So, rather sooner than intended, both mum and I now have little Working Cocker Spaniel pups! And here they are, the sisters now known as Whirligig (my little monster, and the smaller darker pup) and Dazzle (mum’s little smiler and the paler pup).
Both pups are destined for Agility, as well as being involved in the various other activities we dabble in, and there’s so much you can start to teach young pups right from the start these days so they’ll be using their little brains from the off, and learning how to co-ordinate their bodies and to be aware of their feet through various proprioception exercises! And positive early socialisation and familiarisation are so important in building confident, well adjusted adult dogs, so we’ll be working hard at trying to expose them to positive new experiences each day (although people can sometimes overdo this and end up taking their pups out all day with them to a multitude of places when in fact a new experience could be something as simple as investigating a new toy or random object or just popping to the shops, so we’ll be working carefully to balance any potentially over-stimulating experiences with lots of sleep breaks and ‘down time’ to give their growing bodies and brains a chance to process it all and recover).
Anyway, we’ve got a huge list of things we want to start teaching them, and a long ‘to do’ list of new experiences, so I want to try to keep a log of it all to keep track of what we’re achieving each day, and that’s where this blog comes in! I’m going to try to use it to document what I’ve been doing with Whirli and to monitor her progress. I’m not quite sure of the format this information might take yet; we’ll have to see how it evolves as I work out what I’m trying to put in it!! But let’s start with days 1-5 and see how we go!
These first days for both pups were spent mostly with me as mum hasn’t been very well, so both Whirli and Dazzle have been together with me most of the time. From a certain point of view I think this has actually made the transition for them from leaving their litter mates to moving in with our families a little bit less traumatic as they’ve had each other for company and back up, and now that we’re just starting to slowly separate them they are at least both already familiar with both of our homes and being crated etc.
Day 1 – 25th August 2010
Collection and settling in of pups. A day that originally seemed like it would be a quiet day with the intention of not adding in too many extra experiences, but that in fact held many new events and learning experiences!
Age: 8 weeks, 1 day
Weight: Whirli – 6.4lb Dazzle – 8.6lb
New people: Me, mum, dad
New Dogs: Finn, Willow (Border Collies), Ziggy (GSD)
Other animals: Loki & Hagar (Cats)
New toys: Tuggies, soft cloth ball, squeaky plastic toy, squeaky cuddly dog, Kongs
New foods: Wainright’s cooked natural food,
New titbit foods: chicken slices, ham, polony, hot dog sausages, mini-bones
New experiences: Everything today was a new experience! Highlights include:
• Car travel & crates
• Exploration of mum’s living room and yard
• First intro to toys and playing with us
• First intro to titbits and stuffed Kongs
• Intro to non-related dogs and cats (through crate doors!)
• Exploration of my living room, garden and utility room
• Introduction to being left alone in the utility room
• Strange noises – footballers playing behind the house, telephone ringing, tv sounds
• New collar on
Body awareness/Co-ordination skills/Under, Over, Through things:
• Up and down patio steps at mum’s and at mine
• Under my bent legs whilst sat on the floor
• Over the cardboard box blocking pups from climbing under the tv bench!
• Between the small gap between the wall and the puppy gate propped against it (and backing up out of the gap again)
• Over and under the bottom shelf of my coffee table
Details of days 2-6 to follow, but it's hard finding the time to get anything composed with the pups! I'd forgotten just how much hard work they are in these first few weeks, and I feel shattered! It's taken me 6 days just to get this bit written up!!
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