A Day out at a Dog Show

It was a warm sunny Sunday morning. I turned into the car park of the Village Centre and knew immediately that I had found the right place. The sound of countless Finnish Spitz barking, growling and making the other FS noises that defy description left no room for doubt. I parked, opened the back of the car, and Lewi’s cage and out he jumped. He took one look about him, turned round and jumped straight back into his cage.

I did manage to coax him out again and we took a look around our very first Finnish Spitz Society Show. Very soon we met up with Amber, who had brought her human, Angelina and, quite excitingly, we met Leo, Lewi’s brother. They got on so well, firstly playing together, then quietly sharing a treat and a toy before laying down together to watch the proceedings. I even managed to take the pair of them for a walk. Lili, another litter mate of theirs was there as well and we watched her doing her thing in the show ring. All in all it was a great day out, Amber seemed to keep on winning rosettes, Lewi met and played with lots of other dogs and I was reassured hearing that Lewi was not the only dog to make such strange noises. All for the exceedingly cheap price of £1 non-competitive entry fee.

I had my 60^th birthday this year, part of the surprise laid on by my family was a visit by my younger son from Rio. He and his wife turned up a few days before and, with his brother, took Lewi and me for a holiday at Centre Parks, Sherwood Forest. It was Lewi’s first holiday (apart from a couple of nights in a boarding kennel) and was, to be perfectly honest, a little bit over powering, hundreds and hundreds of squirrels, rabbits, ducks, moorhens, other dogs and lots of people. We had 4 days of long walks through the forest, barking at wild animals and being made a continual fuss of by the family. Doggy heaven really I suppose. It was the first time that my son and his wife had seen Lewi. They were intrigued by his “Please play with me” call. That strange mix of growl, moan and bark. He thought it sounded like Chewbacca in Star Wars so all his emails since have enquired about Chewi.

That noise though has caused some problems. When we are out walking, he will often make it to other dogs. They understand that he is asking them to play and will tend to respond accordingly, but some owners just do not understand the noise (nor the obvious friendly body language) and back away as they think he is being aggressive, which can lead to a change in the response of their dogs as well as unpleasant looks at me. I can’t educate the whole world! Those are rarish encounters though, and the more normal response from folk we meet is “Isn’t he a cute dog, what sort is he?”.

We have had a rather disturbing time for him over the last few weeks, I had made the decision that light carpets and young dogs do not make a sensible combination so I had laminate flooring fitted. Poor Lewi, first 2 days with no furniture, the 3 days with a workman, (who luckily loves dogs and thought Lewi wonderful) then another couple of days with me starting to refit skirting board and move the furniture back in a totally different configuration. He has shown his disgust by making a large tear in the fabric on the side of the settee, which has resulted in a further rearrangement of the furniture. The whole business was made more distressing by the mother and father of all thunderstorms. Poor lad, he barked at the first few crashes of thunder, but then decided that the safest place was on the floor next to the chair, under my legs!

We have settled into a routine with our exercise. Helped by the long summer days. A good four miles round the lake and along the canal. At around lunch time, about an hour, mostly off lead stuff in the cal park, then a short round the block before bed. It doesn’t seem to have helped much with my weight loss though!!

He walks very well on a lead now – well after the first 10 minutes or so of rather excited pulling, and we have started on serious recall training. I am doing this with a 10 metre lead. When we get into the park, I hook up the lead and let it out slowly as he moves off to explore, keeping it loose but with not too much slack. When he has moved a shortish distance away I crouch and call. If he comes to me, he gets a treat and lots of praise and fuss, if he doesn’t; he gets a jerk on the lead. It is a long slow process, but is progressing gradually. This is partly due to having to abandon training through the building period. He immediately decided to forget what he had learnt! We are also gradually getting used to wearing a muzzle. We are off to France in September, and the requirement of the ferry company is that dogs wear a muzzle when being checked through the health controls for the return. He’s taking to it very well, every now and again; I get it out, put a treat in it and offer it to him. He has to put his nose right in to get at the treat. He has now reached the stage of getting excited every time he sees me get the muzzle out of the drawer. I have yet to try doing up the strap!!

Well he is very politely, but insistently telling me that we need to go for a walk – now - standing sideways onto me, looking away from me (but watching from the corner of his eye) and gently barking (the “please look at me” bark). The last time I ignored this, we had a clearing up job to do!