Puppies

[heathpack]

Seven and a half weeks old. Jeez it’s a whirlwind of activity.

This weekend we introduced car rides and did our first socialization with children. I finally have some enthusiasm for the dish of puppy food, which gives me more to work with from a training perspective. I can’t believe mama’s still letting her nurse, little Smoke has some sharp teeth!

She is now a Bitosaurus Rex. Plays like the Tasmanian Devil. Yeah she looks sweet in the pic, but she’s got a mean snarl-lunge-bite! Not with humans of course- I’m talking about while play with Auntie.

She got her first vaccine on Thursday, so we will be able to start getting out in the world by the end of next weekend.

 

[Theiggy]

Oh my heart!!! Smoke is so adorable!!!! Thanks for making my Monday morning.


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[ilene13]

She is adorable. I'd love to send my almost 9 year old yorkie to you for training. She still thinks she's a puppy!! Since we moved to Florida, so in our house she is VERY defensive and protective of me. If you came in she would nip at you. Out in public she is an angel. My vet and the groomer we use can't believe that she is anything but a sweetheart. Truly Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde!

 

[DaveNV]

I’m smiling with pride here. She’s gorgeous! And listen to you - the proud grandma. Really good to hear all of you are doing so well. Thanks for sharing this journey.

Dave

 

[melissy123]

Those eyes! I wouldn’t be able to resist giving her anything she wants.

 

[Glynda]

She's just precious!

 

[heathpack]

Well today was the first day I’ve slept 8 uninterrupted hours since Smoke was born on April 14. She slept all night in her pen and/or crate without needing anything. Also- the litterbox was clean this morning, she held it all night!

Smokey will turn 10 weeks old on Wednesday. Last weekend we started trips outside the home to various novel environments and to meet safe dogs. She has spent time with adult dogs- a dachshund, a lab, and a giant lab mix. So far, her behavior has been great (sometimes singleton pups are obnoxious towards other dogs because their mama is too tolerant with them). Still looking for some puppies to play with, I have a few leads.

She‘s been to a couple of different parks, a coffee shop, the beach, “hiking” in the mountains, and yesterday I took her on her first solo excursion (ie without the adult dogs) to the outdoor area of our local mall. Once she was used to seeing people from afar, I started giving folks treats to give her. Lol the lightbulb went off in her head that random people might give her a treat, so she started bounding up to mall-goers. She was pretty well received- definitely smile-inducing to have a dachshund puppy run up to you at the mall. So cute.

Heres a pic of her manding for a treat in my pocket this morning. I mentioned manding earlier in this thread. Basically- you train the dog to sit as a polite way to request something from you. Maybe they want a treat, or a toy you have, or to get out of their pen, or to sit on your lap. The way to ask is to sit, not jump on the person (which is what dogs naturally do). Reasonable requests are usually accommodated. Of course she still jumps on us plenty, she’s a baby. It’s a work in progress.

Heres my favorite overall pic of her, I think she is around 8 weeks old in this one:

PS It was a great morning- not only did my puppy sleep through the night and demonstrate polite behavior, I was able to EPlus my Cabo week for a Westin Kaanapali week for next May!

 

[MULTIZ321]

Well today was the first day I’ve slept 8 uninterrupted hours since Smoke was born on April 14. She slept all night in her pen and/or crate without needing anything. Also- the litterbox was clean this morning, she held it all night!

Smokey will turn 10 weeks old on Wednesday. Last weekend we started trips outside the home to various novel environments and to meet safe dogs. She has spent time with adult dogs- a dachshund, a lab, and a giant lab mix. So far, her behavior has been great (sometimes singleton pups are obnoxious towards other dogs because their mama is too tolerant with them). Still looking for some puppies to play with, I have a few leads.

She‘s been to a couple of different parks, a coffee shop, the beach, “hiking” in the mountains, and yesterday I took her on her first solo excursion (ie without the adult dogs) to the outdoor area of our local mall. Once she was used to seeing people from afar, I started giving folks treats to give her. Lol the lightbulb went off in her head that random people might give her a treat, so she started bounding up to mall-goers. She was pretty well received- definitely smile-inducing to have a dachshund puppy run up to you at the mall. So cute.

Heres a pic of her manding for a treat in my pocket this morning. I mentioned manding earlier in this thread. Basically- you train the dog to sit as a polite way to request something from you. Maybe they want a treat, or a toy you have, or to get out of their pen, or to sit on your lap. The way to ask is to sit, not jump on the person (which is what dogs naturally do). Reasonable requests are usually accommodated. Of course she still jumps on us plenty, she’s a baby. It’s a work in progress.

View attachment 36814


Heres my favorite overall pic of her, I think she is around 8 weeks old in this one:

View attachment 36815


PS It was a great morning- not only did my puppy sleep through the night and demonstrate polite behavior, I was able to EPlus my Cabo week for a Westin Kaanapali week for next May!

Hi Heathpack,

Thanks for sharing! Smoke is part of your Tug Family too. The pics are wonderful!

Richard

 

[Theiggy]

This might be my favorite recent thread on TUG! Glad to hear Smoke is doing so well and you got some sleep and a great eplus! Bonus!


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[heathpack]

14 weeks. I made my first pass at stripping her coat, only to find there appears to be a red dachshund under that dark overlay. Whoops, I registered her as a different coat color called wild boar. I’m going to gene test her for coat color before I get in touch with the AKC.

Shes doing great. She knows sit, down, come (sort of), touch, and stand (really more of a freeze, which is the prelim step to stacking, which is the ”show dog pose”). She walks on a leash pretty well. We’ve started closing the crate at night for 6 hours at a stretch- no accidents so far! She’s about 70% housebroken.

 

[SandyPGravel]

What a cutie!!

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[heathpack]

Here’s Smoke’s tricks back when she was 11 weeks old. She’s way smarter now!

 

[heathpack]

We work a lot of building emotional resiliency. When she was a little baby, we‘d do startle and recovery exercises. I take her somewhere every day and encourage her to interact with people, the environment, dogs I know to be friendly, etc. Huge amount of work.

But here’s an example of what we’re working towards: we took her to the beach and she was exploring the rocks. She didn’t really understand how the wave action worked, until her feet got flooded by a little surge of water. Look at that! No panic. She takes it in stride. So proud of her. She was around 12 weeks old in this video.

 

[DaveNV]

I'm grinning ear to ear. You're both doing so well! Smoke is going to be striking.

How is Phoenix handling the weaning? Not still nursing, I hope?

Dave

 

[heathpack]

I'm grinning ear to ear. You're both doing so well! Smoke is going to be striking.

How is Phoenix handling the weaning? Not still nursing, I hope?

Dave

Essentially no more nursing, Every now and then Smoke makes a dive for a teat but then aborts her attempt on her own.

 

[heathpack]

Stacking practice. Here’s a video from a few days ago. You can see in the video that she’s trained to freeze, keeping her attention on my finger. We’re working on being able to move her feet, so that I can get her placed into the perfect show dog pose. In the video, I’m only able to move one paw. But as of today, I can almost always move two paws without her losing focus. Sometimes 3!

 

[heathpack]

Smoke is 19 weeks old now. She’s pretty well housebroken, and is sweet and lovely when she’s not being terrible. Tomorrow she learns how to go on vacation- we are taking a trip up the central California Coast. Gotta start em young! Pro tip- just say she’s a service dog, and you can stay anywhere! I’m kidding. We’ve rented pet friendly air BnBs. All the property owners know we are coming with three dogs.

Yesterday I took her to the park and we saw some rabbits. One was sitting by the brambles, so once he hopped off, I put Smoke down on the rabbit scent. This was her reaction! A little bit excited, don’t you think?! At the end of the video, she gets herself pointed in the direction of the rabbits escape.

In this video, we are working on everybody being in the same place at the same time but no one biting anyone. Yes, it’s chaos a lot of the time!

 

[Glynda]

They're beautiful! Safe travels!

 

[DaveNV]

What a star! Great progress. You're collectively doing really great. Very happy for all of you.

I hope you plan to write a book about all this. Remember when you were first thinking about whether to breed Phoenix? Seems like years ago. Add in everything that's happened since then, and all you've experienced and learned together. You have tremendous experience to offer others about all of this.

Have a great vacation!

Dave

 

[AnnaS]

Adorable!! Have fun and safe travels!

 

[silentg]

Have a nice vacation, thanks for keeping us updated with Phoenix and Smoke.

 

[heathpack]

@Passepartout post reminded me to post this pic of little Smoke. Our vacation went very well. Smoke was a great traveller. No accidents in the rental houses and she had tons of fun. We took her out to lunch with us one day and she was the best behaved critter on the patio, including the human children, lol.

Its exhausting managing a 5 month old puppy. But fun too.

Our rental house in Cambria was right near the beach and there was a briar patch at the marshy end of the beach. The briar patch was full of RABBITS! So most days Smoke got to do a little rabbit work. It was awesome.

One day she took a break from rabbit to watch the ducks swimming. She is getting to be huge.

 

[DaveNV]

I warned you - parenting a puppy is exhausting work.

I'm glad she's turning out so nice. You've earned this.

Dave

 

[Glynda]

She has gotten big! Fantastic that she travels so well.

 

[Breezy52]

As my niece would say, Totz Adorbz!