Introducing..... Florimania!

I've officially crossed into crazy dog lady territory. Yip, I'm now destined to be single forever. I'm turning my crazy life even crazier, by adding to my furry family.

This is Florimania. She's a working cocker spaniel from a local gun dog breeder. I've always enjoyed having different breeds of dogs having started with a husky cross border collie, and some border collies, and a weird terrier thing. I feel like it makes me a better trainer, working with different breeds, sizes, and personalities.

Her registered name will be 'Caderyn Leicestershire botanist' (or similar), pet name Florimania (or Flori). Florimania means a craze for flowers and for me represents her sweet and girls side, also her crazy zoomie gremlin side.  Caderyn is her breeder's kennel name, and all her littermates will have 'L' English towns or counties. I picked Leicestershire because apparently, it's official flower is the 'Common dog violet' which is a pretty purple flower.

I've got a few friends with gun dogs, and recently had the privilege of getting to know another working cocker puppy Inkie, who kind of stole my heart.

This decision was far from easy. I'm paying a mortgage on my own, money is very carefully managed. Time is as always an issue. And as always I want to ensure that all my dog's get everything that they need. Chace is very dog reactive and can take a really long time to be ok around new dogs. It took 6 months for her to play with Evo. Deo is a terrier and has many terrier traits, which include terrier snarking at dog's he's not sure about!

But timing feels right. Chace is now retired from competition agility, Deo is pretty much where I need him to be skill wise (other than contacts which are a constant work in progress). Evo is still very much a baby dog but making amazing progress. This puppy is ready on the first day of school holidays, giving me two solid weeks to get everyone happy and settled and used to new routines. And I'm incredibly lucky that my dogs are a welcome member of my 'other' full-time job.

I have many plans for this pup, many that still need to be developed and written down. But I'm excited to see where we go!

Thanks to the amazing Emily Taylor for these beautiful photo's of Flori.

If you are interested in following and learning with puppy and me, email me on hybriddogtraining@gmail.com or Facebook PM me to learn about my Hybrid Training Puppy Diary. This is a discussion group where I'll post info, video and more about my journey in applying puppy culture protocol, socializing,  introducing puppy to a multi-dog household with a reactive dog, teaching domestic skills, and starting work on the foundation skills for becoming a performance dog.