How are things going
@David?
It's a work in progress and reminds me a lot about "Marley and Me".
Poppy is a lovely dog without any doubt. We've got her on 28 days trial but it's already a foregone conclusion that we will be keeping her. I've had her along to see the vet and his verdict was she is boringly normal and in fine condition and at ideal looking weight.
She's a quick learner so quite bright. It only took a couple of no's for her to learn we didn't want her going upstairs. On the other hand she has taken possession of the large sofa.
We've been working hard on getting her to walk to heel. That takes a LOT of proofing. She now walks nicely along the road on our regular morning walk back to the house about half a mile with her nose just next to my left leg. I never achieved that with Lady. Everywhere else she pulls like a train until we get control of the situation. So each new environment we are back to square one. She'll get there in the end. The main problem we have to train out is she looks on new locations as working. For example we took her to a NT garden yesterday. She was on a lead but leaping on top of walls and digging in to bushes left and right which I guess is what she was used to doing as a sniffer dog. This actually nearly ended in disaster/ grossly embarrassing moment when we took her into woods where we could let her off the lead. (Marley moment alert!). She suddenly dived left and punched her way through a hedge, where there was absolutely no gap, into a field of bullocks. We now on wrong side of fence and no way of getting her back. I ran to a field gate - big chain and barbed wire on the top. Poppy was the other side looking at the cattle and they were not impressed. Fortunately she recalled and scrabbled under the gate. If the gap hadn't been big enough I have no idea what we would have done.
Her recall is good but not good enough in exciting situations. I think she's been pretty much a town dog but has now discovered RABBITS! (Marley moment alert). We were in a very large water meadow (at least 40 acres) where I used to train Lady when Poppy spotted a rabbit. We got her back about half an hour later when she had cleared the rabbits from the entire hedgerow around this field!
She was not brilliant meeting other dogs in a group. She's a puppy and can be boisterous and is a very powerful dog. Pretty much all the other dogs with our dog walking friends are adult and tell her off which works to a point but she's completely fearless! Fortunately she's fine on a second meeting and pretty much ignores them beyond a hello. Also she will recall from a dog situation which is great.
Meeting other people we thought would be a problem is actually not. She doesn't jump up at them contrary to what we expected.
So on the whole some things to definitely work on hard but actually all very encouraging. I'm using a training line now in places where she's likely to get into difficulties and we are working on reinforcing the recall.
At home she's a delight. Very polite and gentle and not interested in looking for tit bits at meal times etc. She's used to being crated so we still crate her at night. We need to decide how long to keep that up. She's obviously been used to being fed in her crate because when I get her food ready she dives inside waiting. Quite endearing but we feed her in the kitchen so I guess she'll get used to that.
Every time I move she gets up and follows me - that can get a bit wearing, but when I sit down she just flops on the floor next to me and goes to sleep. Outside she helps in the garden which mainly involves putting her head where I'm about to dig a hole.
So all in all we are getting there.
