Celebrating 6 months on the planet!
- Aug 6, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 18, 2025
We arrived back home after a week in Europe at 4AM and less than 5 hours later we were already on the way to a 6 months reunion with all the siblings from the litter in which Seraphina was born.
The meet-up was at a dog farm owned by my friend where she also saw big dogs like Alaskan Malamute for the first time and chickens and birds.
It was really nice to see how she responded well in front of all the creatures but the best part was watching her run around with all her siblings 🫠
We spent about 2 hours there and headed back home to a much needed sleep.
I got back a bit sick but I was so excited to get back to work with her after one week apart and couldn’t wait to refill my energy sources!
On the first session we had I decided to see how are we doing on social rewarding and connection and she was over the moon excited and crazy so it was really fun for me to work with her at this point. Yes, she got distracted a bit at some points, but I honestly felt that it’s really good for her age and her character. I felt so proud of all the progress she made so far!
Next, I placed a body sized low platform to work on some static skills with distractions and direction changing as preparation for face out exercises and to finish with the platform just some spins for her accuracy in movement in the trick.
The final part of the training was with food as well. Starting from the ZEN exercise with food and teaching a new rewarding marker (kchi) which will mean to her - you can take the food which is on the ground.
After a few repetitions, I started some tricks and mini sequences followed by thunder the leg transitions in a very early stage of teaching the position.
At this point the mic went crazy and the sound is not as good as it was before but you can still hear enough I think.
She did so good and I literally had to remind myself to stop because I felt she was so with me - so I spread some treats on the ground and asked her to search for them to finish the session.
That evening, I trained her again and we worked on going backwards and she was AMAZING! I can see she is really starting to think about her body and how to use it and it makes me so excited because honestly there are so many moments when I feel like I am doing something wrong with her. So every small success is something huge for me.
We had in total 2 round of backing up and I was super pleased with both of them. On the second round I felt her REALLY walking back and enjoying it. she does have a small tendency to the right in her walk but I think I can fix it by feeding more with my left hand.
After we finished with backing up, I wanted to check how she would react about learning to cross her paws. That may not have been my brightest moment but I learned from it. I see now that she would be able to do it well, but is missing the state of mind for the trick at this point so I will go back to work on her position and brain before we would be able to make progress to actually crossing the paws.
She also got a bit crazy and told me basically “I need to bite something” so I brought in the toy after a few more repetitions.
I was so tired from the whole day so I did a lazy sitting down toy training.
Starting with some self control which she was very good at, followed by some tricks with an empty hand and rewarded with a toy and of course all the time - making the retrieve super fun!
At some point I tried to get her to do self control with a toy while I lure her with an empty hand but it was not as good so had to give it a bit more time before she was able to make it.
There was a lot of things happening at the street at night so it became much harder for her and even though it was a bit of a challenge she really did it and I am so proud of her.
Working with a dog who has a tendency to react on the environment is never easy, especially when you didn’t expect her to have this in her, but I can see now, that I can learn a lot from this about training, about listening to the dog, being more patient about things and above all - giving the dog what he needs to have the best life possible.
The next morning I brought a new toy we received to work on her retrieval without encouragements from my side and only marking something good; getting up with the toy, coming towards me with it even if it’s still not full retrieve, etc. it’s something I will definitely do more because she has a major conflict with it; she wants to play but also she doesn’t understand yet that the toy should go directly in my hand. So I will take my time with it but it would not be an easy process with this girl. I want her to truly AIM for my hand - push the toy to me and tell me “please play with me” instead of feeling that I am taking it away from her. She already feels it with some toys but I know it’s not natural for her.
Raising Seraphina is not how I imagined it would be, but then again, neither was raising Rhythm or any of my other dogs.
Each dog is a whole world of it’s own, and I am just happy that I get to learn so much about how to be the better person for each and every one of them ❤️