Eleven Months

Ellie was eleven months of age yesterday. There is still no sign of her first season, though we're not overly concerned.

In terms of training, things are going well. Her levels of concentration are certainly increasing, meaning that we are able to expect more and more from her in training. For example, I was taking photographs of birds yesterday, and had her laying beside me. She stayed there with a "leave" command, even though I could see that she really wanted to chase them.

We still don't have a date for her Good Citizen Bronze exam, and I'm extremely disappointed about that. It's looking more and more like she is going to be over a year old before she even gets her first test. It's crazy. If she fails then Lord knows how much longer it will take us to get a second exam. I feel that so much time is being wasted. By now, we should be working towards the silver exam.

As the warmer months are now setting upon us, meaning that we're able to be more active with Ellie, we've started adding small portions of beef dripping to her daily food rations. This will hopefully help prevent her losing weight during the sunnier months, and provide a little extra energy for the increased play.

She's now pretty much as we'd like her to be around other dogs -- ignoring them, preferring to focus on us instead. As we take her to more places over the coming months, I expect her to get better and better around other dogs and people. Thankfully, she does seem to be getting better at not jumping up at everyone she sees, trying to get some attention from them.

As you might be able to see from the photo to the left, Ellie is now looking a little less "stringy" and a bit more muscular. I put this down to a combination of age and exercise. Whatever the reason, it's good to see!

There are still no bad behaviours to report. All furniture is in tact, nobody has been bitten, no running off, no nothing. How lucky are we? I suppose if she has a fault, it's that she doesn't much care for sharing our affections. She wants us all to herself. If we stroke another dog outside, she will make it very clear that she's not happy.

In other news, we have a brand new camera and so we're able to take pictures of a much better quality now, and include some fast-action shots. (Our other camera was really a very basic point and click affair with no zoom capability.)

Ellie's car sickness seems to have improved. The true test will be when we take her to Jan's Mum's, as that is a pretty long trip, and she's been sick each and every time we've taken her to date.