Bug

Thank you for your comment on Rigby!  He sure is something, quite a personality.  Your Bug is also very cute!  Rigby doesn't shed much.  Not sure what his adult coat will be like.  There are hairs once in a while but nothing like when I pick up one of our outside cats.  They leave hair all over our clothes!  Or my Aussie, she leaves fur balls all over!  I only brush him once a week if that and there isn't too much in the shedding brush, the Aussie on the other hand I am constantly cleaning out the brush!  Rigby' s father is a double doodle and mother is a golden doodle.  I am also a Special education teacher!  I am hoping Rigby will be a Therapy dog one day!

Is Bug home yet?!  You wrote me a while ago to say my pup Mattie is cute and said that any advice I had for a new puppy would be welcome.  I thought about it and I think I would give you these thoughts.....

-First of all.... don't worry about doing it all the right way, it will all turn out all right in the end :-)

-Puppies bite a lot as they play and it's normal.  I thought Mattie was going to be a terror.  She would clamp onto the ends of my pants every time we went outside, onto my hair when we would play, and nip at us when ever our hands or faces got close to her cute little mouth with razor sharp teeth in them.  We worked consistently to give a yelp when she bit (a loud yelp just like other pups might do, it's their language for "that hurt, don't do that" and just put something in her mouth that was supposed to be there.  A toy.  Over time her biting got less and less.  I think she was about 4.5 months old when I finally realized that she (usually) doesn't use teeth with us when she plays anymore.

-Socialize early and often and for everything.  We took Mattie to parties, to our coffee shop, into pet stores, to puppy obedience classes (starting at 10 weeks but they said you could and should start earlier as long as the place is good about making sure the other pups are at about the same vaccination level), to puppy play time at the same place so that she could learn how to play and get bite inhibition down, in the car (LOTS of time in the car), to friends' houses, around babies, toddlers, people of all shapes and sizes and colors, played music loud and soft, vacuumed around her, said hello to mail carriers, police people and firefighters.....and on and on and on.  She's nine months old now and I think it's still important to get her out into the world and try lots of new things.  We were super worried about parvo when she was really young and we carried her most places (embarrassingly :-/ ) so I think we could have relaxed about that a little bit but maybe it was better to be a little overly cautious than to subject her to the possibility.

-Bully sticks are amazing.  Enough said.

-Another note on playing with other puppies; their play can look aggressive sometimes with snarling teeth and lots of growling and barking.  As long as the puppies are not staying in one position for too long (like pinning another dog down by the neck and not letting it up after 10 seconds or more) their play should be a little rambunctious.  A little yelp from the other dog when things go to far is important for our pups to hear so that they know they're playing too hard.  It's hard to watch sometimes because it looks so vicious but it's the way they figure things out.  That said, I am not a professional, these are just things I've learned along the way.  It's good to have someone who knows about puppies like a trainer watching in case things do go too far, which sometimes they can.

-I also think Mattie could have gone the whole night through in her crate without us taking her out every 2.5 hours much earlier than we did.  Dogs have a hormone that suppresses their need to go to the bathroom while they are asleep and makes it so that they can hold it (and you can get just a touch more sleep) during the night.  Maybe at the very beginning it's a good idea to do the every few hours but then I think we would have just let her tell us when she needed to go instead of having the schedule like we did.  Talk with others and see what they did too.

I hope that's not too much info!  I was just thinking about what we would have liked to know early on from others.  Every dog must be different though and these are only my experiences.  I hope they help!  It's crazy, the puppy time was hard but already I look back and think "aw, that wasn't so bad...and she was so cute!".  She just gets cuter to us everyday though and makes l

Oh look at that little bundle!!  How sweet!  Congrats on the baby bug!!  My Douglas weighs 39 pounds.  He will be six months tomorrow.  He is projected to reach 45 pounds.  I'm hoping he'll be bigger than that, he has a good year left of growing time I believe.

Thank you!  We think so too.  We're completely smitten over here.  You're little Bug looks like such a sweetie!  Is Bug home with you yet?  Welcome to DK!

He certainly is a LOVE Bug

N ice to have you with us here on DK!