I picked up Jude from the airport at the end of July - only four months ago. He's grown so much since then! He was always a big puppy but he truly dwarfed many of the other puppies we ran into at sheepdog trials. Here he is in the cargo area of Alaska Airlines when I picked him and his dam, Sleat, up from their quick flight from Sacramento, CA. The crate is supposed to hold a 20lb dog which I thought would be great for an 11 week old pup. Again, Jude was kind of a chunker though...
At first, Mattie had about 15 pounds on Jude. It only took an afternoon for Jude to start serious playtime with Mattie. So began the daily antics of wrestling around the living room and gnawing on each other's faces.
Jude is growing up. He's taller than Mattie and Scott now. His right ear is erect like his mom's and his left ear is floppy like his dad's Del'Mar side. His nose still has one pink spot on the right. His black eyeliner - a signature of him dam - is pretty much all filled in now. He is getting some heavy ticking on his front legs and it appears some light ticking on his face (in addition to one bold black spot on his nose that he's always had that I attritube to his Del'Mar lines). His paws are all white except for one toe - that's black.
As he gets older, he's getting busier and nosier. He graduated puppy obedience class in November and we are starting puppy-level agility with him soon. I think he's going to love it. I'm hoping agility classes will help him with his obedience in the presence of fun and distraction, and will help the relationship I have with him as well.
He has been in the round pen with sheep a few times now. While his recall is pretty good for a puppy, the all important "lie down" and "stay" is not that good. We will work on this in the coming weeks off stock. He is very keen to the sheep and has shown some good stuff already with regard to keeping off the stock and going between sheep and the fence with confidence. I'm pretty excited with him so far and can't wait for this Spring/Summer when his training can really begin.
Jude experienced his first snowfall this Thanksgiving holiday. All I can say is that he enjoys the snow more than Scott does but in this photo, Jude actually looks like he'd rather be in the house taking a bubble bath!
I created a copy of Jude's pedigree at sitstay.com. I only put his dams and sires on it; I didn't think there was room for the owners/breeders info. If you are intersted in knowing this aditional info, send me an email. Click on the image to make it bigger.
