Inko has had a good week training wise. We had our first heelwork to music class on Sunday and Inko did very well with stand, bow, spin, twist, close and heel...unfortunately it tested my co-ordination skills somewhat! Then on Monday evening we had our first ringcraft class. We were quite surprised when someone recognised Inko as a Finnish Lapphund - it turns out that she has a 7-year old lappy, Ellie (TabanyaRuu Sello), from Smuu and Tuukka's first litter. Inko did fairly well considering it was her first go, but we need to try and work on getting her to stand without constantly having to be chewing at a treat held in my hand! Sure we'll get there!


Thought I'd add a few pictures to show how much our little girl is growing up! Can't believe she is 4 months old on Sunday. Still such a cutie and she's getting a fantastically big coat! She's also quite chunky - she weighed in at 9.5kg yesterday!

Update

I haven't been very good recently at updating the blog I'm afraid as we seem to have been quite busy (mostly busy being chewed by a small lappy!!), so here is a bit of an update of the last week or so. Bit of a ramble through different things I'm afraid!


Meeting up with Tarmo

Last Saturday Inko got to have a lovely romp around in the woods with her brother, Tarmo. Tarmo lives with Stacey and Shane in Woking, not far from us, so we travelled over to have a catch up walk. We went to Horsell Common and it was great. There is a shallow lake and big sand pit type are in the middle of the woods which both Inko and Tarmo thought was great!! Much bigger than Inko's little sand pit at home!! After much rolling around they both turned from Black Tri lappies into a somewhat orange colour!! Luckily, the wonder that is lappy fur meant that with very little effort after the walk, Inko was quickly looking her usual lovely, fluffy self!!

Paddling!

Nice and coated in sand!

I think maybe Inko was trying to be in disguise!!

Might be all sandy, but still a real cutie!

And here's the lovely Tarmo

My birthday party

The evening after the walk with Tarmo was my 30th birthday party - luckily Inko was quite tired after the walk so was nice and quiet at the party. She got lots of attention from all the guests and was an absolute sweetie all night! None of the guests got chewed or barked at which was great!! Such a good girl! Inko looked somewhat confused when she walked into the back room where people were playing Guitar Hero World Tour on the X-Box 360!! Not sure she was impressed with the singing and instrument playing!! When it got to her bedtime she decided to pack herself off to bed!! Think she was a bit surprised that people were still around at such a time, but she wasn't going to let that get in the way of her bedtime!! She normally gets put to bed at about 10pm but people didn't lave the party till about 12-12.30 so she didn't properly go to bed till much later than normal. Luckily this led to a wake up time of just before 8am - much better than the normal 6.30 wake up call!!

Lappy walk

Inko had a great time at the lappy walk up in Watford last Sunday. It was quite a long walk so I had to carry Inko for a bit of it - she is getting quite heavy now so this was somewhat harder work than it was at the Bath walk last month! Luckily our friends Alison and Mike very kindly assisted with some of the carrying, saving my arms muscles a little. We met an absolutely beautiful husky type dog - think it was a Siberian husky, but I'm not sure - with one blue eye and one brown eye - it was stunning! It was lovely to have a catch up with lots of lappy owners and for Inko to have a good run around with other lappies.

Teething

Inko is still massively chewing - mostly chewing hands, arms and feet!! She seems to have very little interest in toys for long at the moment but is very, very persistent with her chewing of people. Because she still has most of her puppy teeth (she's only lost 3 or 4 of the small front teeth) this is rather painful!! We have tried lots of different things - yelping to let her know it hurts, trying to stuff a toy in her mouth for her to chew instead, and shaking a coin filled plastic jar to try and distract her, but none of these seem to be working! She has also been loving chewing my new slippers so we bought some bitter tasting spray from the pet shop to spray on my slippers (and on the sofas where she chews and digs them), but unfortunately this is not doing much good either - it would appear that the fun of chewing is worth the bitter taste!! We have now taken to popping her into her den area for a bit to calm down when she gets too over the top with her chewing.

We have bought a big bag of frozen carrots to give her to help sooth her gums and she is enjoying eating them, and we're still continuing with ice cubes. We're hoping that the persistent chewing phase stops fairly soon as she has left quite a few scratches on people's hands, which isn't the end of the world when it's just us too, but great when she does this to guests!!

Eating what she shouldn't!

Unfortunately Inko has become quite a fan of eating cow poo and mud! On walks we constantly have to pull her away from cow poo in the fields and in the garden we are constantly having to call her out of the flower beds where she has always got a mouthful of mud! She also keeps bringing mouthfuls of mud into the house - and she seems to have a habit of spitting it out on the sofa! Nice!! This doesn't seem to be doing her much good as she's been sick a couple of times now, bringing up either mud or cow poo that she has eaten before - not sure really how to stop her doing this as, like with the chewing, if it's something she enjoys she is very, very persistent!

Some pictures of one of our favourite walks

On the morning of my birthday on Wednesday Inko and I went out for a lovely walk to one of our favourite places, Hawley Meadows, and it was a beautiful sunny morning. I got some lovely picture of the meadow and a nice one of Inko there too in a rare moment of her standing still. Such a lovelt way to spend the start of my birthday :)

Meeting a parrot

This afternoon Adam, Inko and I went over to see Adam's Nan and Grandad. They have an African Grey Parrot and Inko seemed quite confused by the whistling and talking coming from the cage in the corner. Apart from the odd yap at the parrot, Inko was actually really good and most of the time just watched the parrot climbing around her cage and swinging on her swing bar in the middle! Even when the door was opened up to put a bowl at the bottom for the parrot to have a bath and it was left open Inko was still very well behaved!

The bell

And finally, I thought I'd give a quick update on how Inko is getting on with the bell to go out to the garden - I think she's finally cracked it!! She now goes and sits by the bell whenever she needs to go out and if we haven't noticed she then starts nudging the bell! It is one of those ones like you have on a reception desk at a hotel. She doesn't manage to get it to 'ding' every time, but it makes enough noise with her pushing at it with her paw or her nose that we turn and notice her waiting there! What a clever girl!! However, she has learnt that ringing the bell gets her out in the garden....this means she rings it if she wants a potter and a dig, as well as if she actually needs to go to the loo!! We had been so keen for her to learn it that whenever she pushed it we'd take her out so that she made the association with going out. We are now trying to wait a bit longer before letting her out, whilst keeping an eye on her body language so we quickly take her out if she clearly looks like she needs a wee or poo. This way, if she is just ringing it because she fancies a play outside she generally gives up sitting by the bell after a short while and and wanders back to the room. But if she really needs to go out she will stay there and usually try nudging or ringing it again. People seemed very impressed with this at my party! It's very cute :)

Boxes

Yesterday, in a very uncharacteristic moment of tidiness I decided to sort out a 'toy box' for Inko to stop the rooms looking like a bomb had hit them every moment of the day (knowing in reality that this would never really last with untidy people like me and Adam, and a lappy!). So I hunted out an old cardboard box and popped all her toys in there. All was nice and neat until Inko came out of her den area where she is kept when we're at work. She then proceeded to start systematically removing the toys until she realised it was much quicker to tip it on the side and half get in the box to remove them all!!

Once they were all out she found that actually this new square thing that had been introduced to the room, which had been keeping her toys prisoner, was actually even more exciting than the toys!! So she spent ages last night 'killing' the box!! I managed to get a video of her having so much fun, half in the box most of the time!! It's a bit dark, but the darkness seems to have shown up the devil in our little lappy - notice her normally beautiful brown eyes looking bright red eyes whenever she looks to the camera!! Explains her hooligan behaviour!! You can even catch her red eyes peeping through the hole she has created in the bottom of the box at one point!!

I knew there was a devil in this dog!!!

Think she really enjoyed having a good chew as she definitely seems to be getting to a teething age now - she is extremely 'bite-y' at the moment and we can't walk her to the garden for a wee without nearly losing a toe, despite many efforts at distraction - this lappy is not phased by any loud noise - even the magic red can of Pet Corrector - or by having water sprayed at her! Just have to hope her sharp needle teeth start falling out soon!! She's also started trying to chew our hands and arms quite a lot when we're sat here. She pushes right to the back of her mouth so I think her gums must be sore at the back. She was doing this with the box too - pushing the cardboard right to the back. Have been trying to give her lots of decent chewing toys to try and help (although they appear not to be as fun as hand/arm/toe/ankle/box). Have also been giving her ice cubes regularly which she has been chewing and sucking - think they must be nice and soothing so need to make sure we have a regular supply in the freezer.

We have a busy weekend ahead of dog walks with friends (canine and human), a puppy party, and lots of training for Inko's assessment at puppy class next Wednesday - really want her to pass and get her KC Puppy Foundation certificate!!

Visiting lappies, chewing and moles

We all had a lovely visit to Liphook at the weekend to meet up with some of the lappy lot who were camping there and Inko had a fantastic time on the lovely walk that we had, running round with all the lappies and with Toni's border collie. Thanks loads to Steve and Shelley for the cups of coffee and for letting Inko explore inside your caravan!!


Inko decided to do a bit of decorating while we were at work today. She had been fine all morning and had a lovely play for nearly an hour with my mum and dad at lunch but she must have got a bit bored in the afternoon. We have a wooden radiator cover in her area which is a bit tatty so we weren't going to be too concerned if she nibbled the edges - but it would appear that Inko thinks edges are no fun, and she went for shredding the front of it instead! Guess we must have jinxed things by telling Shelley that we've been lucky so far with Inko not chewing very much of our stuff!!





Last night we went out for a walk to a local meadow that runs alongside a river which is just down the road from us which we often go to. We decided to walk across one of the big fields and Inko started going mad, barking and pouncing at the ground - using the torch (as it was rather dark), we scanned around and noticed lots of mole hills - don't know whether she could hear the moles or smell them, but she definitely seemed to know there was something down there!!