Day 10 - Wednesday (First Dog Club)

Dog club has always been on Wednesday nights; Bramble (our first black labrador, who died aged 5 from a Spinal Stroke - another very little known about illness) started our trips to "Auntie Sheila's", and Joey and Abbie have followed, so it is only right that Poppy will do so too.  Sheila is an absolute wonder, she is an absolute font of dog knowledge.  Every dog that I have ever seen come to the club always behaves when Auntie Sheila takes the lead!

It was a big ask, as club for puppies doesn't start until 6:30pm, and this is obviously after a long day being awake and active.  These days, unlike in Bramble's day, most vets have their own puppy parties for early socialisation, so many puppies miss out on Auntie Sheila's club.  Today was one of those quiet puppy nights - it ended up just with Poppy.  It didn't matter though, as she had a wonderful time, and met the "big dogs" at the end of her class.  Sheila was really encouraging, and helped me with some games that we can play quietly.  So today Poppy has had her first experience of "Find" with a small treat on an upturned bucket.  We tried on the floor first, but it was obvious this was quite hard, so immediately Sheila shifted the focus to a slightly raised environment.  Poppy loved it!  Then we had to have a couple of trips round the playground - to find all the dangerous objects that had been left behind by visitors during the day - a piece of sharp clear plastic, various assorted broken parts from toys, of course any available stick and pieces of tarmac left from the recent replacement around the entrance steps!

Sheila has suggested trying to let Poppy work out which hand a treat is in (we tried this out when we got home, and she got it right first time every time except once!  Joey is still trying to work out this game!)  We are also going to think about a mat game - setting up two mats and sending her to lie on each in turn on command - this may take a bit of development, but it could certainly be possible.  Also collecting (rather than retrieving as such) a pot with treats in it, with the reward being the treat from the pot.  Fantastic food for thought for some future games.

It really feels that to a certain extent we have just been living day to day, but we should now look at giving Poppy some additional games to stimulate her mind.

Although she was tired when she came home, she was very bright and continued to "show off" to the other dogs for about 20 minutes before she eventually lay down to sleep.

We are hopefully starting to get better at working out what she can cope with - I certainly think that the less "bouncing" that is done the longer she seems to last.  This morning's walk was very successful on this basis.

A steady Poppy is seen in this video (aged 17 weeks).