Friday will be interesting...

Today we are going on a little field trip, to do a screening of a litter. A mentality and game screening that I've mentioned before. The details of the test is less important, but the knowledge is superb to have. I tried to explain it to our daughters this morning. It's like if you have two puppies and both a qute, happy, curious and lovely. And you have two family's to choose between. And when you do the test you find that one puppy adds negative experiences. It becomes more and more hesitant during the test but it is still a happy social puppy. The other one seems to be in touched by all the experiences but it's not really participating in the action either. The first puppy is not for a very social family life. The noisier and more changes that appear around a puppy like that one will it build it up, it will just add stress. In a family of few with regular routines and similarities, it will grow stronger and become a balanced adult. It will never be bold and suited for a life with a lot of changes, but it will learn how to endure it if the first two years consists of stability.
The other dog you need to think twice about and maybe test a bit extra. Is the ignorance due to lack of interest or out of avoiding stress. If it's lacking interest it could be perfect for the family life with a large social network, but it might be hard to train. Is it the latter, because it tried to avoid stress. Then it might be both hard to train and need a calming lifestyle to be able to bond and take interest in activities like training.

So the test guide us and give tendencies and a foundation to work from. But it doesn't tell you if it's a good or bad puppy, it depends on the matching. One puppy can be great with one owner and a disaster with another.

And what one breeder strives for might be something another finds unappealing... But just because you strive for one thing, that thing doesn't have to appear in all the puppies in every litter. The more puppies in one litter that behave likewise the bigger chance or risk that they in their turn will produce puppies with that behaviour, even if they don't show it themselves. So just because the mother is quick to relax, she doesn't have to give that talent to her offspring.

Well enough about that! Back to the meatball work 😜. We have done this for some time now and there has been some changes and additions to the routine. First of all there might be added meatballs/triggeres during an advance. There might be several triggers from start or there might be blind retrieves to do in the middle of one. And finally the triggers might appear in any direction, both when going away and back. So it can be something like this;
a) Sitt-Yaaa-Stop- go left, and search for a dummy - hand the dummy in-Sit-Yaaa-Take the meatball
b) Sit-3 meatballs are thrown in different directions- yaaa to the on on the right- while running back a new meatball is thrown to the right-Yaaa- for the one straight forward- stop-Yaaa, for the one to the left-when going back- get a direction to turn left and search for a dummy.
You get the point, anything can happen at any time!