Dog Days of Summer

Meet Summer. Yeah, that is this adorable German Shepherd adolescent-girl here. I originally met her and her peeps; Susan and Felix, through Puppy Foundation Skills class, where she started at an early age. 

Just a few days ago, I met up with Summer and Felix for a lovely outing and photo shoot. There were a few specific images I was looking for to add to my photo gallery and library, and the very cool thing looking back through the images was how well many of these images illustrate one of the things I keep preaching to students all the time: develop PLAY with your dog!!! With good skills and a keen player, there are so many training challenges that become easy and fun to work through - but more than anything, Play develops such a fantastic bond and relationship! It puts the emphasis exactly where I believe it should be: right in the middle between you and your dog - in something that you do Together. 

So, here are some of the photos from our photo shoot just the other day. Hope you enjoy! THANK YOU Felix and Summer for being awesome models! Thank you Susan and Felix for doing such an awesome job getting this girl off on such a great start! And Thank you for teaching her how to play with you! It is a gift that will stay with her (and you) for life :-)

I LOVE seeing the intensity in the play! It is just simply gorgeous and it is easy to see just how much fun she thinks this is, too! In the image below she is frozen - ready to pounce the moment she is given permission! Can't you just feel the intensity?

See the impulse control Summer is showing in the photo above, too? Love it! And she's 5-or-so months old!! 
Closing off with a beautiful portrait of a very beautiful soul. OH Those Eyes!

Pinot's weather report.

Unreal how much snow was dumped on us in the last 24 hours!! I enjoyed a fabulous walk in the woods with Pinot yesterday. Maggio is on bed rest (and lots of bones) right now while we wait to figure his elbow-issues out. It's hard to leave him behind, as he just would like to go, go, go, but it's also obvious he is not feeling all that great about moving too much, so we have to limit his exercise for now. By the end of the week, there should be a Plan of Action in place for how to best address what's going on with his elbows.

Pinot is soaking up all the solo attention and honestly does not seem to care whether Maggio comes along or doesn't. As long as she gets to go - she's happy. That's all that matters :-) Pretty self-centered creatures when it comes to stuff like that?! 

With the accumulated snow - it was too funny to watch her literally not be able to "reach bottom", but keep experimenting with kangaroo-style leaps alternating with belly-flop attempts looking like  she was thinking "maybe I DO float on this if I try again?" 

She didn't float, no matter what style she tried, but it sure looked like fun trying! And we both got a really good work-out! It really was quite the show, this "walk" of ours; playing in the snow and watching Pinot's intense, crazy energy - insisting on playing her favourite Frisbee games despite it being quite difficult to get around in places. At times she was literally over-her-head-deep-in-snow, and I had the occasional thought go through my mind about snow-shoes perhaps being a smart thing (not that I own a pair) as I was labouring along, too - in the sometimes thigh deep snow. Great exercise, and a remarkably soft landing when a loss of balance threw me off. Pinot was doing all kinds of "four-wheel-getting around" and just seemed to have a total blast, too! I DO love the snow. This is what winter is supposed to be like!