Chapel St. Leonards

We took Ellie to Chapel St. Leonards yesterday. For a dog who was scared stiff of water for months of her life, she sure makes up for it now.

It was a good day for her, as it involved quite a mixed-bag of discipline. She had to behave in our friend's caravan there, she had to walk around the town on leash with plenty of other dogs around, and she had to play off-leash on the beach.

Her town walking was excellent. Despite being barked at by Dobermans and GSDs, she carried on regardless, and I really was very proud to walk her past other dogs and people.

However, there was a downside to the day too. Ellie was attacked on the beach by one of our friend's dogs. Luckily, it was muzzled, however, things did get a little nasty, though there was also a surprise too.

Ellie was fetching and returning the ball to me on the beach. The next thing I saw was her getting attacked by our friend's dog. Ellie retreated to between my legs and immediately dropped to a submissive position, which I was pleased about as it made controlling the situation much easier. At this point, we were quite some distance from everyone else. However, despite Ellie submitting, the other dog repeatedly persisted, and then its partner, another terrier (without a muzzle) joined in, though it quickly gave in.

To my amazement, our usually very placid (almost wussy) Ellie, decided that enough was enough and decided to defend herself. So much so that my attention had to switch from keeping the other dogs off her, to keeping her from biting them. While nobody likes to see dogs fight, I was a little relieved to see that she will stick up for herself when the need really arises.

After a few clashes, I managed to get hold of the other dog and secure him until his owner came and leashed him up. I'm pleased to report that no physical harm was done to either dogs, or to me. I'm not a fan of muzzles at all, but I sure am thankful the other dog was wearing one as I know that real damage would have been done had he not have been wearing it. Ellie and I immediately returned to playing and, as is typical with dogs, she seemed to have forgotten the incident two seconds later. She was perfectly fine with other dogs afterwards.

In other news, I've ordered yet another clicker-training book. This one, Clicker Training for Obedience, is one that I've been after for some time, but each time I've gone to order it through Amazon, it's been out of stock. I managed to look again at a time when they had two in stock! That should be arriving on Tuesday. I've been looking forward to it for ages.

Talking of obedience, here are a couple of videos of a dog and handler that I've been following for some time on YouTube. I love how Kaisa, the dog, is so focused on the handler. You can't help but admire that heelwork.





In other news still, Ellie takes her Kennel Club Good Citizen (Gold) exam on Sunday. Now, if she passes that will mean that she has done them all, and we then have to think about what we're going to do with her after that. The initial plan was to have her reach Gold standard by the time she was three years of age, and then her maturity will have settled in and we'll know just what sort of dog we have. As it is, again, if she passes, she will be only sixteen months of age. Either way, we'll continue formal training in something. We're just not sure what that something will be yet. I'd like to think that she could still come to love formal obedience. It bores her at the moment, but I'm hoping that because she's still so young and so she sees it as too dull and unexciting, when compared to learning tricks and running around.