Over the last couple of weeks with Matilda, the priority has been getting her out doing controlled greetings with other dogs, and on the whole, it’s gone really well. She’s also been out and about meeting more people and traffic, and life at home has thrown up the usual mix of puppy challenges: evenings getting darker, puppy biting, and a lot of very enthusiastic water play!
Learning to greet other dogs
This has been the main focus, and I’m genuinely really pleased with how it’s gone. We managed to find four other calm, older dogs for Matilda to meet under proper controlled conditions – starting at a distance and gradually getting closer, so that by the time they actually came together to sniff, she was already familiar with each dog, had assessed there was no threat, and felt safe. All four of these went well, no growling at all.
Since then, she’s also met three more dogs completely by accident while we’ve been out and about – and been absolutely fine with all of them too. So the plan is clearly working. I’ll carry on with the same approach: plenty of seeing dogs at a distance, and occasional controlled meetings, and fingers crossed we keep going in the right direction.
People and children
Children are back at school now, so opportunities to meet them are fewer, but she did meet some at a National Trust property recently. They wanted to say hello, so I asked them to crouch down and let her choose to go over, which she did – and it went really nicely. She’s always been completely fine with adults and loves people generally.
Traffic
Still going well – no concerns here. Between this, the dog greetings, and people, the three main collie triggers all seem to be heading in the right direction. Although writing this has reminded me that I need to keep this up – we’ve lapsed!
House training
Still really good. One accident on the settee, which was our fault because the door was shut when she needed to go out. I think she chose the sofa because she prefers to wee on something soft rather than a harder floor.
Darker evenings
This is where it’s got a bit more challenging. We used to just sit outside with her in the evenings and let her mooch round the garden until bedtime, playing with the other dogs and amusing herself. But now it’s dark by 8pm, which leaves a good two and a half hours to fill before she settles for the night. She does sleep for some of it – we still pop her in her pen for a nap around half eight or nine, and she has a proper little snooze – but then she’s up again for another hour before bed.
She’s not being naughty, it’s just that she needs to be kept occupied, or she’ll relentlessly pester the other dogs to play, who understandably get a bit fed up, and she can get bitey with us too if she’s under-stimulated. This is exactly why I wanted a summer puppy – I ideally wanted a puppy earlier in the year, but just couldn’t find one with the right health testing and upbringing. The light evenings make this whole stage so much easier, so it’s been a good reminder of how much a bit of extra planning in the evenings matters at this time of year.
Puppy biting
Biting is probably getting very slightly worse, mostly because her jaws are simply getting stronger. She still doesn’t bite my feet when I’m walking, unless I’m in a rush and don’t stop the moment she approaches – and even then it’s brief. We’re still doing the “treat every time she approaches while I’m walking” approach, and it’s continuing to work well.
She can get bitey indoors too if she’s got nothing else to do, which is part of why I like to keep her occupied at certain points in the day. She’s noticeably better when I’m sitting at my desk, mainly because she simply can’t reach my hands! Collies don’t dislike having hands on them exactly – it’s more that puppies find hands almost impossible to resist. If she were still with her mum and littermates, this is exactly the kind of play biting they’d be doing with each other, so there’s nothing malicious in it at all. Her teeth are still very sharp though, and her jaws are getting stronger, so it’s something we’re working to pre-empt by keeping her occupied.
Some evenings we give her a chew, which helps, though she doesn’t have a huge appetite for them – she’ll chew for a bit and then want to hide it. We let her, but if I notice her wandering round looking a bit anxious trying to find a hiding spot, I’ll get some really nice treats out of the fridge, scatter them nearby, and pick the chew up while she’s not looking. We never leave chews lying around, partly to keep them novel for when we really need her settled (like when I’m on a call), and partly because we’ve got four dogs in the house and one of them resource guards, so a chew usually means shutting the other dogs out for a bit, which isn’t always practical. We’ve steered away from treat dispensers too, for similar reasons – I think she’d get bored and abandon it, and then one of the other dogs could come across it, which could easily cause a squabble.
Matilda and the other animals at home
A really lovely moment worth sharing: Flo, one of our older collies who I genuinely never expected to warm to Matilda – she’s always kept her distance – licked her dry after she’d been paddling about recently. I was amazed. Flo has never done anything like that for any other dog before, so it felt like a real turning point.
Gael is becoming less wary of her too, and there have been proper moments of genuine, mutual play between them, which is lovely to see. Ozzy continues to be her main playmate, and I think Matilda is occasionally starting to listen when she oversteps the mark and bites him too hard – she’s definitely calming a little, paying more attention to the other dogs’ feedback, and starting to do things alongside them rather than just constantly play-biting at everyone.
Matilda is still intrigued by Willow the cat, and will stalk her, waiting for her to run, which is one of her favourite games – chasing other moving things. Luckily Willow is quite resilient and confident, and rarely runs. She stands her ground and has learned that collies soon get bored if she stays still!
A real water baby
Matilda absolutely loves water. We took her to a beautiful open garden and tea room recently with a shallow river running through it, and she had a wonderful time splashing about. She also loves paddling in her tub in the garden, and will try to get involved when I’m filling up the dog and sheep water bowls. When she is bored in the house, she may dig in water bowls. We have no-spill bowls, but she still does a good job of getting water everywhere!
Bath time
A good way to fill some of those long, dark evenings. We’ve been using a bath mat so she doesn’t slip, since that would definitely put her off, and rather than just plonking her straight into water (which can be quite alarming for a puppy), we popped her in first and then gradually let the water rise up around her, with some floating toys and treats in there too. She seemed to quite enjoy it and didn’t try to escape – and a couple of days later, while I was in the bathroom washing my hair, she actually jumped into the bath herself without being asked, so I think that first experience really landed well. Now we’re doing this a couple of nights a week, filling the bath a little more each time and introducing the shower head running nearby, which she’s enjoyed so far.
In the following video, I use her interest in a fly to encourage her to paddle a little.
Digging
She’s started showing an interest in digging, and we’ve now got two or three decent-sized holes in the garden. We’ve covered them all with something heavy rather than filling them back in, since filling in a hole is often just an invitation for a puppy to keep digging it back out again – it’s such a tempting game. It’s a very normal thing for collie puppies to want to do, and I’m hoping to persuade my husband to build her a proper digging pit at some point! Having a special digging pit allows them to fulfil the digging need to their heart’s content.
The car
A little better – we’ve been doing much shorter trips to somewhere nice and straight back, rather than long journeys. She’s getting a bit big to keep lifting into the car now, so I’m going to start introducing a ramp: first just getting her used to it flat on the ground, then a slight incline, gradually building up until she’s happily going up and down it, and eventually using it to get in and out of the car when we’re not even going anywhere, just to keep it fun. A lot of collies don’t like being lifted, so that may well be part of why she’s been a bit reluctant – it’ll be interesting to see if the ramp makes a real difference.
Once in the car she settles really nicely and will sleep.
First proper walks
Matilda’s had her final vaccination, so she’s just started her first proper walks over the last week or so. She’s on a harness, since she’s not loose-lead trained yet and this protects her neck if she pulls. She’s been utterly fascinated by all the smells, so we’re not covering much ground – which is exactly as it should be. It’s really important, on those first walks, to let a puppy sniff everything and just soak up the experience of being out, with absolutely no pressure to move anywhere quickly.
We went to a stately home last weekend, which was a brilliant, if slow, outing – lots of children, dogs, flags, people, wheelchairs, and pushchairs. It took us 45 minutes to cover about 200 yards from the car park to the house, but it was a genuinely useful, rich experience for her.
One evening, when I couldn’t think what else to do with her, we took her out for a 15 minute walk after dark, and it was a bit of a different story – she was clearly more wary in the dark, pulling away from the house to try to catch up with Gael (our other dog, who came too), and then pulling all the way back home again. And Willow our cat decided to join up, which made Matilda pull towards her as well. Pulling is very often a sign of stress in puppies, so I’ve taken that as a sign to keep walks in the dark closer to home for now, sticking around the front of the house until she’s a bit more confident, rather than heading out after dark just yet.
The pushchair has been great for getting her out and about but I’m pleased I can put it away for now!
Loose lead walking
We’ve started proper loose lead training: dogs pull because they want to get to something, so whenever she pulls, we just stop dead, without saying anything, and wait for the pulling to stop before going forward again. The going forward is her reward. We’re pairing this with sections of walking where she is given a treat every few steps to teach her that being next to us is the most rewarding place to be – just a continuation of what I’ve been doing in the garden. Alternating stretches of intermittent but frequent treating, with stretches where we are stopping every time she pulls helps to teach Matilda that pulling will not get her where she wants to go, without building up too much frustration.
Training
There’s a fair bit going on training-wise at the moment. Out and about, we’ve started using Look At That and the 123 pattern game – both lovely games for anything that’s making her a little anxious, or if she looks a bit worried about something. They give her something structured to do while she watches whatever’s bothering her, learns to regulate her arousal, and teach her, gradually, that she can be near it and still be perfectly fine.
We’ve also been practising “this way”, walking along and then suddenly calling “this way” and running backwards, rewarding her when she catches up – essentially building a U-turn we can use if we ever need to whip her away from something quickly on a walk.
Settle: I’ve started rewarding Matilda whenever she settles quietly nearby, so that she starts to learn that in the house, calm quiet behaviour is more rewarding than bombing about like a lunatic!!
We’ve also started the usual sit, down, wait, and recall.
Handling practice has continued most nights – ears, eyes, all-over handling – alongside the usual sit, down, and wait work.
We’ve booked her into some puppy classes starting this week, and I was quite particular about which ones: I wanted classes with controlled greetings only, not the sort where puppies are just left to charge about together, which really wouldn’t suit a puppy like Matilda. I asked to watch a couple of options first, and a couple were definitely not right for her – including one where all the puppies are just merged freely, which isn’t something I’d want for any puppy, let alone one working through what Matilda is.
Grooming practice has continued too, and on the whole she’s doing really well with all of it.
I don’t focus on any tricks such as give a paw in young puppies – there are so many other, more useful life skills to teach them.
Sleep
Sleep is so important for puppies, and continues to come easily to her – we don’t always need to use the pen if things are quiet, and she can nap next to us if we’re not too busy getting up and doing things. I do still use the pen sometimes, though, since I want to make sure she stays comfortable being left in it for whenever we do need to go out.
Vet visits
Her final vaccination appointment went well. The waiting room was quiet to start with but filled up while we were there, and I was watching the other dogs closely – if any dog had looked like it might be vocal or unfriendly towards her at this age, I’d have taken her straight back out to the car and let the vet know we were waiting outside. As it happened, she watched the other dogs with interest but without getting frustrated or vocalising, which was great. I took a good supply of tiny bits of cheese in with us, and she didn’t even notice the injection – I was scratching her chest and feeding treats at exactly the same time.
What’s next
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be carrying on with the calm dog introductions, starting puppy classes, building up the car ramp work, and easing further into proper walks as her confidence grows. I’ll keep sharing it all honestly as we go, the good bits and the trickier ones.