Belatarr Hungarian Wirehaired Vizsla.

The Graduate, redux.

27/03/2010 at 18:26 2 comments

A big week for little Mingus as he graduated from his Puppy Gurus course with flying colours and managed to complete all of his obedience and command tasks to complete perfection, receiving his first rosette to mark the occasion.

Steely focus.

He had (rather unkindly!) earned the nickname of “class swat”, with all the envious/seething/delighted (delete as appropriate) puppy owners willing him to mess up and miss a command, to make their own dogs look better…but they went home disappointed (all saying that they “wanted a Mingus” too!) and our lad was, as ever, a complete joy, ending the session with a not-half-bad show stack – his optional extra exercise.

Mingus having a paddle at the rivers edge.

The assumption was that we’d been training 24/7 with him, but actually 5 mins a day was all it took, so keen is he to be trained (well, to be trained and to earn chicken chunks.)

One of the great things about positive training is how much the dogs absolutely love and look forward to be asked to do something (anything!) – they’re always completely eager and totally up-for-it.

Rhododendron barbatum - all a-glow.

In completely unrelated news…the utter devastation to many of the evergreen trees and shrubs in our  garden, (wrought by the official coldest-Devon-day-ever-recorded) has been tempered by the re-appearance of the earliest species Rhododendrons, which are now merrily flowering along with the primroses, hellebores, daffodils etc.

And another gratuitous Rhododendron-in-the-rain shot.

Meanwhile, Phoenix has her own projects to be getting on with.

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