Goodbye Everybody

Today, was our last time visiting Pickles in Greeley.  Poor Pickles had to leave all his friends behind.

Get this thing off me

While we were visiting last, there was one collar that Brandy and Mike were switching around from puppy to puppy.  Whichever puppy had the collar on was seriously distracted.  He would run around in large circles away from the other puppies hopping on three legs while his fourth leg tried to itch the collar around his neck.  Eventually he would stop sit down and start itching, then get up again and start hopping again often yelping helplessly.

Photos Photos Photos

Visit # 3

We went to visit the puppies for the final time this evening.  Next time, we get to bring him home.  The puppies have at least doubled in size since we last saw them.  They were running, playing, and tumbling all over each other.  We played outside in the cold and snow for a while with all of them. 


All the puppies were so friendly that if you slapped your hands on the ground enticingly and called them, all of them would storm into your lap.  Pickles was very outgoing, friendly, and people oriented: exactly what we are looking for.  They also bragged that he is possibly the smartest puppy of them all.  After the puppies started getting cold we went inside and they all fell asleep immediately in their playpen while we sat with pickles in the other room.  We got a demonstration of sanding his nails down with a dremel which he didn't seem to mind at all.

 When we got up to leave, Brandy put the puppy blanket that we brought with our scent on it into the puppy pen and Pickles curled up on it to go to sleep.  Amazingly this wasn't even staged, and he was out in less than a minute.

Learning to Sit

Add basic obedience training to list of things pickles is learning before we even take him home.  The other things for which we are super grateful to Brandy and Mike include: potty training, taking the puppies on individual car rides, teaching them to sleep in a crate by themselves at night, leash training, meeting chickens, learning to sit, and just about everything else they do. 

Meeting the Chickens

Lucky for us Brandy and Mike have a flock of backyard chickens that they are introducing the puppies to.  Pickles is hopefully learning that chickens are friends not food.  His sister, Bindi, however, tried to take a taste.

Eye Exams

Today, the puppies all went to have their eyes checked.  They were looking for any Iris Colobomas; where a dog will be missing part of its iris causing him to squint in bright sunlight.  Since we plan to spend a lot of time outside with our pup; this would affect how suitable the puppy is for us.  Luckily, all the puppies have perfect clear eyes and in Pickles case perfect blue eyes.  I think he is officially reserved for us now.

Temperament Testing

Today, the puppies were temperament tested. This involves having a stranger take each puppy individually and test it's personality to determine how dominant, submissive, independent, adaptable it is. Of the three puppies with tails: bananaz, bindi, and picklez. Picklez and Bananaz tested very similar scoring 3s and 4s on the test. This corresponds to the middle of the spectrum and a perfect companion dog. These dogs are highly attracted to people and willing to work retrieving, guiding, etc. They are also quick to forgive and handle stress really well. The 3rd puppy, Bindi, the female tested 5s and 6s which is the high end of the scale with 5s being very submissive, shy, and nervous and 6s being very independent. A puppy testing 1s or 2s would be very dominant, aggressive and take some expert training. Bananaz was selected for another family with kids and Pickles is just right for us!

Going for a Walk

The puppies got their first experiences with collars and leashes.  Pickles appears to know exactly what leashes are for and tried to take his sister, Bindi, for a walk.

Sloppy Kisser

The pups all got their pictures taken on valentines day.

Nesting

We have started to slowly acquire a lot of puppy gear over the past couple of weeks. We bought a crate off of craigslist, unfortunately it does not collapse so we will most likely get another more portable crate for traveling. I made a cushion for the bottom of the crate along with a couple stuffed toys and braided fleece ropes. We also bought a puppy Kong, Busy Buddy Waggle, Nylabone, and bully stick. We have both an undercoat rake and pin brush to groom with. For leash ware, we have a flat buckle collar, a thin 4ft leash for him to drag around, and a larger 6ft leash for when he's bigger; all three are a nice forest green. We got both his food and water bowls at GoodWill. Still on the shopping list are dog food, a flexible shower head for bath time, toothbrush, toothpaste, ID tag. Anything else that we're missing?

Visit #2

The puppies were 4.5 weeks old when we went back to see them again.  They were up walking around and playing.  They were not interested in people and also starting to play with each other.  Amazingly, Brandy and Mike their human parents had already begun potty training using puppy pads.  It was mostly still hit or miss whether they went on or off the puppy pad.  After an hour of playing they were all completely exhausted and fell right asleep.  As we got up to left, Darcy was let back inside, immediately waking all of the puppies, which in turn initiated them all to start crying, following after Darcy, and peeing everywhere.  They certainly were a handful.