The weather has finally changed and we have had some lovely spring weather.

Not much to report, we have hibernated and have not done much, I shall try being little bit more active when it comes to updating the blog. Well if everything goes well with THE wedding of Sasha and her -husband to be- the blog will become *Puppy blog* so lot of updates expected later this year :). If you are a reader and are interested in a puppy from our beautiful girl, please get in touch as we are collecting a list already.

We visited Crufts but for the first time ever, I did not spent the whole day watching the Leo ring but went around shopping etc. We have also applied for our Kennel name so watch this space, should hear from KC in few weeks.

Baby Ellie is doing well, soon to be 6 months old so not a baby anymore! She has been to a dog pool and loved swimming so I hope we will have fun with her next summer at the water rescue :). Sasha will hopefully be busy with maternal duties so it will be nice to get Ellie out by herself and see how she does. I must get my calendar out and enter Ellie to few shows here in UK as it will be nice to show in a puppy class, Sasha was too old when she came to UK.

HERE is a link to Ellie's sister Lyyli learning retrieve, she is 5 months old in the clip. The retrieve has been made fun so the dog stays interested, there is no point in repeating the correct obedience retrieve over and over again, you will soon have a puppy that will not do a happy retrieve. Lyyli has also graduated to retrieving a metal object, not bad at 5 months old! I always found retrieve to be the most difficult part to teach to my Leos. I failed misearbly to teach it to my lazy-berger, how ever I tried to do it!

Probably following the failure to get Sani to retrieve I have never tried to teach Sasha to retrieve. We did do lifts to my hand after her accident to keep her brain busy and she knows to bring an object in to my hand at home but I have no doubt she would not do it anywhere else! Maybe I should set that as the task for the next few months, teach Sasha to retrieve! I might have to get some tips from Lyyli's owner first :D

I have found my Leos get bored with repetative obedience and enjoy doing tricks and different things much more than "boring" heel work. It is very important to keep their mind ticking and not repeat the same thing too many times. I find even at the training classes Sasha is great for first 15 minutes but then totally loses interest! If the same move is repeated too many times I will get the amused face "what again? but I just did it!". All of my girls have been very different when it comes to teaching them. Bonnie was a dream and wanted to work for you. She was also very clever and easy to teach.

The middle girl Sani just was not interested, we think she was slightly braindamaged when she was born so she really was not "the brightest grayon in the box" bless her. She was very good in giving a paw and would always try to see if that was what we wanted, even is she was told to go down she would happily give a paw  first, just in case we actually really meant give a paw :). She was good at giving paw! Very sweet girl but would have never made a good obedience dog!

Sasha can be good, but only when she wants to! She also gets bored very easily, she too like Bonnie is very quick to learn. Of course I got her home at 14 months so she has not grown up with me and her attitude might have something to do with being very spoiled when puppy. She did not really have to work for treats etc so she can get very fustrated if the treat does not drop quick enough...and she will literally just walk off!

Poppy the parrot has been a totally different ball game! Yes, she has had to go through the training too, including retrieve! Below are few selected videos of Poppy doing her tricks. She learns about 10 x quicker than the dogs and it is very easy to reward the wrong thing, the first video is a great example of this... I was clicking "wave" move when I thought she was starting to wave, when in reality she was just about to scratch herself... So the enthusiastic waving she does, really was a mistake from my behalf but with some shaping we ended up with the very cute move indeed.

Poppy waving

Poppy RETRIEVE

Poppy TURN