Early Days for our New Team Member

It's been almost a week since we brought our newest member of the team home. Lola is an English Springer Spaniel with a great mix of FTCh and more traditional lines. Her sire is Dashbrook Raggedstone of Greenfox (AKA Woody) and we think she's going to grow up to look just like him!

This is the third time we've brought home a new puppy and has absolutely been the easiest first week we've had with a pup so far. I'm sure some of this comes down to our experience (it's been great knowing that the crying isn't going to last forever and that it's normal for puppies to breathe so quickly!) but I think most of it comes down to the amazing start she was given by her breeder. Lola came from Pippenmoor Gundogs and we've had such an incredible experience!

It's early days for Lola, but we're trying to employ as much of our learning from the last two puppy experiences as we can to her day to day life! So far, we've managed to shape a sit by rewarding the natural behaviour every time she presents it, whereas in the past we've always lured a sit. We've also put in a bit of work in terms of her impulse control by working on only letting her out of her pen when she backs off and sits and doing the same when giving her food. Lola was weaned onto raw and we're slowly introducing kibble (Skinners Field and Trial Puppy) for training purposes. We're hand feeding the kibble and using a lickimat for her raw which has encouraged her to be really gentle when taking food and is definitely helping with the biting!

Over the next few days, we're going to try and charge up the clicker and make the association that the clicker means something good is on it's way! We've loved the precision of clicker training with Alfie and Millie and we're looking forward to using it from even earlier with Lola! We'll do this by providing a constant stream of treats while she's in a sit, marking each treat with a click before we deliver the treat. Hopefully this will also help to build duration in her sit too!

We're so excited to start our new training journey with our gorgeous girl; she's been a superstar so far and long may that continue!