Sheltie. So far, a lot like a border collie but with more yapping.

Late Monday night, my little pup was shipped from Alberta Canada. He travelled on 2 planes to get to me Tuesday afternoon. When we met him at the airport, he stood up, wagged at us, and said "Yap!" right there in the crate. On the way home, he ran around (on leash) and barked at trees.

The next day, Wednesday, he had to travel with me while I taught private lessons in NJ. He did fabulous, although I think he was still tired. He was brave about meeting new people. He was great in the car.

Thursday was our only day home, and so far my dogs are doing fine with him, although they aren't really playing yet, they don't seem to dislike him either. They do get jealous of the TOYS I have when I play with him, but that's about it.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday he went with me to Virginia where I was teaching all day, each day. This is inside a nice climate controlled, clean floored (no dirt!) facility, and so I told people who attended that they were free to get him out and walk him for me, to play with him, and cuddle him on their laps while I was teaching.

So basically my sheltie loves all people, will play pretty much anytime you ask him to, and is quiet in his crate. He slept through the  night in the new place, met new dogs and new people, and basically everybody loved him. He was gifted with several new toys! and he loved them all.

I don't know if you need to be my facebook friend to watch this video, but it's pretty funny, if you can.
And so far, he only yaps and barks when he's playing, which is fine. Recreational barking I would have to work on stopping, but I haven't seen any of that, thankfully!

As always, I enjoyed teaching at ACA, it's a fun group of people and they seem to like me which is nice too! Strafe did a bit of training on another new surface and tried his hand at some of the harder masters sequences during lunch, and as always he did great. He isn't perfect at everything yet, and he shouldn't be at this age, but he has a lot of natural talent and isn't pushy about things, which makes my life much easier!

This weekend we have another AKC trial. It is Drifter's first trial since December and he's a bit out of shape, but he's only running Friday and Sunday, and only 2 runs so I think he'll be fine. Hopefully we can get a QQ or 2 to chip away at MACH2.

puppy daddy

3rd dog to run, starts at about 1:25




 1st dog in this video:


 and some runs from the AAC Regional:
 

Introducing...

My very first small dog, ever! In 20 years of dog ownership!

Well, if you don't count Kiba. And he probably won't be a whole lot smaller than Kiba. But still, this is an actual "small dog"!

And everyone keeps asking me what his name will be. Because I wasn't planning on getting a puppy quite so soon, I've been kind of wishy-washy on names. Both of his parents have a "y" in their names in place of an "i", so I thought I might like to continue that trend. I could also use that sound because none of my current dogs have that "long i" sound so it won't sound like anybody else that I have - and in the same vein, no words that start with "S" or a C that sounds like an S, because Seri is pretty reactive to the S and she already gets excited if I begin to say her or Strafe's names.

So I rolled some sounds around a while and came up with a few I liked. One sounded too much like a common word said a lot by agility rings and so I ditched that one and I think I will stick what I ended up with, it's fairly unique (I know one dog with this name, properly spelled), it's easy to say, it shortens well...

The kennel name is Khirugai, and so I think this will be "Khirugai's Ryze Above", call name Ryze or perhaps Ryzer. I will shorten it to Ry around the house a lot and maybe I'll even call him Ryan affectionately, who knows!

Little Ry or Ryze or Ryzer will probably still be "pup-pup" for a little bit while I mentally attach his name to his face. He did really really well with the long ride from Alberta to Texas and then from Texas to Baltimore. He came out of the crate sassy, barked and wanted to play halfway home, and is currently alternating between napping and chewing a bully stick in his crate after a small meal. I think he is tired so I'm going to leave him in for an hour or so to let his food settle and let him de-stress a bit. My dogs met him outside and pretty much just said "another puppy? really? alright, whatever!"
i think he and Strafe will be good friends.

I will post some videos of his relatives running agility soon, but I have to reboot because Google Chrome and Shockwave Flash are having fights again and right now they are not getting along.

Pics from FL.

In case you're not on facebook. These are the cropped versions, you know, to focus more on Strafe. Isn't that why you come here, after all, to ogle my pretty puppy?

a previously unpublished gem from FL
Triton, Trig, Strafe

This is funny because Triton's full name is Triton T. Davis, and he responds to Davis.

The darker one, without the full white rough, is coming to be mine. The one that's continually attached to the blanket, tugging and growling like a maniac. Yup, that one ;)

I don't really NEED another dog (really, nobody NEEDS 5 dogs) but I believe I have time to train him. Why do I think that? Because despite all the other things I'm doing, I still found time to play a 35hour game of Mass Effect on the Xbox 360 last month. And I've been reading a lot. So if I cut down on leisure activities, I'll be fine. Money will be tight for a bit when he debuts in agility but I'll make do the same way I always do - by carefully picking which dog runs in which trial until they're all qualified for the things I want them to qualify for. It's been working well for me so far, and after this year Drifter will be fully retired and living the easy life.

Barring any issues, this growly little pup will be shipped to me on Tuesday. Once everything's settled I'll post more info about him.

Somehow, I keep ending up with tricolors. As the sire's owner pointed out, I sort of have the tri-fecta now...