New puppy

I’m so excited, I’m getting a new puppy, the next addition to my family, a liver working cocker spaniel boy!

I’ve wanted a new puppy and a second dog for a while now but the timing hasn’t quite been right. For at least a year I’ve known I want to take on a working cocker spaniel next and for the past 5 months or so I’ve been keeping an eye out for a breeder. So much can happen in the first 8 weeks before you even get your puppy home, a puppy can be made or destroyed by what a breeder does with it in the first stages of it’s life so it’s crucial to try and source a puppy from a good, knowledgeable breeder. Plus there is unfortunately still a lot of punishment/averse/harsh (call it what you will) training in the gundog world, and I didn’t want to pass several hundred pounds of my hard earned money in to the hands of someone who believes in that form of dog training.

So when the name Jane Ardern was recommended to me and I just sent her a casual message asking if she had any plans for puppies in the future, as I was willing to wait for the right dog, I wasn’t expecting to be given the opportunity to have a boy from the litter that had literally just arrived, it was too good to miss.

Jane is a fabulous trainer, she’s been highly recommended to me by a number of people who have had experience with her in different aspects of dog training and behaviour, and I couldn’t hope for a better person to have a puppy from. She sends regular updates of the puppies and it’s fabulous to be able to see the journey they take over the next couple of months.

I’m so excited to take on a new challenge and my next training adventure!! There’s so much I want to do but I’m excited just to take it one step at a time and go through the puppy process again myself. It’s been 7 years since Guinness was a puppy, and although I am highly involved in puppy training as my career it’s a bit different when it’s your own pup. I’m definitely going to do agility training again which I’m really looking forward to, but there’s no pressure or goal for this puppy to “be an agility dog” or “be a gundog”. We’re just going to have fun, explore different training options and most importantly set out some good core foundations for a happy, content dog.

Roll on July when Zebedee (aka Zebby) can come home!!