Monday, November 28, 2011

Stella update

Been trying to write a year end wrap up blog about deuce's first year of trialing and I just can't seem to get the words together like i want to. SO, instead I am going to blog about miss stella.  Miss, I am the naughtiest dog ever, stella.  Alot of what happens is my fault and I know it.  She is too young to be trusted as much as i give her and so when I am cleaning up after her, I know it is my fault and until I get some balls, it is going to continue.  She always tends to fool me into believing that she is over what ever stage we were battling.  The latest stage is her barking like a mad woman at any noise downstairs in the middle of the night.  I think she hears my hubby down there (he falls asleep on the couch alot) but sometimes I have no clue what is setting her off and I just don't want to know what it is.  I am hoping we pass this phase before the baby comes because I will probably come unglued if she wakes up a sleeping baby!!!!!  We seem to be (knocking on wood) getting over the potty training issues we were having.  Again, these are a lot my fault as I very early let her start sleeping in the bed and trusting that she would wake me up when she got off the bed to go potty on the carpet.  For whatever reason, she wasn't waking me up and I would get up in the morning to multiple pee spots.  Easy fix right, put  her ass in a crate, but I just can't and I am not sure why.  Maybe because of the way she snuggles up to me every night like deuce does?  Anyway, she seems to always wake up around 4 am so I take her out every morning just in case.  As long as I get up and do this, there are zero accidents.  She is also still having accidents in her crate randomly.  We tried putting towels instead of a nice bed and that helped a little but she seems quite content peeing on her bedding and then laying in it.  I am going to try the bed again this week and see if anything has changed.

Stella is probably the most active aussie we have ever had and as long as her activity requirements are met, she is fine.  Don't meet those requirements and watch out.  This morning i just wanted 30 more minutes of sleep, a BIG mistake.  She brought me a measuring spoon, some toilet tissue, the paper towels I used to clean up a vomit mess, and an oven mitt.  She is also a horrible counter surfer so if we don't watch her like a hawk, she is in the kitchen getting whatever she can off of the counter.  We are considering in our kitchen remodel to put up a gate into the cooking part of the kitchen to prevent both her and harley from getting to the counters.   I am sure harley taught her how fun this habit is.  He learned it from a foster dog at some point.  He has also taught her the finer points of eating poo so we are battling that as well right now with both of them.  I try and keep the yard spotless but I just can't keep up sometimes and hubby doesn't help at all with this, yet complains when they have poo breath.  Ah, the joys of raising a puppy!!!!!


Agility wise, things are going pretty slow.  Tony gets motivated and does little things with her but I for the most part do most of the training.  We have been working on channel weaves lately with the channels way out and she is such a quick learner.  I still don't think she has the body control to start plank work for her running contacts so that will be put on hold till she does.  I don't have any illusions of running her anytime soon since the baby will cut into my showing and tony's showing and money so she will have plenty of time to mature.  I do love the fact that she catches onto things so quickly, so much more quickly than Deuce ever did.  Or course she is a girl so that helps;)  She is doing great with her foundation work and that may be what we stick with for quite a while.

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