Pip Pup

Dog blog for Pippin, a husky/heeler with agility dreams and rally goals!

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I guess I have a dog blog now! This was initially a sort of digital scrapbook as we raised and started training our sweet, nervous puppy, but she’s grown up and getting into sports now!

Us: Myself (Wolfie, main blog wraisedbywolves) and my husband Chris. We both grew up with dogs and have had one previous dog as adults/as a couple, but have never raised a puppy or pursued higher level training/dog sports before. Wish us luck.

Her: Peregrine, aka Pippin, Pip, etc. Named after the bird, for her sharp face markings. She’s a husky/australian cattle dog with a little pit and lab, adopted from a local SPCA but was shipped up to New York State from another shelter in Alabama where she and her sister were surrendered at just 5 weeks old. She started out very nervous and cautious, with a tendency to shut down rather than react to things that scare her, but is building confidence and doing great as she approaches her second birthday.

Our hope is to build on that confidence and encourage her smarts by getting her involved in rally and eventually agility! She got her canine good citizen title in March 2026, and will be eligible for her first fit dog title as soon as the weather clears enough for a group walk. We’ve become very involved in our local dog training club, and in addition to really helpful classes it’s opened up a ton of resources on dog sports and the show world!

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Wait when did my little baby dog get so grown up looking

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Weird dog spotted

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Somebody’s ready for the 9am fit dog walk and it’s not me

We’re back home now and just submitted her info for the fit dog bronze title :) She took the class back in March. Someone else at the walk was talking about their clear preference for CPE events over AKC and said something about “if you want to pay money to add letters to your dog’s name that’s fine!” And I get that, for sure. But also when we’ve taken classes and when we did a rally show and go a few months ago people will say to my face that when we walked in they expected Pip to fail because she’s visibly mostly husky. I am a spite fueled creature so yeah, I want the fancy titles. I want ribbons. Look at her go. My dog kicks ass even though you think she’s gonna be terrible at stuff.

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When you did the 9am 2 mile Fit Dog walk and then a 2 mile walk with friends and then weaves class and you’re usually a lazy bum

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Somebody’s ready for the 9am fit dog walk and it’s not me

We’re back home now and just submitted her info for the fit dog bronze title :) She took the class back in March. Someone else at the walk was talking about their clear preference for CPE events over AKC and said something about “if you want to pay money to add letters to your dog’s name that’s fine!” And I get that, for sure. But also when we’ve taken classes and when we did a rally show and go a few months ago people will say to my face that when we walked in they expected Pip to fail because she’s visibly mostly husky. I am a spite fueled creature so yeah, I want the fancy titles. I want ribbons. Look at her go. My dog kicks ass even though you think she’s gonna be terrible at stuff.

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Jumps and turns, jumps and turns! We also got her up on the dog walk for the first time today, and as I suspected she didn’t flinch even slightly about it!

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One of those green faery hounds seems to have found its way into our home

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Miss Pip was a superstar in weaves class and then we went on a nice gorge hike with lots of sniffing and stairs to tire her out!

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First swim of the year! I’d love to try her in an actual dock diving pool, but for now we’re out at a public boat launch and I just can’t trust her off leash in that environment. I bet she could get some real air if she got a running start!

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Someone has a new favorite obstacle!

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Tonight we were practicing forward drive with a “go” and then handling through a tight turn, and had a bit of a breakthrough!

Maybe this is obvious for experienced agility handlers, but when watching the videos I took after class I realized why she was missing that last jump. She takes the turn just fine in every video, but then kept veering off before the last jump…. To try to get back on Chris’s left side. The side she’s more used to working on, and that we’ve reinforced in other classes like rally.

She’s not missing the cue to turn, but her desire to get back “in position” is outweighing the cue to take the jump. I guess we know what to work on next week!

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Teeter with no assistance/support tonight, and she gave it a good effort on a full ten obstacle course! Eight jumps, two tunnels, and several tight turns. She got a bit hung up on the turns, she tends to slow down and look at me, but we did do the whole course a couple times!

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Pup cup for Pip Pup

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We’re working on door behavior (aka no scratching or biting doors because you want to go outside) and Pippin is extremely skeptical

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I really need to make an effort to change the way I think of Pip’s personality.

When we first brought her home she was incredibly fearful and shut down. She spent a ton of time hiding, she startled easily and took a very long time to recover from it, the first time we took her for a walk outside the yard she panicked and had to be carried home because she refused to stand up at all. It took six months to help her find enough confidence to walk into buildings.

And I know enough about her background (surrendered to shelter by owner at 5 WEEKS OLD and then transported halfway across the country to a different shelter at 12 weeks) to understand why she reacted in those ways! I expect that that way too early weaning will continue to affect parts of her for the rest of her life!

But at 2 years old, she’s made huge strides and built up so much confidence! She’s really blossomed, she’s grown into a smart, curious, and incredibly affectionate dog. And I need to stop thinking of her as “nervous” because that’s really not what she is by default these days. I do think she’ll always be sensitive to change, she’s definitely a little overly alert at times, but she has the skills and resilience to cope with that and I need to avoid misreading her signs by chalking things up to fear.

We’re trying to overcome a barking problem that we first read as fearful; she meets a new person, greets them a little uncertainly but not badly, then backs up to about 5 feet away and starts barking at them. I thought she was trying to make them go away, but if they move away she follows. Now, months into trying to figure this out, she’s started doing it to us sometimes.

Because it’s demand barking. We used to have people give her a treat to encourage greetings, and she’s decided that if she greets someone she is OWED that treat and needs to yell at them until they give it to her even if she has no reason to think they’ve got a treat. Demand barking isn’t an easy thing to work on, but it’s a very different approach than if the barking signaled fear!

I need to be better about paying attention to the dog in front of me, and not just the puppy I remember.

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She’s getting it! No more tunnel problems!

We also let her do the teeter with almost no support today, she’s probably about ready to try it on her own!

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Pip is going to teach someone else’s dog who would never have tried it how to do the crocodile roll/full fondue dip in the mud puddles at the park one of these days I just know it