Novaforesta Delyssa - a.k.a. Nénu
Nénu’s News: (updated 04/09/08)
Nénu has been, and continues to be, the most perfectly behaved puppy I have ever had: she has absolutely no negative traits at all – incredible!
She has 9 giant Newfoundland friends (in addition to the two she lives with) that she sees regularly, by whom she has never been at all intimidated and with whom she plays with great gusto! Over the summer she has met many other dogs at horse shows, agricultural shows and, of course, The CLA Game Fair – all have been greeted with equanimity. Sheep en masse trotting past the front gate and horses close-up, at the livery yard, did prove very scary, but that’s no bad thing in my opinion!
Nénu has represented the breed via her photo in both Dogs Today and Shooting Times and in person with her sister, two of her brothers and Bepop at the CLA Game Fair (see News page.) so she’s becoming quite used to being a “media star”!
She loves her “wilderness” walks in Brechfa Forest (there are no other people or dogs - ever) and I still take her on her own while she is young and training is in progress. In spite of the awful, wet summer, she has managed to find ripe blackberries, which she now picks delicately and eats with relish without any help or encouragement from me.
The BARF diet continues to be relished and she has what can only be described as “a very healthy appetite”! I don’t know if she’ll get big enough to have chicken carcases as the Newfs do; at the moment (aged 26 weeks) she’s eating 4 chicken wings (in 2 meals) per day plus one meal of liquidised fruit/veg and yoghurt mix. Variations include white fish, oily fish, eggs, breast of lamb, offal and occasional goat’s milk.
Training is going well – her recalls and sits are good. Retrieving is quite good, but not always to hand. Her favourite “trick” is to rush back straight towards me with the dummy and then to “jink” past me at speed at the last moment! I have set up a retrieving corridor (as advocated by The Gundog Club!) but as we have had torrential rain ever since, it has not been tried out yet. Encouraging hunting is more difficult as there are no open spaces (fields etc) around here and when in the forest she tends to stay on the track at the moment, but I hope as she becomes more confident she’ll start to hunt in the trees to either side of where I’m walking. Water is proving difficult to find in spite of the amount that falls out of the sky in Wales. She went for her first introduction this week and was not confident enough to take her feet off the bottom although quite happy to retrieve whilst in her depth until …… she couldn’t resist the temptation to join the Newf in the water and leapt about 3 feet out into the lake from a shallow step (she preferred that to the gentle “beach” area) and swam around in a circle and back to the shore with the other dog. However she didn’t repeat it and after another successful in-depth retrieve we called it a day – always end on a high note! We’ll have to see if she makes further progress another time.
Fiona, W. Wales