Baby Halos taking on new challenges

Last month, Jenny found a notice on a seminar/training day that the local NAVHDA chapter was having. NAVHDA stands for North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association and is a group that tests Natural Ability in puppies through tracking, water retrieve, and hunting. The tests around here always fill up very early, so we’ve never been able to test our dogs. However, it seemed like a good opportunity to check out a new thing. Of course, we emailed our puppy homes and within about an hour they had both signed up too!

Fast forward to this last week and Byron and Catherine sent a message saying they hoped we didn’t mind, but since Maggie has been on birds about weekly, rather than attend a hunting seminar, they wanted to try their hand at a conformation match. When they came to us for a puppy, they said they wanted a sport model hunting bitch that could do agility. They agreed to let us try and show her for big shows like the Vizsla Club of America National that is coming to Colorado in 2020. So imagine our shock getting an email saying they wanted to do a dog show with Maggie! We gave them an enthusiastic thumbs up on the idea!

However, Louie and Cheeky were still in for the seminar, and they did an awesome job today. There were about 12 kids running around, screeching, and wanting to pet all the dogs. It made Jenny so happy to see Louie just totally bomb proof to all of it. We spent so much time with this litter getting them socialized to humans, sounds, and experiences in their first 8 weeks. It is so super rewarding to send them out into the world with responsible owners who keep up the training and have an amazing dog to show for it.

Cheeky was a star on the whoa table. Right now it looks like an oversized dog walk with a large up and down ramp. She confidently marched up it, did a free stack in the middle, and held while Jenny walked to the end of the down ramp and back. That was pretty proud moment, especially since many of the other dogs were terrified of the ramp. Again, the confidence Cheeky & Louie had on this novel equipment was something to be proud of.

Finally we worked on some retrieving/bumper games. We’ve never trained a force fetch on any of our dogs with pain compliance. Our theory is always to foster and develop their natural retrieve, especially since we have a “softer” breed. Louie and Cheeky both retrieved well, but Louie was exceptional. It’s going to be a really fun Spring training season getting these puppies on birds and bumpers!

And across the complex, we got word that Maggie was an absolute star. She went Best Vizsla Puppy and then made the cut in a huge Sporting Group. The judge was very complimentary of Maggie and another spectator even texted Jenny to tell her what a stunning mover and fabulous temperament Maggie has.

Yep. Pretty proud of these amazing 3 pups this weekend. All that hard work while they were puppies following the Puppy Culture protocols really seems to have paid off. But, we’d be nowhere if we didn’t have these amazing homes to expose them to new experiences and provide the training and enrichment. Feeling so very blessed!