23 October 2017

The boy is growing up.

We've noticed Finlay gradually changing over the last couple of weeks. He is more affectionate, he has sat on both of our laps and today even had a 20 minute snooze on my wifes lap. We wouldn't expect a Tibbie to be a lap dog necessarily, if he turns out to be then so be it. More than likely it is a phase, but it is nice he is settling into being a bit more laid back with us. He is also cocking his leg now, a sure sign of growing up and his 'boy' hormones starting to kick in.

Part of his problem I think is still teething. He is getting better with throwing his teeth around and he is being more gentle with us now. But clearly on some days he is desperate to chomp his chew toys and this will no doubt continue for a little while to come. He also is quite itchy and we aren't sure what is causing this. He is moulting out puppy fluff at quite a rate of knots right now, but it could possibly be because of his food. I know a lot of people recommend a 'grain free' diet to help with itching. So we have slowly introduced him to some different wet food and kibble to see how he does.

Some photos from the last few days:

Finlay still knows how to attract our attention, by "threatening" the items on the telephone table

He has also discovered the stream near us. He doesn't want to splash through the stream just yet, which I'm pleased about, but he is intrigued about it. So it is an area to be explored.

This next video made me chuckle. We have found a couple of places that are safe to let him off lead. I know Tibbies are notoriously unreliable off lead, but I believe that you have to try them when they are young, walk with a handful of tasty treats and make yourself someone who is going to be an attractive proposition to recall to. So far this is working. It is nice to see a dog off lead and free, but it has to be in the right place. Right now, I can outrun Finlay if he strays, but I won't be able to for much longer as he gets older/faster so let's get the training in whilst I can still catch the devil - I know the theory is you are supposed to run in the opposite direction if they leg it....but still! This video shows him almost doing that obedience, however this was a new place for him and he has discovered rabbit poo. I guess it does look a bit like kibble and it must taste better than what we had!!

22 October 2017

Another busy week for Finlay, particularly Friday. We had set up a puppy play-date with another Tibbie called Jinpa who is a little older than Finlay at 8.5 months old - so still a puppy in his own right.

Whenever you meet up with another dog you never entirely know what to expect, will they get on, will they just ignore one another. That said, we've never met a dog Finlay hasn't wanted to say hello to and to play with. We knew from Jinpa's owner Morrigan that he was pretty full on too. So it was time for our dogs to live up to their reputations. And boy oh boy did they live up to their expectations!!

You would expect some play then perhaps some rest, then perhaps things to settle down as they relax into each others company. Then by the end of the walk, they were calmly walking along together like old buddies. That's not quite how it went....

We decided to meet at Itchen Valley Country Park near Eastleigh, which is a large open space with lots of space to run. So a pretty safe place to let your dog off....an ordinary dog anyway. Tibbies of course are not 'ordinary' dogs and are never entirely predictable when let off the lead. Currently I can run faster than Finlay, although of course that won't soon be the case. It has to be said though, for such a young dog to be let off the lead, Finlay was really good and did have a good level of recall (ahem, better than someone else I could mention!).

So going back to the puppy play-time. These two dogs duked it out for over 2 hours, they played and played and played. When I say "play", things did look quite serious, albeit hilarious. I don't think I have laughed so much on a dog walk, ever. I think I can say that for all 3 of us humans. Jinpa was quite excited and decided to hump Finlay, which you may have thought may have thrown a 4.5 month old pup off his stride. But no.....Finlay having been taught the move by Jinpa decided he could do it too. So they swapped humping moves for most of those 2 hours.

So in-between the playing and frolicking, there was a lot of humping. Lots and lots of humping. I'd love to share some of the pictures with you, but they don't look the best. The main thing was the boys had fun. We had a cuppa in the cafe afterwards, and the boys did have a bit of a rest too. It is a shame that we don't live closer and couldn't meet more often, not because I want to see more humping, but hopefully they would eventually settle into one anothers company. Plus Jinpa is a gorgeous boy, so it would be good to see him again (and Morrigan as well of course....)

I had a such a good afternoon, and it was fantastic to see Finlay meet another Tibbie and have fun. Let's hope we can do it again one day in the not too distant future.

18 October 2017

To show, or not to show......

We hadn't intended to show Finlay when we bought him. Deb tried it with Nemo when we had him, although he showed pretty well his colour (tri-colour black, tan and white) was not favoured at the time. So after a short while we gave it up.

We went along to a show the other week in Havant and we wondered again whether we should try Finlay and see how he goes. He is a gorgeous dog, but that doesn't necessarily win dog shows! So we had a chat about it and decided to take him to ringcraft classes and see what he makes of them. We went to our first one in Upham last night and Finlay was actually very good....not so much with the ringcraft but the whole experience.

He was a lot more civilised that we would have expected. Of course he wanted to say hello to all the dogs, but he did so in a little less full on way than usual. It was almost as if he understood that he was there to learn rather than to play. He fell in love with 'Ebony' the Chow Chow.

His first experience at being looked at on the table went ok, he seemed to really like the 'judge' and therefore she had to be wagged at and kissed with gusto. Perhaps that is the way to a judges heart? But as it was his first time it was more of an experience than anything. He then walked around the circuit not too badly, very fixed on the treat that Deb had with her. 

Some of the people there were pretty serious, it seemed to be Red Setter and English Bulldog night, as there were about 6 of each there. In fact there were so many dogs there, in excess of 20, we only got one go in the time we had. We will go again.

This is Finlays time on the table - photo in focus except for the tail, which didn't stop wagging the whole evening:

16 October 2017

The spirit of the dog.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change a thing about Finlay, his mischief and sheer will of character are so charming. He is utterly gorgeous. But I thought you'd like to get an idea about how single minded this Tibbie is, probably like pretty much every Tibbie.

They breed them well up in Scotland, from the moment he saw the fencing he resented it, Finlay has made it his personal mission to overcome the fencing and not only get over it but destroy it. As I have said before, it was only ever temporary, to get him through the worst of the chewing and eating phase (don't worry, he isn't left alone to chew this wood, we stop him before he gets chunks off. Not that he has that many teeth yet). 

This was Finlays mood today:

He decided he was now big enough that he could just hop over the fence, and hop over it with utter disdain he did. He then goes about destroying the posts that support it. This is an action photo of him jumping back over:

Ready....

....over!

The other things that are on marked time, are the pigeons. As shown in the video, he plots how he can get through the gate in the fence, then stalk and kill his prey. He has eyed up the lie of the land, he knows how fast he can run and how far it is.....one day soon he'll be flying through the air, inches behind a pigeon....

15 October 2017

So what has the boy been up to today? He went for a paddle....

I'd love to call it a swim, but it wasn't quite one of those. I have seen videos of Tibbies who seem to love water and go swimming, maybe Finlay will become one of those. Our previous two Tibbies were never that keen on the water. Louie would paddle at best and Nemo wasn't much different. Nemo used to go to hydrotherapy and would swim but it was never his ideal day out, he never jumped into the water of his own accord.

We will have to wait and see if Finlay becomes a swimmer, but he was brave enough to go in at least. If you are ever in the area I thoroughly recommend a walk along the Titchfield Canal which if you didn't know any better looks like a stream. It runs from Titchfield village out to Titchfield Haven nature reserve. Finlay is too young to do the whole walk, but we wanted to take him to where he could experience a splash around in the water, where it is easy to get in.

Initially he wasn't keen, but along came a spaniel who jumped right in, so Finlay followed. It went up to his chest, and he kind of froze there for a while, not really sure of what he had just done. But as he stood there, he saw lots of leaves floating by and if there is one thing Finlay loves doing, it is chasing leaves. So with trepidation off he went, and seemed to get some confidence as he went. Once he had got out, he shook himself off and pretty much ran all the way back to the car. He did seem to enjoy being towelled off at the end. So that is another experience ticked off. He also met LOADS of dogs today, including a Bernese (who was a bit scared of Fin) a Great Dane and something that resembled a Husky x GSD. He loved them all and the owners were most surprised such a small dog was so keen to say hello to the giants.

This is Finlays first paddle....

13 October 2017

Finlay is 18 weeks old today....

We made a decision today, that we would not take Finlay to puppy romp this weekend. He enjoys it, but the purpose is supposed to be two-fold, to socialise him and to get some basic training done. 

The first item is well covered, he meets loads of puppies and enjoys it very much, but as for training.....when Finlay is playing with other puppies he is in no mood to be trained. He goes deaf! So we decided to use some of the advice given, but to use it down our local park instead. Deb had successfully tried letting him off when she took him out on Thursday and all seemed well.

So we put a trailing line on him, took lots of treats and let him off the lead. He quite happily ran between us and came every time he was called. He seems to have a natural 'distance' that he is prepared to let us go before he checks on us and then comes running. This behaviour is totally absent at puppy romp, in fact there, we could have left and gone home and Finlay would not have noticed.

So without too much distraction, Finlay is obedient. Then along come some other dogs. He greets them quite boisterously but he is calmer. The dogs he met were big and small, young and old. He had no problems at all with them and the key thing was that we could get his attention if we needed to. There was no puppy deafness. So we are happy this is a better way to go with Finlay right now, the puppy on puppy action is just too much.

Finally, let me introduce you to "cow". Finlay loves cow, he brought the toy from Perth with him and the toy is a firm favourite. It has been remarkably resilient considering what Finlay puts him through.

11 October 2017

My day off today, so walked Finlay over to a local playing field which was largely empty except for a few other dog walkers. He met and played with those, and wandered around the field checking it out. All normal so far.

Then something happened, that had not happened before.....

Finlay cocked his leg up a goalpost!!

He has been sniffing around posts and bushes for the last couple of weeks quite intensely, he knew he was supposed to be doing something but hadn't quite figured it out. But today around one of the goalposts, there was some bushy grass growing. He kind of darted around in an excited manner then suddenly stopped and cocked his leg. Now it was a kind of 'puppy leg cock', it was very quick and the leg wasn't properly in the air, but it was nevertheless the real thing. Finlay was chuffed with himself.

Then we had our first encounter with a different animal species. Next to the playing field is a field with 2 ponies in, they've been there for years. Finlay spotted them and sat down to watch and consider. What they got was moofed at, in a slightly unsure way. This is a good thing, because being cautious around ponies/horses is wise for a tiny puppy. I'd have thought that being brought up in rural Perthshire with ponies he'd have been more prepared.

Next time Finlay, maybe next time.....