediate spitting and then the lightbulb clicked and we have a solid 5 seconds of sitting with the dumbbell I give her. Now adding in her grabbing the dumbbell and doing different movements like spins with the eventual goal of grab-assume a sit-hold.
- Doing well with her stand/sit/down transitions with feet on a perch. Off a perch she has no clue about stand, and her sitter is usually broken with down being default position for anything I say.
- New trick started of jump into my arms! Currently it's just jump onto my lap as I'm crouched.
- Also started new trick of shaking her head. Vito's cue is are you crazy? but I'm hoping that won't be hers :)
- Backward circles are the current broken trick of the week.
Am I crazy or are Vito's eyes brown and Zumi's blue? She is stunning! that little white patch on her nose stayed and I'm so glad, what a cutie. Glad to know resource guarding is a thing in young puppies and wasn't just in mine! I'm sure you'll work through it in time, you've always been great with multiple dog households. :)
Zumi's eyes are currently a greenish color. They were very blue when we got her and have been slowly changing as expected. but I feel that most puppies get their eye color months before now and Zumi's keeps changing! Vito's are the normal brown.
Yes I think all puppies go through some resource guarding! Zumi's intensity at 8wks surprised me but didn't quite worry me. I've had to work more with her than other puppies, but at no point was it really a red flag level with her.
Resource guarding with other dogs is always such a fine line as I feel that it's a part of normal doggy interaction! I've just been happy so far that Lance, Vito, and the other fosters never took it past an air snap if their other warnings weren't respected.
One skill I am really glad my Ringo has is being able to switch back to a toy after -- and in the immediate presence of -- high-value food. His cheerful sporting breed brain [working cocker] can generally be convinced to get excited about whatever reward I am offering as well. But I have found it was worth developing switching back to a toy for fun training sessions.
She makes the cutest faces!!! I love her eyes too. It's so weird that they've taken so long to change. She is too cute!