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I bought a silicon mold mat for treats a while ago and made my first batch tonight - very basic peanut butter with eggs and a bit of flour. I’m really pleased, they’re a hit with Kipper and so easy!

I’ve got a new gun - Kipper likes it a lot :) bonus is it’s not actually very powerful, perfect for our small garden and keeping games exciting but not over the top!

Tonight Kipper’s developed a pronounced limp on his front left leg. It’s a tricky one as I think he’s had an intermittent limp for some weeks - pretty slight, barely perceptible except the odd ‘nod’ that I wasn’t sure I’d seen - but after today’s longish walk, a play in the garden and a sleep...

New research out - 'Discrimination of person odor by owned domestic dogs' Discrimination of person odor by owned domestic dogs Hopefully accessible, the abstract is below: In the field of dog cognition research, many studies assume that their subjects have multimodal recognition of their owner...

Here’s a new paper I’ve come across that shows free roaming dogs are less persistent with new object than pet dogs and captive dogs: The role of life experience in affecting persistence: A comparative study between free-ranging dogs, pet dogs and captive pack dogs The theory is that increased...

Kipper’s naturally wary of things over his head, on his back etc. - when he was younger we rushed trying a dog coat on him and it’s made him extra wary. But we’ve been keen to try a drying coat he can wear in the back of the car after particularly muddy or wet walks. I’ve been trying a...

I’ve just clocked that it’s only 5 months til the Fenzi camp (Whoohoo!!) and I’ve booked us on the balance pod session - but at the moment we’re only front paws on. Does anyone have suggestions for moving to all four paws on the pods? I’ve been iffily working on back foot targeting but am not...

Kipper got a lovely leather moose/reindeer from Green & Wild’s for Christmas from my sister-with-3-dogs and he loves it. However, Jambo is staying and he has an unfortunate habit of chewing - and poor Moose has suffered (I didn’t realise he hadn’t been cleared safely away with the rest of the...

My OH just showed me this article (Shropshire farmer becomes first person to train sheep to associate drone with food) about a sheep farmer using a drone to manoeuvre his flock by pairing the sound of the drone with rewards. This is in contrast to drones being used to herd sheep from behind...

This is an interesting article about a recent phenomenon on Instagram (Hunger4words) - short videoclips of a dog called Stella trained by its owner, a human speech therapist, to use a board with electronic buttons that activate single words like ‘outside’ and ‘ball’; the owner claims Stella has...

Kipper took a small chunk out of one his back paw pads a few days ago, and after a vet visit to check it over the recommendation was to keep it clean and cover it on walks to keep it from further irritation. In our first aid kit we had a pair of Ruffwear Grip Trex boots so thought I’d give one a...

One big gap in my training so far has been looking in the mouth - Kipper doesn’t like sustained mouth handling and I know it’s something we need to work on. However, this afternoon he seems bright enough in himself, but unusually dribbly. I know this can be lots of things, but I think the most...

I'm quite pleased; we've got a plumber in replacing both toilets and a sink (long overdue, both knackered and one sprung a leak the other day :puke:), which we thought would be a 'quick' 2 day job but has actually taken 5 days so far - a combination of tricky plumbing, bad luck (backing tiles...

This study made me laugh out loud. Three dog breeds - Czechoslovakian Wolfdogs, GSDs and Labradors - were compared to see how long they persevered at an unsolvable task before they gazed at the human in the room. There were actually 2 humans in the room - one was the owner and one the...

Well - tonight, stroking Kipper on the floor, I saw a little black hopping feller on the carpet. “Was that...?! Noooo...”. Couple of minutes later... hop! Holy cow, it was a flea :shock: He’s up to date on his tick & flea treatment, and checking over the obvious places (behind ears, top of...

The last 2 nights, young Kipper has been de-crated - the first night because he woke up about 2pm and then didn’t want to go back in his crate, and last night we just left him sleeping behind his chair because he looked so comfy. It’s taken so long (he’s 22 months now) because he’s seemed quite...

We’ve just done day 1 of a 3 day scent workshop, and it was fascinating - and exhausting! I’ll post more after tomorrow’s session, but in brief(ish),today we covered shaping a nose touch to a scent pot that looked like this: So we got a reliable nose touch, rewarding under the pot to reinforce...

Yuck - I’ve just found an ex-tick behind Kipper’s right elbow/shoulder gully; it’s pretty black and dessicated with lots of ‘bits’ all through the hair :sick: I got most of it with the tick remover and cleaned it up with water, but the skin is quite red - I’ve slathered Savlon on (Kipper was not...

Kipper’s had a bare patch on the side of one of his rear paw pads for some time (I think months?) which occasionally looks raw or inflamed. This was it last week: I’d assumed it was simply a bald patch he’d rubbed on granite or similar at some point, but showing OH the other day we thought hmm...

After a bit of a slow start with wrapping (I just couldn’t get the mechanics to begin with), we’ve now begun to crack figure of 8s. Kipper seems to really enjoy it - this is a snippet from the end of a longer session, and watching it back I did too many repeats early on. But we’re getting there!