Energiser vol 2.

If you remember, I wrote about Energiser in November. It was an activity in internet, where we could log all the physical activity and it was calculated to points that took us further on virtual journey from Oslo to Hammerfest. It was not about "swet and tears", just to promote healthy livingstyle and daily physical activity. Well, our walks every morning and evening gave us enough points to get to the finish - Hammerfest. Even more, we got 31 place of about 6600 people. The journey ended already in December, but today I surprisingly got a mail that I had won a lottery prize. Such a nice surprise! So soon I'll have new running clothes, what is, considering the calories I have stored on my body during winter, exactly what I needed :o). And dogs too get part of award, as of course we go running together.

We got wonderful new pictures! Thank you, Karin!

All pictures taken by Karin Põiklägu:

Bigger pictures you can see here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Rocco.sheltie/March2010#

It's Lucky's 1 year birthday!!!

Lucky is 11 months old !!!

Happy birthday Isac, Foxy, Max and Shadow!!!

Lucky's height is ~37 cm

It's winter wonderland outside

It's the winter I have been dreaming about outside. We have a lot of snow and trees are frosted over. Nature really has made wonders.

Here's some pictures of our weekend walk.

Playing with Luna

I'm not sure if anyone will take Lucky to herding shool if I publich pictures like this, but still: Luna and Lucky playing with sheep - or whats left of it:o)

Walk with Fancy 12/1

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Karin, for wonderful pictures!

More pictures you can see on Karin's album : http://picasaweb.google.com/kuukivishelties/2010January#

Lucky is 10 months old

Happy birthday, Foxy, Isac, Max and Shadow!!!

Lucky height is about 37 cm and as he is very very not at all interested of his food, he hasn't gained a single gram in weight :o(

We have most wonderful winter outside! Walking possibilities are very limited with small dogs like Shelties, if they go off the track the snow is over their heads :o). But it's soooo beautiful outside, the real winter fairytale!!!

Christmas pictures

It has been a while since the last news here. December has been a busy month and very cold too - we had about -12...-20C for 10 days, brrrr.
But to catch up with latest news, here's the slide show of Rocco's and Lucky's Christmas:

We got surprisingly many pictures I would like to show you, so the list would have been too long if I had put them all here.
On the pictures you can see snow lion we built with Kelli. Rocco and Lucky with their gifts from Santa. Lucky enjoying the snow. Today we took hay and carrots to Bambies and bunnys. And on the evening today there was so beautiful light outside, we took camera and went for a walk and captured very beautiful colours on the pictures. And last the picture of our dear old country home and sauna.
If you would like to see the pictures one by one they are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Rocco.sheltie/Christmas2009#

Merry Christmas!

Here are Christmas cards from our friends:

Waiting for Christmas

Elna and Isac sent us wonderful pictures of Isac and his first snow last Wednesday. We too took camera with us when we went for a walk yesterday. And today. I got a small automatic camera as birthday present, and I'm not very familiar with it yet. But one thing I learned this weekend. It has many different modes of takeing pictures, one of them beeing underwater mode. I always wondered what it's for, but now I know - it's for taking pictures in our climate :o). It's hard to believe Christmas is coming soon, it's warm and wet outside and at our country home, an anemone will soon start to bloom in flowerbed.

Here is our underwater-mode picture :o)

And 2 made with auto-mode today. Underwater has much better colours, don't you agree :o)?

But hopefully winter gets here too soon and we all have beautiful white Christmas. In the mean time, lets train new tricks with dogs, because, I'm sure, there's gifts for all good dogs in Santas bag. And wouldn't it be embarrassing for a decent Sheltie if he/she wouldn't have fancy trick to show.

I have so very much work to do, that I leave Kelli and dogs with my parents for next week and work very long days. But after that the year end should be much easier for me and I promise I'll write ansvers to your e-mails.

Sheltiefun again

This Sunday was big Sheltie funday again - Kristina and Kendzi and Joker came to visit us. It's one thing to meet on the evening in town, when it's dark and not many good possibilities to let the dogs run free. And another at daytime on country, where dogs can run free as they want.

Puppies started playing on the moment they met, they were running happily chasing each other. Later we took a long walk in forest. The nature there was really wild and so were dogs :o). It came out, that teenage is contagious. At least was Kendzi as eager to go hunting as Lucky. And so they had to walk on leach. But they had opportunities to run free too, enough, that at home, after puppies playing some more, all dogs slept nicely. And sleeping sheepdog, as we all know, is a good sheepdog :o) (just a joke, they are very, very good all time).

Here's some pictures of our walk

Joker looking video of himself and Lucky playing :o)

And here's the link to video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdK0XyVp4kA

Teenage...

... has hit our Lucky :o). Very hard :o)

When walking in forests at weekends, I have looked for opportunities to hide from him - so he would know it's his problem not to get lost. And it has worked very well - he really is concerned if he thinks he has lost me. Well - was. Now the company of his hormones seems to be quite enough for him :o).

On weekend he found a track of deer and went to trace it. He seemed so excited by what he was doing, that I was afraid he would go too far before he would even notice he had lost us. So instead of hiding, I tried every way to get him coming back. The best arguments (like steady-ready- Rocco let's escape :o) or calling his friend kitty), that always work, just got him bark, but not return. Well, finally of course he did return. But considering that about a month ago we saw a deer in about 50 m distance and he didn't go after it, this was not a nice surprise.

Similar case was on monday evening, when we went for a walk to our beach and as Kelli was with us, ended up on childrens play ground. There's a lot of different attractions and usually I'll be somewhere near and train some tricks with dogs. But as there wasn't anybody else then us, we joined Kelli. Climbing and sliding on chute was fun, but next to that, there's so many opportunities to use the attractions for dog training too. Like sandbox border as agility dog walk and with the help of clicker Lucky learned climbing on stepladder. He was cooperating so well, but then a dog appeared and gone he was. And only way to get him coming back was to catch him. So in future, he can enjoy only very limited freedom.

And I would very much appreciate, if you would tell me your suggestions how to get his attention back.

Steady, ready, GO!!!

I just wanted to share a trick that has been very useful for us - steady, ready, GO! I first found it out years ago with Rocco, when we were going to swim. He just loves swimming and to make it even more fun we made this competition - with both of us looking at direction of lake, I held him back with my arms and told him with excited voice - steady-ready and on GO we both raced to water. He learned to love it very fast. Later we used it for our agility-games and in what ever situation - steady-ready gets him alert and quick. Now, with Lucky, I found out that our trainer uses the same method. So now Lucky too knows the meaning of it. And it works so well. Steady-ready-come is the best way to get him coming very-very fast. Steady-ready-sit/down don't work so well yet, as he starts barking and doesn't listen for the real command, but usually tries to quess what I want form him next :o).

And another trick that's very useful in everyday life, is running around different obstacles. We use it with Lucky for our forest-agility :o). There's not very many opportunities for him to run fast, if he doesn't have another puppy to play with (I'm snail-slow compared to him:o) ). So we pick a group of 4-5 trees with enough distance from each-other to be our agility-obstacles and run 8-s and rounds between them. As Lucky just loves action, he learned very fast to go to direction I show him and he is fast and barking happily :o).

I'm not sure if my english is good enough to explain what I ment, so I'll try to have someone to take a clip of it if I have camera and trees and light and someone at the same time :o)

New "era" in obedience training :o)

For 2 weeks now, our obedience trainings have been held indoors. It probably sounds like nothing special for readers abroad, but here dog sports is not so popular. It's a little better with agility, but for obedience we haven't been able to afford this before.

It's sooooo good we are not depending of weather any more. And fingers are not frozen after the training.