Lucky is 6 months old

It's Lucky's 6 months birthday today! Happy birthday, Foxy, Isac, Max and Shadow!!!

Luckys weight is 5,5 kg and height about 35 cm.

Here's one picture we took today, little birthday boy walking with his weekend- family (only daddy is behind the camera) :

On our walk we saw glow-worms! They usually "light their lamps" on midsummer, seeing them at autumn again was nice surprise.

I'll try to catch up with old news during the weekend. We are back in city again from beginning of September, and Lucky has time to collect a lot of energy for me during the day. At the evenings we play and play and play.

Trip to Lithuania 26-29.8

We had a wonderful end to wonderful summer - a trip to Lithuania. Our destination was Curonian Spit. We were there few years ago with Rocco and our friends and the beach and sand dunes were so beautiful, that we wanted to show them to our daughter too. And as our dogs have no illusions that home should stay in place, car and bus do just fine :o), they of course travelled with us.

It's quite long and boring drive to get there, one very interesting place we found next to road -Šiauliai's Hill of Crosses:

On Curonian Spit we first visited Sea museum and dolphinarium.

This is sea lion Pirate:I was so impressed how well trained he was. The tricks were really complex and he was soooo good. Clicker training for dogs is based on training of dolphines, and I really got confirmed, that it has no limits.

As amazing was the show of dolphines. Look at one of them playing basket ball:

And this trick was most impressing for me, 2 dolphins lifting their trainer to throw the ball to basket:

And seal and sea lion kissing :

Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Dogs had to wait for us in bus, so that they would also get the chance to see the dolphine, we bought them one :o) :

Next stop was on Grey dune. Kelli was impressed with all the sand around and was playing by herself so I tried to take pictures of dogs. Our good old Rocco of course cooperated as usual:

But, after long drive, our little fun Lucky had everything else to do then to pose for me :o)

Well, I still managed to capture one moment he was standing still :o) :

Next we went to the sea. Sun was just setting and we took a walk on the beach. Daddy went swimming too. Dogs wanted to follow him, but first wave made them all wet, so they stayed on shore with me and Kelli and complained.

And then we sat on back door of our bus and looked at beautiful August sky and celebrated my birthday. It was really different this year and very wonderful.

Next morning we went to the beach and did all the important things you have to do on beach :o). Builded sand castles, :

collected seashells and amber, and of course went swimming:

The waves were big and water was salty, very much different then at home. We stayed there half a day, but as it was end of August already and we just couldn't keep our daughter out of water, to avoid her getting cold, we had to continue our trip. We went to see white dune:

and the living area of cormorants:

And then took direction toward home again. Here's a picture of our travelhome:

I could point out a few :o) differences with caravans parking next to us when we spent night at parking slot next to sea but it's perfectly OK for our needs. And it's possible to keep it warm during night on winter too, so let's see if we can think out something to use this possibility :o)

Puppy school 24.08

Todays topic was safety in dark. On the picture below Effer is demonstrating reflecting safety jacket to other puppies :o)

Then we started to learn distance control - sit and down when dogs are moving or few steps away from ovner. It's amazing how quickly puppies got the idea.

First Lucky looked at me like he never heard the word "sit" before, but when he got the idea, then by the end of lesson he could already down and spin at few meters distance from me. Providing there was nothing more interesting happening somewhere near of course :o)

Hi, Isac and Elna!

Internet is just wonderful, we got acquainted with Lucky's brother Isac and his ovner Elna! Isac had his show debut on same day as Lucky did and he won his class!
Elna & Isac, we wish you a lot of success on shows and competition and a lot of fun and good time training together!

Puppy school 17.08

This time our trainer Sveta spoke about different toys. I was glad to hear Kong toys are her favourites too and that she suggested to leave stuff-a-ball to dog if he has to be left home allone. That's how we have done with Rocco for years. We hide his Kong stuff-a-ball for him, and he just can't wait until we leave and he can go to search for it. Lucky has his puppy stuff-a-ball too and he knows very well how to get the food from it.

Here's the picture of collection we had opportunity to try with our dogs. Well, we have almost the same collection at home, and Lucky loves to play, but to all the toys there he preferred my sleeve or to run with his little friend Kessu.

Here's what we have started practising at home - the "heel" position by Silvia Trkman's method:

Now's the place I just have to tell you how much I like Silvia Trkman's page . If you haven't seen her page before, it's really worth to spend some time reading it and looking at her videos. She is a "superstar" in agility and most of the page is on this topic. But even if you are not interested in agility at all, you'll find a lot usful there. Learning tricks is what makes Rocco happy and Lucky is really eager to learn too - and I have got a lot of inspiration from her page as it comes to new tricks.

Here's 2 direct links for you:

Silvia Trkman's puppy school video

and Tani's heeling video

And here is a quote from her page that I recently found and that made me really happy (I explain later why). Silvia Trkman:" I was very surprised to see some people were surprised that I take my puppy on the walk together with other dogs, asking me if I'm not concerned that will influence our bond. Of course, I'm not worried at all. I don't want my puppy to bond with me because I'm the only living being to bond with available. I want my puppy to bond with me because she thinks I'm the most fun of all hundreds of living beings we're meeting per week. "

Before Lucky came to us, I asked experience from other people who are training their dogs and who's oppinion matters to me, and all of them told they had kept their puppies separately from their old dogs in beginning and walked them separately. Mornings and evenings are so limited, if you work from 8 to 17, I just couldn't imagine leaving one dog home until I'm out with the other, what's the fun of having 2 dogs then? Lucky's breeders were the only who told me I won't have any problems, if I keep them together all the time. And they have been together. Silvia Trkman's explanation seems sooo true to me, I couldn't agree more with it. So we do everything together in future too and time will tell if it's good idea or not. So what if they never become world winners, they are already winners or my world anyway!

Lucky was BOB Baby Puppy in Väimela 15.08

Our little Lucky participated on his first show! I wanted his first show experience to be very positive and this show seemed perfect for that - small, outdoors and the judge, Beata Betkevica, is known for her kind attitude to dogs. The show was everything I expected. And Lucky was brave and curious just like always. Lucky was the only in baby puppy class. He did very well in ring, got very good show critique (very promising!!!) and a kiss on the nose from judge :o) There was suprisingly many Shelties registered in total - 10 :o). We were there 7 years ago with Rocco, and I think he was the only Sheltie registered then :o). Sad thing was, that Lucky's first show was probably Rocco's last - he didn't get any result this time, because he was limping. There is one more important news from this show - our daughter Kelli participated and child and dog contest with Rocco and got III place. She has to practice a lot, but important thing is that she liked it!

After the show we spent wonderful weekend at South-Estonia with friends. On the picture Lucky is digging the sand at Piusa caves with children. This sand should have curative impact at least so the guide told us :o).

And some posing with Rocco:

Lucky is 5 months old - 11.08

Again I'm some minutes late with my posting, but still:

Happy birthday Foxy, Shadow, Max and Isac!

Should you read this, we would love to know how you are doing (e-mail is in my profile or you can write comments to the blog).

Lucky is almost 34 cm and 5 kg.

Puppy school 10.08

Mondays are full day training days for Lucky. And Rocco. They have had free life at country with our daughter and my parents, but soon we have to move back to city. And so we take dogs with us on Monday morning and they'll spend the day by getting used to living in our city home. I'll only stop by at lunch to walk them and feed Lucky. And on evening it's school time. First socializing with public transportation - o boy are we popular :o). Then 1 hour training for Rocco together with our trainer Sveta and her border collie Winnie. And then puppy school! It's so very positive event. We have wonderful trainer and "classmates." This time we learned coming when called, walking on lead without pulling (well, Lucky doesn't need to learn that, he knew it from beginning), standing still, and examining teeth, paws, ears. And some baby-agility - tunnel and hoop. On first schoolday, when Lucky saw the tunnel, he didn't like it very much. So I took Rocco's Royal Canine award set (thank you, Eve) out at home and Rocco showed him what to do with tunnel. And Lucky tried too. We really don't plan to train agility, we even don't think of it before Lucky is a year old. But running tunnels just for fun seems quite innocent for me and Lucky likes it. So tunnel was already familiar for Lucky. The hoop was totally new, but look how well he understood the use of it:

And of course the puppies had opportunity to play. As Rocco don't know how to really play with other dogs - he thinks playing is barking and herding - it's Lucky's good chance to play with friends. Lucky's favourites are Jack Russel Terrier sisters Kessu and Clara. I'm sure, when they grow up, they have no worry with hunting test after playing fox-hunt with Lucky every Monday :o)

Weekend in Pärnu

Well, you all know I have 2 dogs. But daddy can't perform worse then me - he has new friend too - 4-wheeled :o) and biiig. A bus. And Toyota of course :o). And as he needed to test it, he took out the last seats, builded a "sleepingroom" instead and we had a wonderful travelling weekend to Estonian summer capital Pärnu. As pictures tell more then 100 words:

Fountains were really to gladden our daughter - water is just wonderful babysitter for a 5 years old, so after taking pictures of her having fun, I still had time to entertain my dogs too - who, as you can see, didn't like the idea very much :o)

Rocco loves the water and Lucky loves chasing Rocco...

...and they both love chasing me...

... and although Lucky doesn't count swimming appropriate for a decent Sheltie, he couldn't trust us all to go to water and have fun without him - Lucky's second time of swimming:And to follow the old tradition - we haven't visited Pärnu if we haven't walked on Rüütli street:

Bus was just great for 3 people and 3 dogs, (oops, I just found out, that our weekend-dog Jossu and the bus didn't get to any picture, we have to go back and correct that mistake:o) ) so I hope to share more travel pictures here with you soon :o)

Dogs in theatre :o)

Rocco and Lucky are watching soap-opera "Cats eating". The episode actors are performing is almost the same evening after evening, but dogs won't get bored. Specially Rocco can stay there watching cats for very long time.

Picking berries

Well, red currants are too sour for them, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries are very tasty.

Puppy school 03.08

Lucky on the "minefield". There was several different temptations on the field (food, toys) and our goal was to ignore them all. Lucky did excellent. Just like Rocco, he can't even look at food on the ground if he has been told not to take it, he walks away and pretends he doesn't know :o)

Lucky and Rocco teatching me the trick "give us candy":Lucky relaxing
Below you can see a clip of our training. We wasn't prepared for filming, just that Lucky can't wait his turn and offers his little tricks when trainer is working with others. And of course you can't ever ignore the dog during training session. By the time of this video we had done sit and down 100 x and just to keep him busy I tried to teach him backing up. His willingness to work is what I really would like you to look (and comment) in this clip. Look at him when his little friend Kessu comes to invite him to play with her - he still would work with me -sooooo sweet.

Rocco & Lucky playing

01.08 Sheltie fun day vol 2.

We had wonderful day with Kristina and her Shelties again.

On the picture Kristina with Joker & Kendzi and my daughter Kelli with Lucky & Rocco

Weather was not so nice this time and I didn't get as much evidence of how happy the dogs were as I would liked to. But what I got is here:

Obedience competition in Võru, 19.07

Dog school "Tubli" on obedience competition in Võru. Rocco's result was III rank, 1 place in winners class.