Lucy Blog - Lucy 20 months

Another semi-boring blog for Lucy's birthday. She's had a few interesting meet-ups with her friends, some of them we didn't get any good pictures of tho. In addition to her normal friends ... Potter, Rosalie, Elmo, Muti ... there is another new puppy in the neighborhood named Rosa. She is a 2-month-old yellow lab who will eventually become a blind guide dog. She is being "homed" for the first year just around the corner from us, and we meet up with them every once in awhile. No pictures yet of them playing, but we'll try to take a few next time.

This first set is with Rosalie, who is a 10-year-old bulldog who normally doesn't play much. But this one day, they were playing quite well together in a grassed courtyard that we sometimes go to when the park is closed. It is just around the corner from where Rosalie lives and it was Rosalie's "mom" who showed us this little courtyard. It is fully enclosed so we can let them off the leash and they like to chase balls there. This one day, Rosalie was somewhat playing "sumo" with Lucy a little bit.

This looks like Lucy is saying "what are you doing???" and then the 2nd picture I thought was cute with Lucy with her paw on Rosalie's back.

We have started back to the "puppy recess" on Sunday mornings although they have split them into 3 different sessions, with the small-breed session at 9am. Sometimes, Potter's dad will message us on Facebook and ask if we want to meet at 8:30 in the vacant lot next to the puppy school so that Potter and Lucy can play a bit together without the other dogs. We grabbed a video of it one day, and you can mostly see them playing with the sun coming up behind them.

The other thing that we have been doing weekly with Lucy is the agility course. It is VERY busy and sometimes a bit hard to get into, since they only allow 4 dogs per session and there are 4 sessions per week (2 on Wednesday afternoon and 2 on Saturday morning). We have been signing up for Wednesday afternoon since that leaves Saturdays free for people who can't actually come on a Wednesday afternoon. But they fill up VERY quickly so I have to be quick at signing up. Tom got a few pictures of me running the course with Lucy this past week and I grabbed a couple videos.

Here I've tried to grab the best pictures, since some of them have me but not much of Lucy visible :-)

We normally start with a jump, although you can see that we have the bars all on the ground so she doesn't actually jump over the bar. We have to get her to wait behind the bar, which is sometimes not as easy at it sounds! She gets very excited to start and doesn't want to be patient and wait very long.

Then we get to the ramp (we call it the chapeau, or hat) ... up she goes and then back down!

A couple semi-good shots of me attempting to run alongside Lucy, guiding her through the various obstacles.

The videos are a little funny, since while Lucy can do almost all of the tricks without any problem, she doesn't always do them in the right order, and a few times she gets a little distracted. In this first one, she anticipates going up the ramp after the first jump, but she is supposed to go around one of the jumps and then over it before heading up the ramp ... you see Tom getting her back down and around before going back up the ramp. Of course, then he misses the first jump after the ramp.

Then, the 2nd time through, we go through the same group of obstacles backwards. This time, after the first jumps, Lucy decides to get distracted by one of the other dogs (maybe Sasha, the large white-ish colored retriever) and goes over to the fence to investigate. This time, she does the go-around-the-jump after the ramp very well!

And now Susan's last run ...Wait first, then go, over the jump, then through the red tunnel,

On her birthday, we took a little trip to a lake about an hour south of Toulouse, called Lac Saint-Ferréol. I had never heard of the lake until Rosalie's mom (the Rosalie that Lucy was playing with earlier) mentioned it to us. It seemed nice and so we headed there on Saturday after lunch. Interestingly enough, we happened to meet up with Rosalie and Muti (and their mom's) on the path around the lake, as they ALSO went there!! The lake is part of the Canal du Midi system. Pierre Paul Riquet, who was the creator of the canal, needed a water reservoir to allow the locks along the canal to function year round, even in the dry summer season. The construction of the dam that created the lake went from 1667 to 1671. It was the first dam built specifically to supply water to a navigable canal and was by far the greatest single work of civil engineering undertaken during the building of the Canal du Midi. It was a VERY windy day, gusts up to 70 km/hour but Lucy still decided to wade into the lake a few times.

Here is her on the edge and coming out, I know ... she is SO cute!

She sometimes likes to roll and rub on things (I think) that have texture ... the rugs coming into our apartment building, the smooth tile floors when she is wet, and here, the sand and pebbles.

And finally, an action shot of her running on the beach!

While this is actually 1 day after her birthday, I've decided to include her puppy recess into her 20-month birthday weekend blog. You'll hear (if you turn up your sound) how windy it was during puppy recess this week. The weather forecast had wind gusts up 90 km/h (about 55 mph) and while it wasn't quite that bad in the morning, you can hear the wind!

This first video is a little short since the dogs ended up coming up and hitting us on the legs. The golden retriever and the littlest dog came with the trainer, Maxime. Then you can also see the little beagle that she has played with before, Romie.

Lucy's herding technique showing in this one, which was just after the one before. I lose her for a few seconds and then she comes back into view as they run over to the corner of the area. The little Pomeranian at the beginning is named Maiko and the black Cavalier King Charles is her buddy Nouky.

Last video of puppy recess. In the past, Lucy hasn't played a whole lot with the sheltie, named Redson, but today she had a block of time near the end where they played quite well together. You'll also see Nouky at the end having to be pulled off Lucy. Seems Nouky is "in love" with Lucy and follows her everywhere, like a little shadow. Last week, he didn't try to mount her very often but today, it seemed like he tried a bit more and had to be pulled off a couple times. Last week, Lucy was much more vocal when this happened, even nipping back at him. Today, she tended to be attempting to play with another dog and so it was harder for her to be as aggressive back towards him.

She was actually pretty good today at playing, even with her BFF Potter not there. She played a bit more with a sheltie named Redson (that you can see her playing with in these pictures), as well as Romie (the little beagle) and Mikky (the golden retriever).