Prey-Drive or Fowl-Play?

One of the things that CCI dogs can get released for is prey drive - or the desire to chase animals, birds, etc. Not a good trait for a service dog to have when they are at the end of the leash of a disabled person.  Does a high drive for chasing a stuffed chicken toy count as prey drive or is is just fowl-play?

I got this toy as bribery material for teaching Nick the "speak" command, he has seen it, heard it squeak, but has yet to get it in his mouth to play with until he learns "speak". Since he has been gone this week, I took it out of the toy box and Hope has developed a liking for it now. She tosses it around in the air, does a play bow with it in her mouth, and loves to chase it and make it squeak.

It'll be going back to the toy box as Nick returns home this weekend (minues a few parts of his male anatomy - he got neutered today...) so I can continue trying to tease him with it to get him to speak. What a mean puppy raiser huh? ;-) At least Hope has enjoyed it...we'll see if it eventually works with Nick.

Waterlogged

Throw the stick, will 'ya?

I was going to take Hope to the new dog park for a romp after I got home from work today and we went on our walk, but then realized it was Tuesday and the park is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays "for maintenance", what's up with that? :-(

Since we had such a nice time at the lake yesterday, I decided to take her out to Willow Creek for a swim again.  We practically had the whole place to ourselves like yesterday.  She enjoyed swimming and chasing sticks...happy, happy, girl.

See those ducks out there in the distance behind her? (You might have to click on the picture to see them...) Well guess who was interested and made a beeline over to them to check 'em out? I called her back and she was a good girl and turned around and came back. For the dog who had no recall whatsoever as a puppy, I was very proud of her for listening to me.

And speaking of Molly...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting the new CCI pup, Molly VII, who was named after my Molly. Unfortunately, Molly's breeder caretaker has been unable to find out where Molly is headed when the puppies go out to their puppy raisers this week; she thinks she may be headed to the North Central region, but isn't sure. This litter seemed really nice, no yappy puppies, they seemed very easy going, ok with laying on their backs and cradling. There's nothing cuter than golden retriever puppies and this group was no exception.

Lately, I've been feeling the "urge" for another golden since Molly's been gone. It's hard to believe, but in December it will have been a year since I had to say goodbye to her. It's cool to know that there will be a CCI pup out there with her name. Molly was a great puppy raiser assistant for most of my CCI pups, so it's a fitting honor for her to have a pup named in her honor.

Here's the latest picture of Molly that her breeder caretaker took recently, pretty cute. Duh, I took my camera yesterday but got so busy picking up puppies and talking to Patty that I didn't even take my camera out. Good luck Molly VII, have a save journey to your puppy raiser...

Now that things have calmed down a little at work, I'm trying to make a point to leave work at a decent hour since I've been starting work so early in the day.  Today, I took Hope out to Willow Creek at Lake Natoma as it was such a nice day.  We had the place to ourselves, it was great.  I brought a tennis ball to throw for Hope, but she wasn't really interested in it. So we went in search of a stick; it took me 10 minutes to find a stick for her, but at least we found one.  She had a great time swimming and chasing the stick.  It also made me a little (ok, a LOT) sad to be out here with Hope as this was Molly's favorite place to swim; we spent a lot of time out here together.  All I could think about was how she loved being here. Hope did a great job taking her place though and we had a great relaxing time together this afternoon...hopefully Molly was looking down on us and smiling....

Dog Park

Nick went back to our co-raisers this afternoon and Hope was giving me that "look"...the "I'm bored, there's nobody here to play with" look. So I took her to the new dog park in Folsom that's only about a 10-15 minute walk from home.  I'm usually not a big dog park fan, but of the several times I've taken her there, the other dogs have been very nice and the owners attentive to their dogs, so we'll probably continue to go as it gives her a chance to be off leash. 

The funny thing is that every time I have taken her there, she doesn't ever play with any of the other dogs, she's more interested in sniffing EVERYTHING, just walking around with her nose to the ground.  Sometimes she will fetch a ball, but mostly she is just interested in sniffing. Tonight was no exception....sniff, sniff, sniff.  We played fetch for a little but she wasn't really interested in any of the other dogs.  

Tonight these three HUGE great danes who had just entered the park came bounding towards her...she got totally scared, and screamed like I've never heard her scream before, her tail was tucked and she was low to the ground in a totally submissive position.  I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, so I calmly called her over to me and she immediately went in between my legs.  The owner of the Danes was totally nice and called his dogs when he saw what happened. I spoke to him for a little bit, he said the 3 dogs weighed about 130 lbs and that he goes through about 30-35 lbs of dog food a WEEK! Poor little Hope...to have 3 big dogs almost 3 times her size coming towards her must have been freaky...she must have thought it was a stampede! 

The other interesting thing about Hope is that every time we've been to the dog park and there have been golden retrievers there, she is very interested in them and goes up to sniff them, but just the old ones.  I keep wondering if she is looking for Molly because the ones she has been interested in are the ones who are older and gray in the face like Molly was.  She must still remember her pal and is looking to see if it's her....