CLIENT REFERENCE

Ramona,
Thought it was about time I got an email to you with some pix of THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL ON THE PLANET (clearly I’m not very objective about her). She’s a first-rate fetching dog I’ve been encouraging that with her all along and this morning we took her to Council Grove State Park and threw sticks in the river, and she did her first-ever water retrieves. She worked up her courage to go in above her toes, then her knees, then her chest she did great! She’s also doing GREAT in puppy class went through a mini-agility course last week like it was NOTHING! She’s going to be terrific in agility  she seemed to enjoy the obstacles a lot. Merrielle  has been encouraging me to do little things that would help her in Schutzhund, too, if we go that route. So many fun possibilities to do with her!

Ramona, Thank you so much for writing!! OK, glad to know the whirling-dervish ness will subside a bit at some point. It’s not a consistent thing just some days I’m astonished that I can take the dogs for a brisk 2.5 mile walk, Suka will run around with Sunny afterwards for a while, THEN she’ll come in the house and tear around at high speed when you’d think she’d be ready for a nap. She is a GREAT student already knows a lot of her basic commands to a reasonable extent. I have some really good books with week-by-week programs to take her through attention training, heeling, etc. and am starting on those with her. The mini-agility course was part of Merrielle’s puppy class. As soon as Suka is a year old I’ll start her in Sue Neff’s agility class. Sue won’t take dogs any younger than that because of the pounding on the joints from the jumps. However, I will be having Paul build some of the non-jump obstacles here at home so I can start her with those now. Suka is already a natural protection dog – barks at anything out of the ordinary, alert to new people…but fortunately is very friendly to everyone when we’re around.

We took her for her first airplane ride yesterday flew the dogs up to a strip in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and introduced her to water in the north fork of the Flathead River. She went in up to her belly several times, but didn’t want to go further. She followed Sunny all over the place and checked out everything. Then she slept the entire rest of the day (after spending the whole morning roaming the wilderness). In the airplane she just curled up behind our seats and went to sleep. Good airplane dog!

 I started clicker training with her last week, and on the third day a light bulb went on for her about learning/training and she started offering behaviors left and right and anticipating like crazy. She now has “sit”, “down”, “let’s go”, “go potty”, “no”, “leave it”, and is working on “wait”, “crawl”, “stand”, “bang”, “c’mere!” and so on. She’s doing GREAT. I can’t wait to start formal obedience with her, and it’ll be hard to wait until she’s a year old to do agility…but I want her joints to be healthy! I’m also working on the drive-building aspects with a ball-on-a-rope  she’s doing well at focus. I think she punctured the vacuum-cleaner hose by barking and growling at it and then clamping on while I was vacuuming. Everything goes in her mouth shoestrings, hands, cat tails, dog tails, slippers, pinecones, pebbles, deer poop, …

Ramona,
We are now taking Merrielle’s second dog class  sort of a bridge between puppy kindergarten and CD class. In our first session last night, Suka was outstanding. She is starting to heel with attention, her recalls are fast and magnificent, she’s great at a number of other commands. She’s also starting on weave poles, and she jumps beautifully over fallen logs on our property.  What I find even more wonderful/amazing is that she’s picking up the meaning of commands / sentences I give her without my specifically training her on them. She understands “bring it here” and even “go get your ball”…without my teaching these. SHE’S SO SMART!
Julie T. Chapman
An Artist in Nature
www.JulieTChapman.com

Ramona,

It’s been a while since I’ve written and I wanted to share Suka’s latest accomplishments. She completed her CD (AKC “Companion Dog” novice obedience title) on Oct 8, 2005 in Spokane – it took us 4 tries to get her 3 legs, as she got up on a Long Down exercise at the Great Falls trial. Don’t even know why – she hasn’t done it before or since. She earned her first CD leg with a 195 and “High Scoring Herding Breed” that same day, in Great Falls (over Labor Day weekend). Since then her scores have declined a bit as she is way too playful on her heeling in the ring (likes to bite at my hands, pants, etc.) but otherwise does all of her exercises beautifully.

She also completed her RN (Rally Novice) title on Oct 8 in Spokane, and the next day qualified for the first leg of her Rally Advanced title.

Suka knows all of the Open obedience exercises thoroughly and we’re starting to train some of the Utility exercises now. She continues to be amazingly smart, fast, and wonderful; she learns very quickly and seems to enjoy figuring new things out. She will pester me endlessly until I take her out for her regular morning and afternoon training sessions. At both the Great Falls trial and the Spokane trial – the only competitions we’ve been in – I received numerous compliments from perfect strangers on how pretty she is, how attentive, how well she works, how much fun it is to watch her in the ring, and so forth. And of course – I’m almost always asked who her breeder is.

I also have to send a couple of photos. One is of her playing with her frisbee (her very most favorite thing in the entire world) in a big field outside Great Falls, and the second is of her with all her ribbons and goodies won this past weekend in Spokane.

All the best – I hope life is treating you well!

Julie T. Chapman