Autumn's coming!

Very long time no update. No real excuse, the computer is full of new pictures, but we've had a few weeks of holiday and have spent a lot of time in Mykyrä, since the weather has been so nice. We were helping out painting a house and chopping up fire wood and Senna was of course with us all the time.

Since it has been so warm she's also been doing quite a bit of swimming, unfortunately a bit too much... She caught an ear infection that we struggled to get rid of for quite a few weeks. Poor girl was crying at night because of the pain! We went to the vet and she got some ear drops and antibiotics and now she's fine again, but we have to be really careful to wipe her ears completely dry everytime she goes into the water from now on. Aparently, since her ears are flappy, "hanging down" ones moisture can very easily get trapped inside, causing an inffection. Funny design for a water dog isn't it?

We've joined a puppy course with Senna. And I think it's a good thing, it will be quite the challenge for all of us. Senna has increasingly started going crazy whenever we walk passed dogs. People, runners and rollerbladers etc are usually no problem to pass, but when it comes to dogs it's like she's completely impossible to get through to. Unless you use the magic of ham:) In the course she finds it quite difficult to concentrate with so many new dogs and people around her and it's more a case of feeding her nami (treats) all the time, to get her to focus on me. In last week's session one exercise involved being handled by someone else. Sure she would love to be handled by anyone! She would also jump on them, kiss them in the face and try to wrestle them to the ground...so we have some work to do. Thing is, she would never dream of jumping on us, and she never goes crazy when we come home etc, since we always treat her in a very calm way. But with other people and dogs it's a different story. So we've started doing some "people meeting " exercises. I feed her ham while the person slowly advances towards her. She's not allowed to charge at the person and after a while she can say hi in a civilised way.

Otherwise she's learning new things at an incredible speed, and as long as she stays focused on the ham she does very well in all exercises in the course. In fact, I don't think there's anything she wouldn't to for a bit of ham:)

Whilst I returned to work last Monday Tuomo had another week off and he and Senna spent some quality time together, doing a fair bit of socialisation training in town, by walking up and down Hämeenkatu (the busiest street) and not saying hi to everything that moved. They also went to the dog parks and had nice walks together. Today we met with Johanna, a friend of mine from work, her Pauli and their Mexican hairless puppy Pancho. The little pup is only 3 months old and has only just received his last shots from the vet. First we did some "greeting exercises" with Senna, with me feedling her ham. It went really well and she kept herself fairly calm. Then it was time for the dogs to meet. Since the other pup was so small we kept Senna on a leash and let Pancho come up to her in his own time. As it was, he was not very interested in her and I think he thought she was quite annoying and pushy, washing him all over with just one lick, yuck:) It was a good exercise for Senna though, since she wasn't allowed to run around all the time but had to stay still.

Right now she's sleeping at my feet, completely exhausted. Before we met Pancho we'd been on a longish walk with her so that she'd be a bit calmer when they were introduced for the first time:) She's also started being more affectionate, coming up to us to cuddle on the floor and giving out kisses very generously with minimal biting involved (apart from the compulsory "retriever gripping" of hands and arms:) All new teeth have come through as well.

Tomorrow Tuomo starts work again and it's back to kinder garden for our little girl. The daycare keepers wont believe their eyes when they see the size of her! Latest measurements: 58 cm and 23 kilos!