Proud Big Boy!

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Herewith my entry for Deranged Photo Contest.

Not the photo I wanted ...

Another photo as I actually wanted to submit. But the photo I would want to submit was really a mission impossible at the moment. What I wanted was a picture of all three of my cuties together ...

Mission Impossible

The reality is that occasionally they are not such cuties at all. And that it is currently a mission impossible to take all three dogs together to take that photo in a beautiful location.

Too many obstacles

To get to that beautiful location I first have to walk for an hour, which is not so recommended with Myla at the moment, because the lady is starting to get older, and sometimes she really suffers from her hips that are worn out. So if I want to go for a long walk with her, I can not take any of the other dogs with me in case it's too far for Myla and she needs a rest before we go back. Lana and Skipper don't have the patience to take that rest. The next problem is that Lana can't walk off-leash because she has always remained very protective despite all the hard training, which translates into reactive to the environment. And the third problem now is that Skipper still has to learn everything, and I don't want him to be influenced by Lana's behavior. I can manage this well indoors and in our garden. But if I went walking alone with all three dogs, this is not so easy to control because Lana just does not listen at such a time. She gets in a drift and is very hard to control.

Skipper is doing very well

Skipper is still young, and quite relaxed. He's doing very well over all, but he is still learning. We noticed that he didn't learn much from his previous owners. So we're working and building every day. But I don't want to break down what I have built up with him in recent months for a photo ... where I would skip an important part of training myself to take that photo.

3 steps forward, 2 steps back

And with Skipper in his puberty now, it is currently also 2 steps forward and 3 steps back, and then 3 steps forward and then 2 steps back. Like I said, over all he's doing quite good! And I'm very proud to see him grow, seeing him becoming more attached to us every single day. His faith, his trust it's growing every day. And with that, we see him grow ... he's becoming more confident. And he dares to be a bit naughty now. That's okay. We encourage him to be himself. And that exactly, is now also a reason for me not to take all three dogs together now. First I want to see that Skipper is stable.

Proud big boy!

So this time maybe not the photo I would have wanted to submit, but a photo of a proud Skipper who does the exercise well and is rewarded exuberantly for it. We continue to train ... and hope to be ready for the next time Wes will include the theme "Pets" in his contest.

Until then we enjoy what is going well here, and that may not be all, but that is a bit more every day.