01/14/13

Puppies – The Seventh Week

I put a step stool in the pen to change a lightbulb. Daisy immediately took herself upon this step, and sat, appreciating the view.

This is the week where I went, “I have only two weeks to get them sleeping in a crate at night!” and started crate training in earnest.

It was very hard with 6 puppies to do the kind of concentrated effort I normally do. When I have 2-3 puppies, it’s easy to get them into their crates with food, lock the door, and then soon after open the door again. With six, by the time I’ve fed the last one, the first one is crying to get out. Not what I aim for.

So, instead, I decided to test all the puppies with 5 minutes in a crate (on the 19th of December) to determine who would need the ‘most work’ and who was going to be easy. This was just because I had a big litter and, unfortunately, had to prioritise to get things done! Continue reading →

01/7/13

Puppies – The Sixth Week

This would normally be the week where the puppies socialise heaps, but unfortunately it was very hot, and we didn’t get the puppies out anywhere near as much as we’d like to.

While up until now the puppies had been confined to a pen outside, they started to have greater access to the backyard during the last week.

On the 13th of December I took both Kelinni and Boomer out, and they each met about 20 people each.

On the 16th of December, we had a somewhat different socialisation experience. My partner volunteers for the State Emergency Service and they were having a Christmas lunch in a park. In lieu of carrying puppies in the park for several hours, we brought a puppy pen and had the puppies on the ground – something that we never do! However, I think the risks of parvo were minimal: We placed the puppies on a tarp, so they didn’t have direct contact with the soil, the park is in a medium-high socio economic area where most people would vaccinate their dogs, the Christmas lunch was deep in the park, and because you have pay to drive to get your car in, there’s probably less people that attend this part of the park with their dogs.

The puppy pen set up. We chose to sit back from the rest of the group in respect for non-puppy-lovers.

The socialisation opportunities were huge – and actually bigger than I expected. I actually just thought there would be a bunch of men at the Christmas function, and I really wanted more socialisation with my puppies to men. But it turns out there where heaps of kids there, too! So it was very much worth attending. Continue reading →

01/1/13

Puppies – The Fifth Week

In the fifth week, the puppies started to consistently be social and approach people. They started interacting with Benjiman the cat (much to Benjiman’s disgust). They had their nails trimmed again. Most days, they spend the morning and the evening outside for a couple of hours. It has been very hot, so they haven’t been able to spend a lot of time outside.

The puppies have this small outside area with a sheet over the top of their pen, to prevent predation by birds of prey. (Chip visiting puppies on the outside.)

Continue reading →

12/26/12

Puppies – The Fourth Week

Boomer sleeping.

The puppies continue to grow and be healthy and happy. At 3.5 weeks they began to be offered solid food (mince beef) to start the process of weaning. They now only get access to Clover after they’ve been offered ‘real food’. (The idea is that they will fill up on mince before having a drink.) Clover is no longer getting several big meals a day, as we want to encourage her to cut back on the milk production. Continue reading →

12/23/12

Television is Good for Puppies

Not only do puppies respond to television, but watching the tube may have a positive role in their development.

3.5 week old border terrier puppy watching TV.

Researchers conducted controlled studies which exposed puppies to video images between 3 and 5 weeks of age. This was based on the principle we commonly call ‘socialisation‘ – that exposure to stimuli in puppyhood (particularly from about 3 weeks until 12-14 weeks) creates adult dogs that are less fearful and less anxious, and so impacts upon the temperament and coping style of the dog. The authors said, “puppies that are not exposed to particular kinds of environmental stimuli during this period have an increased likelihood of developing a fearful response to those stimuli, which may present clinically either as inappropriate avoidance behaviour, fearful withdrawal, or fear-related aggression”.

Because puppies at 3-5 weeks show no sign of fear when approaching objects, but start to have fearful responses at 5 weeks, and most puppies will display fear often as 7 week olds, it was theorised that exposing puppies to stimuli at 3-5 weeks may help shape future behaviour in a positive way.

Particularly, these researchers considered that puppies raised in sterile kennel environments (i.e. Dunbar’s ‘lemon puppies’) could be bettered though audiovisual stimulation. In other words, television as a remedy to the sub-standard socialisation in kennels.

In this experiment, puppies were raised in a ‘commercial’ establishment in a barren pen, with two meals a day, housed with mum.

The experiment used 7.16 minutes of video were 50% ‘animate’ (people, dogs, etc) and 50% ‘inanimate’ (such as traffic, vacuum cleaner, etc). The television was played as ‘normal’ – not loud and not with modification to the colour composition of the screen.