Introducing Our Greyhound Puppy

Puppy Love

So, in case you've missed it, our greyhound gang has a new member... Ava.

Ava's first day

Ava is a pure-bred greyhound puppy who was the result of an accidental mating in racing kennels.  I found out about her, purely by chance, through facebook and my friend, Jenny, who runs the South Lakes branch of the Retired Greyhound Trust.  Jenny posted about some greyhound pups looking for a home and within minutes of her posting, I was on the phone enquiring about the puppies.  This all happened on Thursday 5 June and before I knew it, my name was down as a potential owner...

...however, firstly I needed to convince hubby and secondly, I wanted to make sure that the puppy (she wasn't named at that point) wasn't a nervous wreck and petrified of life in general. On the Friday, I casually mentioned about the availability of a greyhound puppy and I fully expected hubby to say a firm 'no, we're not ready.'  Sometimes, however, fate can play a funny old role and instead of 'no', the answer was 'yes, let's go and see her'  and so the scene was set.

Ava's first car journey

After several phone calls to Jenny and the then nameless pup's racing owner, we arranged to go and see her on Sunday 8th June. Stevie and Jasper joined us, as we made our way across the Pennines to meet the potential new member of our gang.

 One of the reasons I was so keen to meet her was because she was already 13 weeks old.  Most puppies (especially those destined to be pets) leave their dam at around 8 weeks old and it's generally accepted that the critical period for socialisation and habituation is between 8-12 weeks of age.  After this period, the window starts to shut...

Thankfully, the little black bundle of greyhound legginess we encountered wasn't fazed by me, hubby or Steve & Jasper.  She took food from me, tried to solicit play (albeit unsuccessfully) from Jasper & Stevie and seemed pretty responsive.  Her fate was sealed.  She was coming home with us, then and there. Paper work was signed and we left with a slightly wriggly, extremely cute puppy.

The journey home resulted in me and hubby agreeing on her name - Ava - and talking about how we were going to manage things back at home.  All the time this was going on Ava slept - remaining completely unaware of the new life she was about to embark on.


 

Stevie hums it & Ava sings it!

Puppy power - growing fast & gaining fans

Fast forward 5 weeks and our puppy isn't looking quite so puppy-ish.  Ava's growing at an amazing rate of knots and seems to steal the hearts of everyone she meets.  

In the UK, you don't tend to see many greyhound puppies (most are born and remain within the racing industry until they retire), so she certainly gets her fair share of attention.

Getting it right - an education all-round

Perhaps, more importantly, these past 5 weeks have highlighted to me just what hard work having a puppy is - especially if you want to get things right. 

It can be so easy to mess things up (albeit unwittingly) and, in doing so, create problems for the future.  I want to make sure that this doesn't happen for Ava and that she gets the best shot at having a happy, healthy and balanced life where nothing really fazes her. 

My memories of Mina are still very clear - she came to me with established problem behaviours, many of which could have probably been avoided had she had the 'right start' in life.  

I do not want Ava to experience the fears that drove Mina to react to other dogs.  I do not want her to have the fears that Jasper has - making him freeze in his tracks when he's afraid and I don't want her to feel like Stevie, who shakes, salivates and runs to hide when he hears loud noises, crashes and bangs and fireworks. 

Jasper & Ava cosy up

Like many trainers and behaviourists, I spend a lot of my time working with dogs that have behaviour problems - often borne out of a lack of early socialisation and the use of inappropriate and/or harsh training techniques.  Most can be avoided if we give our puppies the right start in life. We need to educate our puppies how to live in our world and educate ourselves on how to achieve this.


Ava is being educated and guided by me all the time. I manage her environment so she can't learn unwanted behaviours (I'll share details of this in another blog post), I make sure that her learning is positive and if she's worried or scared, I give her the space, distance and reduction in intensity that she needs - along with comfort and food reinforcers.  I tell her 'yes' not 'no.'  If she is behaving in a way I don't want her to, I'll interrupt the behaviour and divert her to another behaviour that I want to see.

Say 'goodbye' to a tidy house - puppy toys rule!

I provide her with outlets for her needs (our house looks like a bomb has hit it) - plenty of toys, chews, appropriate exercise - and I provide her with love and security.

I'll be sharing our adventures and the lessons we learn over the coming weeks and months and hope you'll join us...

Can You Be Happy For 100 Days?

My #100happydays Challenge

Are you a glass half-full person?

All too often in life, it's easier to focus on the negative rather than the positive.  Generally, I like to think of myself as a 'glass half-full' person but events of the last few months have taken their toll and my outlook has been somewhat clouded by a general shroud of emotional fog.  Finding things that made me happy has been somewhat of a challenge.

However, the introduction of a new exercise to my Happy Hounds dog training classes got me thinking and also happened to coincide with me seeing a facebook post about happiness...

Focusing on the positive

In my training classes it struck me that the human tendency seems to be to focus on the negative, mistakes or 'training disasters'.  If I asked a question like: "How has your week been with Fido?" I'd receive a range of answers, normally along the lines of: "Oh, Fido's been really naughty this week,"  "Fido won't stop chewing" or "Fido just ignores me when I ask him to do something." Somehow, the positive experiences weren't making it through into people's psyches. 

So, rather than starting my classes with a generic question about how the week has gone, all class members are encouraged to share a positive experience from their week.  It can be any thing that their dog has done to make them proud or happy, something they find cute about their dog, any improvements in training (no matter how small or incremental) or any training successes.  And, even if I do say so myself, this change in focus has had quite an impact - both on me and my classes.

Parka focuses on the positive

Classes start with even more of a positive vibe. Concentrating on and pinpointing the things that make us happy is good - not just for us, but for our dogs too.  It's amazing what a difference this subtle change in question has achieved.

All too often, we concentrate on 'what could have been', 'missed opportunities', 'life's annoyances' and before we know it, we're looking at life as a 'glass half empty.'  Quite frankly, this is exhausting - it saps the energy out of us, makes us concentrate on minutiae and ignore the bigger picture of the life that is happening to us now. Have we forgotten what it's like to be happy?

The challenge to be happy...

In my opinion, happiness is a transient state - fleeting moments in time.  But, what if all those fleeting moments could be captured?  Would they add up to make a solid state of happiness?

Well, that's where the "100 Happy Days" challenge comes in. If you use social media at all, you will have probably seen some photos using the hashtag: #100happydays  The aim is to share a photo, every day, of something that makes you happy and to do this for 100 consecutive days.  The organisers hope/believe that by participating in, and completing, the challenge that happiness levels will increase.

I'm all for increasing happiness and getting my 'glass half-full' mojo back, so decided to start my challenge a week ago on 11 April.  I'm a bit of a shutter monkey and love taking photos with my iPhone, and I figured that I'd give the challenge a go.

Share the happiness

My first eight #100happydays

At the time of writing, I'm a week into the challenge and I can honestly say that, yes, I am feeling a tad happier. It may be early days, but I feel that this challenge will make a difference to how I feel.

I'm sharing my photos via Instagram and if you'd like to see what makes me happy on a daily basis, you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.

And, if you decide to take the #100happydays challenge do let me know - the world could certainly do with more happiness to spread around.