Now she is fully vaccinated, Ellie can go for walks on a lead (we have continued working on this). We live on a main road so she has had to get used to the traffic noise and slipstream. She darts about and gets under my feet but she seems to be coping quite well. Even though she can now go out, she will continue to go out on her own for a while yet. I take my other dogs for long runs over the fields but young puppies bones are not yet developed enough for such heavy-duty exercise (not to mention the body-slams dished out by Darcy)!

On Tuesday we went to our self-help training group. Ellie sat nicely beside me whilst other dogs were working although it didn't take much for her to get excited by retrieves, recalls, food circuits etc. When we got up on the floor to work she promptly squatted and wee'd. Thanks Ellie! Everyone laughed, we've all been there...

Puddle mopped up, we went through our nice repertoire of excercises. Even I was impressed at her attitude. I was a bit perplexed, however, that she didn't want to retrieve. I had noticed her interest in the exercise drop off during the week and this evening she was positively avoiding the article! What have I done to make her suspicious? Have I bored her? Have I pushed her too far, too quick? I will probably worry about this...

The next day it snowed. She didn't like it much and didn't want to go out in the garden. We had a couple of puddles in the house. Gggrrrr. It was going so well!

This page was updated on 8th February 2004