Puppies First Outing

Warning: LOTS of pictures...
We took the pups to the lake yesterday for the first time.  They are eight weeks old and we would like to condition them to enjoy water and maybe swim when they are grown, too.  I don't know if we accomplished anything.  We brought along their mom, Breeze, too because they know her and she does swim some.  On hind sight, it wasn't a great idea to bring her.  The pups were obsessed with following her around and she doesn't listen to us all that well.  She was running all over the place on the rocks and they had a hard time keeping up with her so they were panicky a lot and cried most of the time.  She only got in the water once and since they couldn't keep up with her on shore, I don't think they ever saw her swim.  We brought the pups each individually in the water, and they are good swimmers, but the stress that their mother caused them did not set them up to enjoy themselves at all.

How they traveled to the woods/lake.

Running around on the trail to the lake.  We had the little house dogs along, too.

Starting the steep descent down to the lake.

There are puddles in the rocks which made for wet puppies before they ever got in the lake.

They were all trying to keep up with mom, but as you can see, with only one pup here, they had a hard time of it.

Front to back: Opie, Donna, and Jax.

Breeze, Tara, Juice in the water.

Jax, Opie, Gemma, Clayton, Donna

Clayton.

Juice.

Juice.

Juice and Jax.

Spike-house dog.

Shorty and Brute-house dogs.

Tika-house dog.

Spike.

Juice.

Gemma.

Gemma.



Opie.

Donna.

L.-R.-Tara, Jax, Donna, Clayton, and Spike in the background.



Fall Training...

Has officially gotten underway!  We've had some pretty nice weather to get started in.  Of course we're looking forward to even cooler temperatures as fall progresses, but we'll take what we can get.  The dogs are extremely happy too.  Our main goals with these early runs is to get our mature leaders back in the swing of things and give all the pups- six in total, who range from a year to a year and a half-time in lead to see who's comfortable up there.  So far we have liked what we've seen and should have a few more leaders ready to drive the team a bit faster down the trail this winter. 

First run on August 9.  Two eight dog teams off the truck.

Teaching the pups to hold the lines out while stopped just might be the most challenging part.

Swimming with the Dogs

We've been taking groups (males/females) of dogs swimming at a private spot on Lake Superior almost daily during the week.  Well, we do most of the swimming, they usually do this:

Watch from the rocks.

Elliot using his snorkle and mask while the dogs look on.

We do throw them in some times, but really wish they'd just swim on there own.  Good exercise that won't overheat them and it would wash some of the dust out of their fur.  Of course, we discovered that we do have one water dog:

Actually, before I had the camera this day, Brian had only swam like once since we've been bringing them here this spring, but on this day, he swam a lot, getting in the water and swimming to each of us (me, Jeremy, and Elliot) over and over again.  He must have wanted his picture taken.  He also got special attention every time he swam, with no competition with other dogs because no one else would get in the water.  Afterward, his fur was so nice and bright, clean, and soft!  We are planning on having him around when we take the new pups to the lake when they are about eight weeks or so, in hopes that they will learn to like swimming as much as Brian seems to.

Jeremy's trying to convince some of the other dogs that swimming is fun.