We had a wonderful time yesterday visiting with our puppy families and introducing them to their new family member! Thank you for braving the pass yesterday. Everyone had a drive, but the Williams family did an 8 hour round trip...with a puppy going back. Our wish for all of our families is that their puppy will be a blessing in their home and in their life. God made puppies cute for a reason. They do require work and training, but we pray that these sweethearts will allow you to sleep through the night very soon! Tip for those crate training: Place a sheet or towel over the crate, if your puppy has a hard time getting ready for bed at night. It is very calming and makes for a cozy den. Nylabones are wonderful! Your puppy will absolutely need safe teething objects. Rawhide can be problematic. Be careful to check toys for wear that can pose a problem if parts are ingested. We have two large rubber balls in with the two puppies of the Smith and Hughes families. These two little boys are having a blast chasing it. On a crate note: We keep very little in a puppy crate for ease of washing. Again, make sure your crate is small enough so that your puppy does not designate an area for bathroom use. House training will be in baby steps, with keeping the crate dry as the first step. The puppies are used to using cedar chips as a puppy litter box. You can use that to your advantage, especially if your children will be involved with the house training. With it being winter and having blustery days, you can set up a handy situation in your garage where your children can quickly take your puppy to use the bathroom (small, hard plastic wading pool with cedar chips from the local feed store, for example). Very important: Keep your puppy blocked from going up and down stairs. Studies link doing a lot of stair climbing as a puppy with later joint problems. It is very important to let the puppy get exercise on flat or rolling ground. We do our daily exercise with our dogs on our 3 acres, take them to our ranch in Oregon, go on trips, and on our country road. As you know, it is very important to socialize your puppy during the coming months to situations where you want him/her to feel at ease. Most of you do not do dog parks. If you decide to explore dog park socialization, do that after your puppy has full immunity with puppy shots and after the first rabies vaccination. Down the road, when your puppy has a lot of outdoor time, please keep a careful eye on them outside! To this day, we have never had an injury to our dogs from cars, 4 wheelers, or other farm equipment because we do not let our dogs roam. They are on a leash, inside, in their large dog yard, or in their very oversized dog runs. We let them run off leash only when we have constant sight of them. Sadly, we have seen other dogs in our neighborhood misjudge cars and get hit (we are runners, so we know ALL the neighborhood dogs). This time of year, people use de-icer on walkways, etc. That salty taste is a draw for animals. Keep them away from licking the substance. Anti-freeze tastes sweet. Another very poisonous substance for dogs, cats, etc. Just a few thoughts we wanted to make sure to share as we had so much fun visiting yesterday and did not cover some of these points! ( :
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 22:45:14 +0000
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