Southside Shelties

These boys have made leaps and bounds with their crate training! As long as you don’t plan to stare at them while they’re in their crates, they’ve both learned to chill quietly in their crates ❤️

Everyone had their 7 week shot and vet checkup at our vet today! Everyone was super brave and did great for their shot and checkup and all are healthy. As a bonus, all did *fabulous* on the car ride there and back - no drooling or puking from *anyone* - yay! (And the car ride was mostly silent, even better!)

So, a lot new for the puppies this week. They undoubtedly haven’t realized it yet, but today is the day they are weaning. Gracie was removed this morning (as she is every morning starting around week 3), but she won’t be going back later today for feedings. The pups will see Gracie again, of course, but we will attempt to prevent nursing, so they will transition to fully eating dry puppy food. They also were all microchipped today and they all did fabulous! I am always *amazed* at how well the puppies do, as I know how I flinch at getting shots from much smaller needles. They really don’t care though — yay for tolerant, unbothered puppies! And finally, we are starting to work on them eating on their own in individual crates, and spending time alone in those crates as well. They were a bit apprehensive about going into the airline-type crates, but they all did eventually, once they realized food was inside. What you see on the video is the puppies being let out, one by one. The key here is that we’re looking to see that they are being *quiet* prior to letting them out. They don’t have to be super calm or still (yet… this can come later), but at this point, we’d like to not reward bad behavior in the form of them crying and being rewarded by being let out. All are doing well!

Happy 6 weeks to the holiday litter! Pardon Snowy, he decided to take a swim in the water bowl right before this pic 🤣

After a few days, all the pups understand that they need to make their way into the crate to get their food. Whether that’s a straight line in or not, they eventually make it there! No one is fazed by the door closing behind them any longer either. Progress for sure!

When I mentioned the other day that we add more barriers… we like to be practical about it. Sure, the puppies can go over a pool noodle, but I think it’s important to get them use to a crate. All our adults are crate trained, and I think that’s very important, as there’s nothing I can’t stand more than a car ride with a dog howling endlessly in the back because it’s never been in a crate before. So, we start early. This is a video of the second time we gave the pups their mush in the crate… and once they’ve all squeezed in there (and you see I’ll need to size that crate up, like now 😆), we close the door behind them. This helps them learn to go into the crate on their own free will, and to spend a bit of time in the crate. Of course, this can be continued at home, and they can be worked with one on one, though this helps introduce the concept to them. And the pups do have the crate there at all times while they are playing as well, so they can go in and out as they please.

One of the key tenets in the Puppy Culture program is that puppies benefit from being exposed to low levels of stress and frustration at appropriate times in their development. If they can overcome their fears and self-doubt about what it is they need to do, they’ll be more self-confident and calmer dogs in the long run. To do this, we present them with challenges - They’ve been getting their puppy mush daily for about a week now. For the first few days, it was placed in their whelping box, and they were placed around it. Then, it was placed in the whelping box, and they had to move to the food. The next step is a barrier - where the pups are fed outside of the whelping box and they have to climb over a barrier to get it the food. They have to climb over the barrier to get to the food. The way this works is that they have to learn, no amount of whining, barking, or otherwise will get them help… they have to figure it out on their own. You see, if they’re “helped” and picked up now, they realize that they don’t need to think for themselves and they realize that barking and whining get results (I think some people in the grocery store could use this lesson!). So, today was the first day the puppies got to experience the barrier. As you can see in the video, most of the puppies made it out of the box rather quickly… in fact, surprisingly so, compared to some of our previous litters. Jingle decided that today wasn’t his day, and that’s ok, there’s always tomorrow or the next day (he got food back in the box… just not helped out of the box). Once Jingle makes it out and everyone has this down, we will up the difficulty.