14 weeks

[Oliver]

Oliver is now 14 weeks old! Just did my weekly weighing of him: He now weighs 27.8 lbs. which is an increase of 3.4 lbs. since last week! There's a doodle equation that is pretty accurate in terms of how big a puppy will be as an adult that I can't wait to use when Oliver is 4 months old (only 2 more weeks!). As it is right now, if he only gains 2 more pounds over the next 2 weeks, he should be 60-70 lbs. as an adult. But at the rate he's growing, I haven't seen a <3 lb. increase each week since he was 10 weeks old...so we'll see :)

He's doing really well in puppy class, however, all of the distractions and other dogs are REALLY exciting for him at first. We definitely need to make a few more public trips to places so we can work more on having him pay attention to US even though there are a dozen dogs/kids a few feet away from us!

Other than that, things are going well...I was just telling my husband that Oliver no longer has that "puppy smell," he smells like a big, grown up dog now! :) haha

Oliver is now going into his crate at night by himself. Before, my husband or I would have to lead him in or show him the door, but now when we all go upstairs, he knows exactly what to do. :) Actually, one night we stayed up late and he went up to his crate all by himself! He's also been sleeping through the night, although I think he started doing this every so often since he was 11 weeks. Now, it's every night. :) We usually go to bed around 11pm and he will reliably whine to go potty at 7:30am every morning. It's nice to have a full night of sleep again! :)

We go to the vet this week to get some more puppy shots and to get his Lyme vaccine...

Oliver is doing AMAZINGLY well at stay, however, this week I haven't really been on top of things in terms of training. I would say I've only worked on the stay command with treats directly in front of him a handful of times- and he'd stay and look directly at me about 4 out of 6 times. The other 2 times were definitely too enticing for him to NOT try to go get the treat first. Without treats there to mock him, he's a perfect, staying pupil. :) ...Like, when we're about to go potty: Before, when we were working on potty training, we'd run as fast as we could out the door so there wasn't an accident. Now, I'm working on having him sit and stay with the door wide open before we walk out together. I'm amazed at how well he's doing with this- he looks up directly at me, waiting patiently for me to say, "OK! Let's go!" He's also been doing decent with stay before I have him jump out of the car, but today, in the parking lot before puppy class he was way too excited (I swear he knew where we were) that his attention span was only half a second. Which stinks since dogs jumping out of cars in PARKING LOTS is definitely the most dangerous! (I was still carrying his leash, but you know what I mean...) Anyway, we're working on it.

I also haven't even touched ROLL OVER this past week, ha. With Christmas, everything is a bit crazy! :)

This week I think we're going to continue working on STAY- sit stays, down stays, stay before jumping out of the car, and stays with treats in front of him.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

[Lisette]

Hi- You mention the doodle equation?? Is that on the site somewhere- I tried to search but did not find anything. thanks.

[Sherree]

After reading your entery I see you have a SMART doodle too. I did read one thing that makes me quiver a bit, our breeder recommmended that we DID not let our doodles jump into/onto/off of etc for at least the first year, to protect their hips and joints. We taught our boy "paws" this way he puts his paws on what ever and it is MUCH easier to lift 1/2 a doodle that a full doodle. Just thought I would share, Our Pierre is just 1yr and weights about 80#'s our little girl is 9wks and weights about 17# (she I can still lift) Merry Christmas

[Janie]

Thanks fot the nice read.