Good Morning

And that's "good morning" not in the greeting sense but rather me saying that this morning was good.

We headed off to training for our little Commando challenge thing and had a blast. Got lots of biscuits for Charlie, lollies for me, and two squeaky toys that Charlie loves and spent the past half an hour driving me mad by squeaking.

He's so cute :)

Afterwards we went over to the main training area and let the dogs all off to have a play- which each other and whatever throwing toys we had at hand. Mr Anti Social only wanted to acknowledge me and the tennis ball I borrowed until he got tired and then went to sleep in the shade while all the other dogs raced about and had fun together. Such a silly moose. I think he doesn't really "do" playing with other dogs partly because of him not having the opportunity when he was a pup because of his fear aggression, partly because he just doesn't enjoy it with many dogs because he gets worried someone's going to eat him, and partly because I did all of that behaviour modification work on stopping him from bolting at other dogs.

He's more people orientated, and has his special doggy friends that he's known for ages and is comfortable with that he'll have a bit of a play session with- but even that's quite short lived. Special.

With all of the doggy people I know now, and how involved I am at the club, I'm just seeing socialistion opportunities for the new puppy everywhere I go. In addition to the classes I'd actually take at the club, there's trials, going along to watch classes I do with Charlie, off lead time with the dogs at the club, agility training... I'm in such a better position with better capabilities this time around for early learning than I was with Charlie. That's another reason I'm really hoping for a suitable pup as soon as a possible, because with both Charlie and Fletcher I got them right when all things training and trialling wrapped up for the year. In addition to the couple of months off we had so much wet weather that any real plans I had for super socialising went out the window. Fletch was still good- he loved every dog he met especially- and it would have been easy if he didn't have issues cropping up whenever we started to make some progress with something, but there was still so much I wanted to do with him that I never got a chance to.

If I get this new pup within the next couple of months it'd be ideal timing because classes are still going strong, we've got lots of trials and demos coming up, and the weather should still be behaving itself.

But all I can do is cross my fingers and hope for the best.