The title of this post refers to how it is said a dog adapts to his new home. Pucek has been with us for a little over than 6 months now, so perhaps time for a little summary 😃.
Three days... the beginning was totally honeymoon 💙. As I wrote before, the circumstances were sad, since we got Pucek after death of his owner, who was our friend, but Pucek seemed to fit right in. House trained, crate trained, with perfect recall, nice loose leash walking skills, friendly with people, nice with dogs, tons of drive and being super cute on top of that - we could hardly wish for a nicer dog. Some years ago I've met Nanga's brother (Nanga is mother of Zelda and Puck) and he was so totally beatiful that I've dreamed of having a dog in this type ever since. Well, Pucek is even more beautiful (of course). And since he did a bit of agility before, I started with some training with him right away - wow, tons of speed and enthusiasm, really nice reaction to handling, super potential in general, awesome, just awesome in every aspect.
Three weeks... the reality hits. I guess Pucek realised that it is not just a holiday🏊 and he's here to stay and then suddenly he became a bit stressed. It didn't help that Zelda got in season and he started fighting with Brego over her. A bit later he started having some minor health problems (everything under control now) and it turned out he didn't like going to the vet at all, we had to use a muzzle to do a blood test. At the end of summer I also wanted to start a bit more "serious" agility training, weaves and contacts and initially that wasn't going so well either. Even though as I said, he was really well trained in general, and was physically mature to learn "adult agility stuff", he lacked the kind of preparation I normally do with my puppies and at some point I realised he lacked some skills that I assumed were there. Sometimes he got frustrated, started biting me or barking like crazy 👾, sometimes he struggled with coordination or compression skills, sometimes after he made a mistake he couldn't really get over it and would just repeat it again and again. Obviously, he was still super cute and super nice dog in general and we also understood that some of those things were to be expected, as he underwent a major change in his life, so we just started working on the issues step by step.
Lots of socialisation with our vets, just coming along for visits with our other dogs and getting treats. Teaching him I can restrain him and nothing bad would happen. Fun activities alongside with Brego, so he had positive associations with him. Lots of shaping games, some tricks to help him with coordination and body awareness. Physiotherapy to get rid of some ugly tensions of the muscles.
I needed to work on myself as well - on how to best explain behaviours to him, how to schedule sessions, how to reward, how to keep myself from getting into similar frenzy as he did (not so easy, when you're trying to think while someone screams in your ears or bites your hand). Sometimes I got frustrated as well - methods and ways that were tried and proven with my previous dogs didn't really work with him - so I made notes, I experimented, I tried this and that. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. It's still work in progress, though progress I see. And a lot of it.
Three months... or actually a bit more. We have so many successes together. He doesn't fight with Brego anymore, they can walk, train, be in the same room together at home. There is still a bit of tension between them, but now they can communicate, say a few insults at each other and then go away rather than actually fight. He doesn't need a muzzle with our vet anymore and he even started enjoying his physiotherapy sessions. He learnt to weave and then all of a sudden he can do even quite difficult stuff, work distance etc. His contacts training is still work in progress, but we're getting there. We competed in jumping competition last weekend and he was perfect, doing sit stays, listening, paying attention to bars even on slices <3 It was so fun to run him!
At some point I checked my messenger history with Jitka, Zelda and Pucek's breeder, and I saw that when she was sending me puppy videos, I always liked the boy in the red collar. So guess who is that puppy now? Yes, it is Pucuś and I feel like we were meant to be. Now I cross my fingers for our next thirty years together 🐕👧😍
Photo: Leona Ortenberg
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