Tag Archives: puppy

12/14/12

Resources for New Puppy Owners

I started compiling this list for my puppy buyers, but realised that it would probably be of use to other people intending on adding a puppy to their lives soon.  I have tried to narrow this list down to the resources that I genuinely think are the best. I understand that many people are strapped for time, so I’ve included, in bold, my favourite of the resources listed.  This means that, if you can’t read all of these links, then just accessing the first one would be my recommendation.

Photo © Ruthless Photos.

 

Books

Before You Get Your Puppy (free download!) by Dr Ian Dunbar

After You Get Your Puppy (free download!) by Dr Ian Dunbar

The Perfect Puppy in 7 Days by Dr Sophia Yin

The Perfect Puppy by Gwen Bailey

First Call for Dogs by Dr Alex Hynes

 

Preparing for a Puppy Continue reading →

12/12/12

Puppies – The Third Week

Clover with six puppies in the whelping box, with the 'door down' so that they have a bit of a pen.

The puppies turned 3 weeks old, and they started to get busy! They started walking, and toys were interested to their pen. Their pen was made bigger. Grass was also added to the end of the pen, so they can start toilet training (in theory).

The puppies only met one new person this week. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t meet a lot of people – they did! Just they were all (but one) repeats of the week before.

From the 25th of November (puppies at 19 days old) the puppies started to approach people in a happy way.

A waterbowl was introduced to the pen for puppies, but no pups were really interested at this age.

The set-up in this picture was soon changed, as the puppies weren’t quite strong enough to get up the ramp into the whelping box. The whelping box came out, and so the puppies were left with just a pen.

12/6/12

Perfect Puppy in 7 Days

As a huge fan of Dr Sophia Yin’s blog, I kept seeing mentions of The Perfect Puppy in 7 Days book.  It seemed like a pretty cool idea, to me!

With my current litter, I always like to think about new resources for puppy buyers, and so started to investigate this a bit further… After reading a few pages on Google books, I was hooked, and I had to order it!

The book is very much targetted as new puppy buyers, and suits this audience very well. It has heaps of illustrations (400, the cover claims) that show every step of the way, for every little bit in the book!

I loved that this book went into puppy body language, as well, which I think is something often neglected in training books.  Dr Yin describes how to identify when a puppy is ‘playful’ versus ‘fearful’ and so forth.  To me, this is a really important part of puppy raising, and I’m glad it’s included.

Dr Yin is very into tethering puppies, which is a commonly suggested strategy by puppy trainers. What makes this book different is that it actually demonstrates what being tethered to a puppy could looks like through the use of photographs.

Maybe because I’m still recovering from all the socialisation emphasis of Dunbar, but this was something a little lacking from this book. There is a chapter dedicated to socialisation, and it is good. It has a very extensive checklist for puppy raisers, and answers the important question: “What to do if you notice signs of fear and anxiety in your puppy”. However, it’s tucked away right at the end of the book. I’d put this kind of stuff at the start.

Dr Yin talks about picking a breeder, and what a breeder should be doing first in terms of socialisation and habituation.  I really enjoyed this part of the book, and it even gave me some new ideas on what I could be doing with my puppies.

I would recommend this book to a new puppy owner.  This is who the book is made for, and it fulfils this purpose well. For those that are more dog savvy, I am not sure if you’ll find this book terribly beneficial – however, once you’ve read it, you can then recommend it to new puppy owners yourself.

Sadly, the book was some-what difficult to find online, but I did manage to get a copy from a private seller on Amazon. That being said, it is sold at a good price for such quality material.

12/4/12

Puppies – The Second Week

The puppies had been on this earth for 2 weeks! In this week, the puppies continued early neurological stimulation.  They met 8 new people, meaning they have now met 30 people in their 14 days of life.  The puppies had their first nail trim and were wormed for the first time.

Jakkalberry, 14 days old.

Physically, the puppies have now got their eyes open and their ears partially open.  They are starting to toilet on their own, and starting to stand up to toilet.

Boomer, 14 days old.

11/21/12

Not Enough Milk

On day 4 of our puppies, I was woken by a crying puppy.  This is not unusual. Puppies cry to voice their unhappiness at various times, and puppies often cry when they’re not touching mum or a sibling. However, the crying puppy on day 4 was different because this puppy was drinking and crying.  To me, this was a frustrated cry because there was not enough milk available.

This is "Boomer", the worse offender of the crying!

The puppies have been gaining weight, but not as they should.  It may be an ‘old wives tale’, but I was always told puppies should double their weight in the first week. These puppies haven’t come close.

This, along with the frustrated milk-sucking, made me conclude that Clover didn’t have enough milk for her big brood.

Immediately, I started feeding Clover fenugreek, which is supposed to increase milk production. It’s a herb/spice, and couldn’t hurt the situation.

I went and purchased Wombaroo (a dog milk substitute), baby bottles, and set on getting some milk formula into the puppies. Gee, that sounds a lot easier than the reality. There was no way I could get any puppy sucking the bottle.

A friend suggested a more time consuming method, of using a dropper to drop milk into the puppies’ mouths.  The puppies were far more receptive to this method – but, of course, the two smallest puppies weren’t having a bar of it.

However, the good news is, these puppies are not on death’s door by any means. Except for their frustrated crying, they’re doing everything puppies should do. They look plump, they move around the whelping box easily, they cry when they’re unhappy, they twitch in their sleep. The good part of this story is that they’re not fat puppies, either.  Border terrier babies have a habit of getting too fat to walk, so the fact that these puppies are slightly leaner is a good sign.

So, things are not ‘smooth sailing’, but things aren’t dire.  We are managing.