One and half years young Prikka

Peekaboo!  Prikka and raccoon quite soon after her arrival.

 Getting acquainted with the November snow

The easter holidays and fun on the ice 2015

Almost a year at the summer house

Obedience fun autumn 2015

Show fun on the nice spot in Muurame

Prikka will be one and half years within this week. She is a steady adult, I guess she has been the steady adult all the time. Most of the time she is calm and self-contained, walks controlled by my side, not at all like most of the collies of her age running wildly and energetically around. We go to the forest side by side, if we meet someone she just comes behind my knees, usually uninterested in new dogs. She is having fun with the other two, wrestling and running daily. though. She can be incredibly fast when she wants to. She also happily jumps over the hindrances she confronts on our paths whether they are trees or other dogs, such a light movement.

She is calm except when we are about to go out. When we are moving the lawn or raking the autumn leaves or shovelling the snow in the garden, she gets a bit lunatic. One more thing she gets exited is when we start working, she just loves it. There seems to be nothing more fun than working with me. That, of course makes her training very easy and our moments together lots of fun! She has such a huge will to please, nothing else exists around her and she tries her very best to do everything correctly. The way she has handled the new training halls or fields or the shows, have proved that she is very confident. She behaves the same way wherever we are!

We had our first official competition in the obedience the last weekend of February. So nice to go to the show when you know that you can thrust your dog.  In the autumn she was able to do the movements when attending the unofficial shows but she did  not have the patience needed. Now, she can wait for the commands, she does not need to guess that may be it is time to get up or down or whatever. One week before the show I made twice the whole novice class. First time I did it in garden, I did not give her any rewards, only lots of praising between the movements. The praising was a bit exaggerated regarding her behaviour, she became restless and noisier.  Couple of days later we trained with a group and did all the movements again, now including the stay, which you can not train alone that much, since all the dogs go down and get up one by one. Since Prikka got "too wild" with my too eager praises, I did the opposite, I was extremely calm between the movements. She did everything correctly according the coach but she did it without the joy.

What good rehearsals we had! So when the real show day arrived I knew what to do, not too calm, neither too exited. The road to this stage of our obedience would have been much rougher and longer without our training partners and coaches. Thank you, the keen eyes around us, so much!

The show was after noon, so we had a peaceful morning and a nice walk in Mikkeli before the novice class. I had time to remind her most of the movements before it was our turn.
We started with the down stay, she went nicely down and waited there. Alas, she was the first one to get up after the stay and she did not do it from my first command. We were the last in our group to do the individual movements, had to wait seven pairs to do their ordeal.
When we entered the ring, we were a bit lost, but when the heelwork started it was just fine. the picture story of our movements with the points is here. The video of the novice class without the down stay and heelwork, the video starts in the middle of the second movement. We did some heeling and most of the movements of the open class on the video the following day.

This week we have been social, first we had a "Jinga-cousin", a puppy visiting us with her big sister, so a family meeting for Jinga. Since my neighbour has a samoyed puppy of same age, born in Halloween, I arranged a meeting for these two. Pictures of puppies and the "big girls" in here (FB).

In the beginning of this week my friend Maarit was staying with us with her one and half year old BC, more pictures  in FB.

And then some shots of the star of the week:

We got a new hurdle this week, thanks Maarit!

Prikka is just starting the retrieving movements:

It has been a fascinating journey this far, and I sure it is still going to be fascinating to continue our journey together! Thank you, Val, for the precious little one, thanks for the cuddles you keep sending her!