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Monday, December 23 2013

Good Dog Training Newsletter - December 2013

By Raewyn Saville on Monday, December 23 2013, 00:48 - Newsletters

Wishing you all a very Happy Festive Season and a New Year full of wonderful...... Dog Training!

Santa_Fae_dec_13.JPG

TOYS FOR CHRISTMAS

By Raewyn Saville - Dec 13

I guess we have all heard the sensible people of the world telling us not to give or get animals for Christmas, as you probably won't want them by the New Year.

What rubbish. The vast majority of people who give or get a new puppy at Christmas time have planned and waited and ordered their pup or been looking at the Animal Shelters and SPCA for ages. Christmas might be a good time to get a new family pet as there will be some extra time off work for some, to settle their new animal into their lives. I can only imagine the look on the face of a child presented with an 8 week plus puppy on Christmas morning. That will have Granma's ipad working overtime sending pics to all her friends.

It is now the third Christmas since I got my puppy on the 24th December. What a thrill. It still thrills me when I think about it. I had had a sad month and a half by then as a puppy I had chosen from the SPCA had been run over on the main road near my house. I was there at the time and it was a horrible thing to see. Because I had 'Pai' I had not tempted myself with puppies that I knew had been born and that I would have dearly loved one of. The mother dog was a lovely terrier called Spirit. Spirit had been working in Conservation and coming to Agility Beginners with Amy Knopers. I just adored Spirit, she was a trier, she tried hard, she worried if she got it wrong and she had character. She was mated with a Border Terrier male. I have always had a soft spot for Border Terriers, mostly because people make a hash of their training. They say they are un-trainable, difficult, independent. I knew they were a tough wiry character but I am at a stage in my dog training life where challenge is a must or I will go off the boil.

My last training for myself was 'Chan' the pit-bull, whippet, sharpei. He was easy to train to do what I wanted in dog sports but challenged me with his dog on dog aggression. We got that sorted and it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. Well looking back it seems easier. One forgets after the dog is trained how frustrating and disappointing dog training can be on occasions.

Chan was 4 by the time I got my Christmas pup. Anyway I went to the Knopers and chose Fae Spirit. I asked Gus if he would release her to me at 7 weeks and he declined. He liked his pups with their mothers a full eight weeks. I accepted that. The man had principles and he was prepared to stand by them. That would mean that some time in the early new year my pup would be ready to come home. I tried not to get excited, but hey getting a new life to share is exciting.

I got a call from Gus Knopers on the 23rd of December, asking me to help him train a Border Collie. He was having real difficulties with it and wanted to bring it over to me on 24th December. I thought it was a bit odd but he sounded desperate (I should add that Gus Knopers is a very experienced dog handler) and we dog handler/trainers have to stick together. I had such a lot to do on the 24th, you know what Christmas Eve is like. Anyway he pitched up and parked in the shade on my front verge. I met him at the gate. He was waiting at the back of his ute. He threw up the tailgate and yanked out a Toy Border Collie on a lead. At the same time Amy got out of the truck with my baby Fae in her arms and handed her over to me. Magic. I was overcome.

So since then I have decided there are a lot worse things that could happen than for families to enrich their lives with a new puppy. Christmas and New Year were spent that year going outside every hour for pid-dles, mopping up piddles, scooping up the other, playing tiny puppy games, and watching my other three dogs involve the pup in their lives. There was never a bad word spoken by any of us. My dogs just loved Fae right from the start.

Having had a run of rescue dogs, found on the side of the road, or from the SPCA or taken into care from a family that couldn't cope anymore, the brand new straight from the mother dog puppy was something I had almost forgotten. I had forgotten the snuggling into the neck and the little sucky mouth and the 'I need you' expression on their dear little faces.

Fae turned into Fae the Fat Fairy, for the first year with her little Tutu and wings. Then last Christmas she wanted to be 'Fae the Angel on top of the Christmas Tree' with her white Tutu, wings and halo. This year she is Santa Fae. Two years on and three Christmases, Christmas will always be Fae and Fae will always mean Christmas to me.

Incidentally if you want to do your own rendition of 'How I got my Puppy for Christmas' Pam and Dave, Club members at Dog Sports Rotorua have a delightful litter of 8 Miniature Schnauzer Pups for sale. Ready to go Christmas Eve on the sleigh with Santa Fae. If you want the ideal family pet or a hard work-ing Agility Dog this breed could suit you very well. If you have a big dog in training at the moment, get a little one to go with it.

I am training right through Christmas and New Year. If it isn't a statutory holiday, I will be at the Stock Car Club training as usual. Come and join me and do some quality catch up over Christmas, I look for-ward to seeing you.

Pam & Dave’s 3 week old miniature Schnauzer pups ph: 0276788331Pam___Daves_pups.JPG

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Saturday, December 1 2012

Diary of the last two weeks

By Raewyn Saville on Saturday, December 1 2012, 00:00 - Personal Ramblings

Oh dear the last two weeks have been a blur. First my computer has been down quite a bit doing funny things and not able to get to anywhere. Don't know if someone sent me something funny that caused it but anyway I disconnected everything and when I reconnected it is just fine. Whew.

The 16th of November was the first anniversary of the death of Piper my Pai. She was just twelve months old having been born on 1-11-10 and died on 16-11-11. She was run over by a truck on the road. Pai was the beginning of my wanting to help people train dogs. She had been at the SPCA rescue for a while. When she was taken in to the SPCA as a rescue from an appalling home, she became very sick and the people at the SPCA couldn't figure it out so they took her to a very expensive vet and he put her on a drip and told them she had meningitis. She had a long and slow recovery and there was something wrong with her brain. She had trouble making out what was happening around her and panicked quite a lot. I looked at her in the cage with three other puppies all bundles of fun and mischief, climbing over her and clambering to get out of the cage. She on the other hand huddled in a corner wetting herself and hoping the person coming into the cage wasn't someone coming to hurt her again. I couldn't bear it. I took her home as a foster from the SPCA initially. She was six months old, German Shepherd Kelpie. Not a mix I would normally find attractive, but she loved me and I loved her. Her eyes were just beautiful and she would lie in my arms and stare at me while I cuddled her.

However when things went wrong she ran under the hedge and at one point was there for three days. She had some sort of seizures and she did not like people one bit. She was terrified of everyone. My dogs loved her though. Chan the Sharpei cross in particular really adored her and he missed her badly when she died.

It was an odd and pathetic relationship with a dog who was unable to operate in any way normally. She was scared to piddle and poo and would store it until she could store it no longer and then it would come out in a stream of both from which she would run away and hide again under the hedge. My carpet has never been the same and I look fondly at the stains and go 'Oh Pai'.




While I had Pai a little Terrier that I liked belonging to Amy Knopers became pregnant.  I jokingly said '"It is just as well I have Pai as I would like one of her pups"  this was especially as the sire was a Border Terrier and I have always had a fondness for that breed, tough though they are.   "Sorry Raewyn"  Gus Knopers said "they are all spoken for" .  I knew that Amy wanted one of the pups as her special dog, the others were to go and be trained as Kiwi Trackers and Rodent control for people working in Native Bird Recovery Programs around NZ.  Well bless her heart, Spirit the Mother Dog had five baby girls.  One more than they had homes for.




They were born on 1-11-11.  Isn't that a magical date, and by the time I heard about the Pups, Pai had been run over.  Weird I thought.
Gus told me to get over and have a look at the pups, so I did and I chose a little flat coated pup, some of them had real wire coats.
Her mother was Spirit so I wanted to call her Fairy Fae, or just Fae.  She stood out to me in the brood box at three weeks as a really gorgeous little pup.  Faerie being the Gaelic spelling of Fairy, and Border Terriers coming from the Scots border, I thought it was appropriate.  On Christmas Eve last year Gus and Heddy and Amy and Kirsten delivered my perfect little terrier to me at home.  It was my best Christmas ever, following as it did on the heels of the death of my precious baby Pai.  For the past 20 years I have had rescue pups as my pets and workers and as Agility and Flygility dogs.  All of them had been past their baby stages by the time I got them, and here was a real 7 and a half week old baby.




To me the whole episode was magical.  Pai would never have been able to live a normal life, so I think she left me to give me Fae who is a delightful intelligent and wonderful little dog who lives on the paddocks and in the chicken and duck runs killing rats as fast as she can.  Unfortunately she really likes chicken food, pellets, corn, bread, cafe leftovers, you name it she likes it.  She actually takes bread out of the ducks beaks without hurting them.  So she became Fae the Fat Fairy and she is still rather plump at twelve months old, a complete character and coming along beautifully with Agility and Flygility, loves all dogs, loves all people and works her little socks off with a smile on her face.




So over this last month I have reflected on my loss of Pai and stood on the roadside with the tears rolling down my face, and cuddled my twelve month old Fae, keeping her on a leash at all times after the fright I got twelve months ago.  We have celebrated the first birthday of Fae and I write the blog Fae the Fat Fairy which entertains me and a lot of other people too. All the characters in the blog are real animals that we live with or know.




The Knoper family sent Fae a Birthday card and Fae sees her sister Bree almost every week at Agility Training.  The dog thing has kind of taken over my life so I am going to lie back and be guided from above on it.  I called my new business, Good Dog Training Te Kuri Pai.   Kuri being Maori for Dog and Pai being Maori for Good.   I have been blessed this last twelve months with a whole new regime of dog training as my job in life, behavior training rather than just training people to do Flygility or Agility.  My guiding spirit Pai is there with me all the way making sure I understand the pain and difficulty that dogs have trying to live in a world filled with human beings and their daft lifestyles.




I think I am back on track now, I took my dogs to Eastern Bay of Plenty Agility Ribbon Trial last Sunday and Becki-boo who has not competed for five years and is seven years old now, came second in Starters small dogs.  Last time she came 7th but that was overall without splits for the heights.  Fae is too young to compete yet and it will be hysterical when she does as her legs are short and sort of shoot out sideways as she goes, but she is fast as and a happy little thing.  So I am going to Cambridge Ribbon trial next week to see if I can actually beat the Schnauzer that beat Boo by 100th of a second - Yes.  Not that I am competitive or anything,,,,,,




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