LUSI GOOSEY'S AGILITY TRAINING PAYS OFF!

You will remember that one of our favourite walks is along the river: Recently I made a video about how the little wooden bridge across the creek had been washed away and how Lusi had run up and down trying to find a way across the creek for both of us. On that and several subsequent walks we have not been able to cross the creek. This all changed yesterday when my husband took Lusi out for a walk!

When Lusi arrived at the creek with my husband from the opposite direction via the field with the hay rolls and before that the road that crosses the river at the main bridge. My husband thinking that there was an alternate route across the creek that didn't require scaling the broken wooden bridge was surprised to discover his error. The choice was quite clear: Either he must cross the creek with Lusi or return home from the direction he had come.

If you have seen the video you can appreciate the angle of the wooden bridge lying sideways in the creek! And now it was covered in snow and ice making it a less than trustworthy crossing. 

" At first I was just following the foot prints in the snow.... (not thinking that they were headed for the broken bridge), so when we arrived it was a bit of a surprise!" my husband admits. 

"I crossed on the beam next to the bridge by grabbing the thin branch. Then when I turned around I saw that Lusi was still standing on the opposite bank, apparently stuck in her efforts to cross. So I went back across the ice covered beam and scrabbled up the bank to her."

I interject here to provide evidence of this difficult crossing with photos taken from today's walk so that I could better illustrate this story....little did I know that that would create a whole new story all of its own!)

"Once I arrived on the opposite bank from whence I had come," my husband continues to recount the story, "I had to try and persuade Lusi to cross with me. After trying to get her to cross on the beam which she steadfastly declined to do, she did gradually follow my beckoning towards the sloping boards of the bridge. The angle at which the bank and the broken bridge meet meant that it was difficult to get a purchase on the slope and you slid down the bank into the bridge, if you were not quick or brave enough to leap onto it at the last moment."

"Once on the bridge you had to prevent yourself from continuing to slip downwards on the boards. It required a few horizontal steps before you could finally reach for the branch in a last ditch attempt to avoid the water in the creek and then get enough of a grasp to haul yourself up onto the other side of the bank. Lusi of course had to leap from the boards up to the opposite bank! And finally this is indeed what she did."

This might have provided enough excitement for the day, but there was one last bit of the story still......

"As Lusi ran ahead of me now on the pathway towards the river, she inadvertently disturbed a large group of Mallards resting quietly. Her sudden appearance was greeted with such a kerfuffle of wing beating as the entire group of ducks went up in the air that it made for an "Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud" encounter, whereupon Lusi herself then leapt up into the air with fright from the thunderous noise!

And there is an addendum to this entire story, as I mentioned earlier!  When I went out today to take some photos to illustrate what happened at the bridge today... Yes, you guessed already...Lusi did indeed replay this adventure once more but from the opposing direction. The only difference was that Lusi having already made the crossing once with John now proceeded to do it all on her own. Once again Lusi and her owner faced one another from opposite banks of the creek! Today however, I could not make it across on the icy surfaces and had to lure Lusi back to me!

LUSI GOOSEY BURIES THE GLOVE!

YES, THE GLOVE IS VERY SPECIAL! This was clearly what Lusi was thinking when we were out a few minutes ago on our walk.


I had borrowed a pair of soft gloves from my husband just as I was leaving the house so as to avoid having to take my boots off again in search of my own. After we had been walking for about half an hour during which time I had made only a few rather undemanding requests of Lusi, she returned to me in a rather spectacular recall! I was so delighted that I immediately played tug with her with one of the gloves as a reward. This action was shortly followed by her taking off with the glove.


As Lusi headed for an area of undergrowth and brush at the edge of the woods, I thought that I had been silly to use the glove in a non tracking related situation and wondered what consequences this might have for our training. Well, what was done was done I thought, (it's all too easy with animals to undo the training that you have put in.) And so I followed Lusi to retrieve the glove from the thicket only to find her busily burying it. I was so amused at this point to see the care that she was taking to cover it first in pine needles and then in larger pieces of twigs and brush that I hung back to watch the proceedings.


Only when Lusi had finished and was actually turning towards me did I step forward to the spot where she had been burying the glove. What astonished me now was had I not seen precisely where she had buried the item, I would not have known where to look, such was the cleverness of her disguise in the cover.  And so, throwing off the remaining glove from the other hand I carefully removed the layers rather like the BBC Time Team in an archeological dig and finally came up trumps with the glove undamaged save for a little blackening from the soil.


Lusi eyed me, I thought a little suspiciously, or perhaps it was only with some curiosity; that I should undo her work so immediately after her accomplishment seemed even to me rather unfair now. Perhaps I should have just left the glove buried since it was clearly "very special", signalling that our recent tracking training and Lusi's "article indication" has certainly conveyed some level of significance to the clothing. The only other items I have seen Lusi attempt to bury are her favourite bones and just once a toy that she was hiding from the Chihuahuas


Of course, as in all the most amusing incidents, one is never carrying a camera! Note to self...never, never, leave home without the camera!

IT"S EASY TO LOSE A LUSI GOOSEY IN THE SNOW!

What a difference a few days makes! On Monday we had lovely sunshine reminiscent of the late days in fall but on our walk today it has been snowing. There is already enough snow to cover the branches and were it not for Lusi's coat, it would be quite difficult to see her against the landscape such as it is. I should probably have bought her a bright red coat and not a green one as it only seems to have added to her ability to be completely camouflaged when she is under the fir trees!

    

We made our way through the trees and brush to avoid being on the river bank; the water level was so high from two days of rains that it had flooded over the bank in some parts and I was concerned that Lusi might try to investigate the newly created river bank if we walked too close to the river. In fact the current was so strong and the water flowing so fast that it might easily carry an unsuspecting pup down-stream. I need not have worried so much though because Lusi was in fact happy to play in the snow and then she played "recall" from the bushes which we both enjoyed.

LUSI GOOSEY'S WALK BY THE RIVER

 Lusi loves to go for walks down by the river. Even when she was a small  pup at ten weeks old she liked to lie in the long cool grass after surfing through it at high speed. Now she is a lot bigger and stronger she will leap from one spot to another whenever there is a small hillock. She will create her own course in the grass and run it several times in rapid succession. If she hears a noise  like the train approaching she will jump into the air for a better view. She did the same high jumping when I threw her a frisbee to retrieve from the long grass. As the frisbee has a particularly unpredictable landing spot Lusi quickly deduced that she could get a much better idea of its landing location by jumping to see where the frisbee was coming down.

Lusi surveys the landscape from her vantage point

Since we have been going to puppy agility classes we take every opportunity to find unusual surfaces to walk or climb onto while we are out on our walks. Lusi will now "look" for boulders and tree stumps to climb onto. The tree trunk was a little trickier at first but she soon got used to the texture of the bark and the curved and narrowing dimensions of the trunk where it divides into two branches at one end. We decided that this photo looked like a painting by the nineteenth century English painter, George STUBBS.

LUSI GOOSEY'S FIRST SNOW!

We have a light snowfall in November, the first snowfall of 2011 which leaves the ground covered by a mere dusting of snow. When Lusi goes outside she appears to be overwhelmed by the strong scent in the snow. Here, she is starting to track the scent and is following it closely with her nose. Then suddenly there is a moment of recognition of the scent and Lusi leaps into the air with sheer excitement. The freeze frame stills in the video show just how athletic Lusi is and how extraodinarily funny her movements are!

LUSI GOOSEY HAS HER FIRST RIDE ON THE BACK STEP

"There isn't anything funny about this next video except for that hat thing," is what Lusi Goosey is thinking..."It looks like a bird in flight," says Lusi Goosey quietly to herself!


Ah, she thinks I don't know that she hasn't quite bought into the whole idea of dressing up. Well,my motto is, "if I can do it I am sure that she can", even if it does make her look like a Lusi Goosey! Besides, riding on the back step of the marathon vehicle is an important job.

LUSI GOOSEY GOES CROSS COUNTRY BIKING OFF LEASH

We want to train Lusi to work as a carriage dog so that she will run alongside a horse drawn carriage at the axle. She has been going to the barn to get acquainted with all the sounds and smells since she was about ten weeks old. Now we are teaching her to run alongside a bike so that she understands that she must respect the wheel and not run into it. We have done a few bike rides along trails now; sometimes on the leash and sometimes off. Since it is a long time since I have been biking I am going quite carefully and slowly on this cross country trail but this is ideal for Lusi who would like to run very fast so she is having to adjust her pace to mine. The recall between my husband and myself is a great interlude for Lusi to burn off some of her high energy!

LUSI GOOSEY GIVES HUGS AND KISSES!

Lusi Goosey makes us all laugh when she gives hugs and kisses. At five months old and close to forty pounds in weight, she's quite an armful. There is something about holding her in this position which immediately invites "goosey" behaviour. She will also do a piggy-back, (sorry I mean a doggie-back) when invited.

WHO IS LUSI GOOSEY?

Lusi is our 5 month old liver spotted Dalmatian. We call her "Lusi goosey" whenever she does something that makes us laugh...which is a lot. This is something of a surprise to us since we have owned dogs all our lives; first German Shorthaired Pointers and then Chihuahuas, not to mention my daughter's lovely Lab-Shepherd cross which came to live with us for several years.

As a child I had always wanted to have a dog and perhaps that is why we now have four dogs living with us: two older Chihuahuas, Loki and Cola, one youngster, Remy, and our latest addition to the family, Lusi Goosey the Dalmatian.

The comment that I am most often met with when I meet someone is, "Oh! A Dalmatian... you hardly ever see Dalmatians anymore!" It seems that everyone is in love with the breed and yet our idea of what a Dalmatian is has almost exclusively been moulded by Disney studios. I suspect that the rise in popularity of the Dalmatian breed with the movie "101 Dalmatians" was just as quickly followed by the decline in the numbers of the breed as people sadly discovered that this beautiful dog could not be as easily accommodated in the family as they had anticipated judging from the movie and their possible previous experience with other breeds that are happy to lead a normal family life! 

Featured in breed books as a high energy dog it is difficult to describe that level of energy except perhaps in terms of hours walking per day!

As an eight week old puppy, I was surprised at how big Lusi had already grown as we arrived to collect her! Even more surprising to me was just how fast she grew in the coming weeks. She is now five months old and weighs around forty pounds with at least another fifteen to go. Despite her growth, Lusi is very much a puppy still. Her brain is yet to develop about half as much again; in fact Lusi really is just a "half-brained" dog! This definitely partly explains why Lusi is "goosey", but I am beginning to suspect that Dalmatians rather enjoy being goosey; it seems to be part of their personality.