June 16 Pupdate

I am starting this early today in hopes that it will be more coherent than yesterday’s. Last night I was trying to write it with the movie blaring for the puppies and people and I couldn’t hear JAWS or myself think.

We had nice BIG thunderstorms last night and the night before so the pupadoos are getting some good exposure to that kind of thing. I heard the pupkins playing down here at 5 something am (aka the crack of long before dawn.) They weren’t loud enough to wake me, I was semi awake because Bruce was getting ready to go to the Greenbrier for his practice round.

This morning after they had some breakfast at 6 am, I took them outside one by one. I started with Pink! because she was asking to be picked up. I carried her out into the yard and she immediately found a good spot and peed. Then she wandered around with me and found just the right spot to poop. We walked around a little more and then I let her follow me in to the house. I traded her in for another puppy; repeating the process until they had all been out. Everybody peed out there and all but the Brownies pooped on the first trip. GreenBela was still a poop nazi even after the second trip. She didn’t poop in the pen either though so she’s still being a good girl. At this stage, I am still not calling this housetraining. We are just developing and reinforcing their preference not to have to live in a soiled environment. Later, we’ll reinforce MY preference for the same ;-) She did go out around 9 and poop; I think she is just on a different schedule.

My niece hit the puppy pen first thing this am and enjoyed getting mobbed by them. They all certainly like people. Cary (Carolina Blue’s other nickname) was playing with a blanket at first and didn’t notice her come in so he was the last one to the party. The little prince shows promise as a hair stylist. He was “helping” Haley with her hair while she was in there.

We had a nice visit with more kids including an 18 month old who did some good screaming. The puppies were completely unfazed but Jack was worried about her a lot. We thought about pinching her to get her to do a little more screaming but decided that wasn’t necessary ;-)

This afternoon, we took the puppies out into the dog yard after I made sure they couldn’t get under the wheelchair ramp or out of the ‘fencing.’ My niece and nephew helped me watch them and took some video with the new flip. With any luck, I’ll get them on Youtube and the link on this page. Since so far, the videos have been taken by me or my niece, you never know what you’ll see but hopefully there will occasionally be at least one puppy. They had BIG fun and surprised (and scared) me by going up the 2 steps to the decking of the wheelchair ramp. They cavorted all over the yard and deck and had some lunch in the pool. My nephew squirted them with the water crayon gun. It was not quite as unbearably hot today but it’s not cool enough to just be out there with no precautions for the puppies.

The girls helped me holler the magic word while the puppies ate their last meal tonight. I need to start using the whistle as well. They absolutely LOVE the cat scratching post ring. I tied a toy to the top of it today to add some interest but it doesn’t really need much. They’ve also been playing with a tennis ball, water dummies and were really tugging hard on the float line training rope that I tied on the side of the ex pen today. And of course, the paper in the pen is always a big hit.

Tomorrow night they will be 6 weeks old. Where in the world did all of the time go? Their puppy breath has changed a little and Jill (and Sammie) have started requiring slightly different behavior. The pupsters have decided that they REALLY want to do what Jack is doing a lot of the time. Jack is not too thrilled with that idea, especially when they are stealing his monkey paw or ball or chasing after him. He won’t correct them but he will try to avoid them getting to him (to the extent that he still gets to interact with the humans) and then tell us if they are bothering him. Such a good dog!

Maybe we’ll have a weight watchers to report about tomorrow. The weather looks like it will be cooperative for a trip up to the pond this weekend and we should manage to get some real practice in for the big dogs. For now, we are all going to go nighty, nighty, nighty.