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You know when you look at some of the advertising photos those expensive, hipster, scruffy-posh brands put out. The people look like their having such a jolly good time but you think, “ahhh its so pretentious, so staged…” Well this is that rally where they are taken. And you know what…

What time is it? No… really? We are already at the circuit and we are arguably late. At 7 am! We had to queue to get in. We had to get a bus to get here. From a park and ride. At the other end of the A43. After an hour’s drive for picking up Cerb. After an hour and half drive from Stoke…. Yeah, I was up early. But not as early as it could have been. I did the drive from Stoke last night and stealth camped in the Birmingham suburbs. As you can tell from this blog entry, I survived un-stabbed.

A couple years ago, the tree that had been growing between the bricks of the wall behind my shed, decided to fall over. And as luck would have it, a branch punched its way through the roof of my shed. It was stormy and so, come the morning, I found a lot of stuff very wet. I had a portion of type 2 fun, patching it up as best I could in the remaining 4 days before going on holiday….

Weston park international model air show is absolutely-freaking-massive!!!!! I thought Wings’n’Wheels was big, but this is another level!

I woke at the time I usually wake up – because that’s just what an adult routine does to you. But also because, no matter how much a lay in would have been nice, or how warm I was in my nice big poofy down sleeping bag, my bladder said I needed to move in the direction of a loo…. Like, right now. Maybe this really is what being an adult is like, is this the start of being old??!?!

After 4 years, it’s time to tackle the Dragon Rally again. It’s taken me this long to get over the trauma of the last event… the gale force winds… the rain… the oil on the roads…. the cow juice… maybe I’m not over it… 

But I was off early this morning and the first stop is Tescos cafe for breakfast. I’d packed up the bike over the last few days. Packed and rebuilt actually…

We are making some progress. Daito is definitely learning every day. Not many new commands but getting more controlled and repeatable. 

We have learnt one major new one which is very useful. Always in a positive way and never as a punishment.

“On ya bed” to go into his crate and sit.

This one has been quite easy to train as we already give him all his food there. Kongs are also something he loves, but he carries them around so they go in there too. And now we have a couple lick mats that’s also exciting to have in there. We only had to use the command each time we gave him a tasty treat or dinner and he pretty much got it. We are working on commanding him and pointing from a distance which sometimes works.

We have realised that we don’t have a release word. He is just getting up and walking away when he wants to. This is not ideal because we really want him to stay still until we give him a command that he can go do what he wants or we have another command for him. If he’s getting up and leaving before this, then we lose that control. We sort of use “go on then” when out on walks to tell the boys to go about their sniffy business ahead of us, so that works but might be a bit long. Maybe just “go on”. 

What we have been getting more and more of are dead bits of stuffed toy laying around. He’s always loved a squeaker and furry toys to chew on, but now he’s more powerful he’s chewing them up. He will happily knaw the tail or ear off a stuffed toy in minutes that we have had for years with Haku and Kayto. Doesn’t really matter. It’s cheaper to chew up toys than sofas. Being home all the time means we can instantly correct him on the rare occasion he has started to chew the coffee table so it’s not become a thing yet. Hopefully the destruction will be limited to toys… but that might be wishful thinking.

We are now 2 weeks into puppy dogfatherhood and dogmotherhood. This has been a tough two weeks. Not only physically with the exhaustion from running around after a nippy demon that pees and poops everywhere. But also emotionally because under the physical exhaustion it’s hard to stay positive and not get wound up with the puppy and each other.

It is great fun playing with a puppy when they are playing nicely and he is super cute but we have also considered giving him back. That’s in those moments it’s usually because we are exhausted and need a break and it’s not something we seriously consider. Just read this and be warned that if you are considering taking on a new puppy it is a lot of work. Even for us who think we knew what we were getting into we have been surprised at the amount of work it has been.

But work does not equal bad. So by putting in the work now we will hopefully end up with a well-mannered and enjoyable dog in the years to come. I think I also should have invested in some dog treat companies because I suspect will be pushing up the share price of them all by the number we have been getting through.

Of course the most basic and easy commands to give a dog is to sit. It is very rewarding to have taken this bundle of chaos and managed to plant his ass to the ground for a moment or two with a simple command. It is very useful and a good start. But now we must embark on a full regime training games, commands actions and techniques that we have never had to think about before in any great detail. 

If his parents are anything to go by he is going to be a big dog. Akita’s are powerful and they are loyal and guarding. Getting the training wrong or training the wrong behaviour into him abnormally could result in quite a scary dog to handle. So we are taking as much advice as we can from friends and professionals alike by employing a trainer. She has given us some games to play and techniques to follow to hopefully promote the correct behaviour so we shall see how we get on. But both of us sometimes feel quite overwhelmed and worried that if we do something wrong we’re going to end up with a powerful and potentially dangerous dog. Of course, everyone we have spoken to has said because we are worried about this, we will train him seriously so that this does not happen. It’s reassuring that people have faith in us even when we are feeling quite low like we will not be able to do it.

So far the commands we have managed fairly reliably are:

Sit – pretty straight forward. Can be just a hand signal single index finger pointing up.

Down – from sitting he lays down. Point down and run finger along the ground away from him

Here – with a point to come to a specific location either as recall or manoeuvering.

Ah! – loud noise to get attention and prevent from doing something like eating sticks, mud, blankets etc.

We’re currently working on these commands which are taking a little longer.

Daito – his name which should get his attention but it’s not very successful at the moment.

On – which will be a little useful in the future but mainly being used as the opposite to…

Off – to get off something like the sofa or a rug.

Nice – as a calming acknowledgement of something he has noticed. This is one of the games given to us by the trainer so that in the future when he notices something, it is thought of positively because we always say nice and give him a treat. But also because his natural instinct is to notice things and we want him to be able to disengage from that and return to giving us attention to decide how to deal with what he has noticed.

… This blog entry was never finished so I just published where I got up to! – Clearly I was too tired haha!