from puppy to young dog

Tomorrow Ezri will be six months old, and she's definitely made the transition from puppy to young dog. The picture to the left was taken on December 30th, as she played with Christy's puppy Edison, and it's not only a good shot physically but also captures her spirit and attitude quite nicely. She weighed in at 24.8 lbs that day, and has pretty much plateaued at her current size (height and weight) for the past few weeks. Her right ear has been down for over a month now, and her left ear alternates between up and down depending on the day.

Training-wise, Ezri is doing very nicely with learning manners, tricks, and flyball. We haven't had an accident in the house in about two weeks, and the change was almost like a light switch so I think that is tied to her maturity in some way. She's picked up so many general commands just by watching and learning as we go about our day that it's been easy - I know for sure I never specifically taught her "off," "out," or "upstairs" but she understands and responds to them all. We still need a stronger recall outside, especially if Curzon is around, but inside and at flyball she is doing well with recalls. At flyball she is nearly to single-stepping every single jump, and at practice last Sunday ran a 4.94 on the puppy course with a full single-step run. Next Sunday we will move her to a real box with a training board, so she won't be triggering the box just yet but will be modifying her high turn slightly to fit better on the actual box. I'll move her up to 6" jumps when she hits 8 months or so, although she can probably run them now with no danger I'd rather be safe and keep her on the 3" puppy jumps for a little longer.

Personality-wise, Ezri is a sweet and inquisitive little border collie who is a joy to have in the house, much like her big brother Curzon was at this age. She definitely has her opinions, especially on when she wants to be fed, but we can redirect her into toy-chewing or naps without too much effort. Her current idiosyncracy is chewing on my desk chair to get my attention - hard to just ignore that one, so I redirect her to a toy and otherwise ignore her, then a moment later give her some pets and attention as a reward for -not- chewing the chair any more. She's still definitely destructo-puppy, able to chew just about anything into pieces and often happily ingesting said pieces. Right now there are only two safe toys in the house that we don't have to supervise - a hard plastic ball with holes and a soft rubber ball inside it, and a medium-hard plastic ball. She'll shred fleece, defuzz tennis balls, and even chew pieces from Orbee toys. If she didn't eat everything she got loose, I almost wouldn't mind, but she does do so and thus we can't let her have such things unattended.

Next Saturday (January 24) Ezri's cousin Teal will come home to live with our friends Ben & Deb, who also have Ezri's sister Indigo. It will be great fun to watch the three interact when Deb and Indigo return home from Boston this June!