#Pavel was raised more like Merle from Ted Kerasote's book

[zaryathelaika]

Don't lecture me about long lines (or ecollars) and waiting until dog is two years old before giving them free-running time.

In my dog circles, people let their puppies offleash since the first day they receive them and teach them to take directions [Wayback Machine, archive.today] (Finnish) with hand signals and whistles by zigzagging and moving through the woods randomly.

— Lahtinen, Heidi. From Puppy to Hunting Dog (dead link). Translated by Angela Cavill. Retrieved June 16, 2023. Archived from the original on July 30, 2015 via Wayback Machine.

And it's pretty common for dog trainers to be permissive of young puppies being offleash for the first few months [Wayback Machine, archive.today] of their lives before being leashed and receiving an education in leash manners. And recall is reinforced strongly [Wayback Machine, archive.today] when they are puppies. The dogs need to be controllable [Wayback Machine, archive.today] at all time regardless, even when allowed [Wayback Machine, archive.today] outside of breeding season.

We've neglected going on regular outages because of the forest fires and poor air quality this year. That's the reason for failures for Zarya not checking in like she should. It's just really strange Zarya chose to go back to the parking lot instead of using her ears and eyes to find me. At least she can backtracks and her internal compass is strong because apparently that quality is being lost in recreational hunting lines.

— Popov, Aleksander V. “Hunting Laika” [PDF, 1.91 MB]. Journal of the International Society for Preservation of Primitive Aboriginal Dogs 31 (2012): 23 – 25. Retrieved June 15, 2023. Archived from the original on June 19, 2023 via Wayback Machine.

A few of my friends said the dogs they imported from west of the Urals are not as good as the dogs from east of the Urals. The loss of certain attributes was a concern I had with getting a new puppy since Pavel's parents are from Siberia (more specifically, the Far East in Khabarovsk) and Kazakhstan; but Zarya's parents are from European Russia and Poland with some Belarusian dogs in her mother's pedigree.

Recall/check in fail this morning. For some reason instead of using her senses to find me when she checks in, she goes to where she last saw me then alerted her to where I am. But then one time she disappeared for a good 20 minutes with no visual of her being in proximity. Found her waiting in the parking lot by the truck. Strange. Used to previous dogs being able to find me and checking in every five to fifteen minutes instead of them going back to the spot where they last saw me.