Haven't checked in lately

[Leslie du Mont]

Well, Atty is now 14 weeks old. We love him SOOOO much!

{{{Our boy!}}} He's the star of his puppy class. His two instructors fight over who loves him most and call him their star student! He's mastered sit, down, leave it, take it, and walks on a loose leash and sits when we stop. :-) He "gets" potty training, but still doesn't really let us know he needs to go so I just bought Poochie Bells to help with that. I've got my fingers crossed that he gets the hang of it.

His deployed Navy dad comes home in late July so we're trying to get more tricks under our belt to show off to him! Atticus loves jumping in our pool whenever his "special float" is near the edge...so we bought him a life jacket for when he's outside and we're swimming to keep him safe! He's a chewing machine and wants to eat rocks and mulch constantly. (ARgh) Atty's has gone from 6.2 lbs at 8 weeks to just over 10 lbs at 13 weeks. Our vet thinks his tummy woes were caused by something in his food and that might have been causing his rather low weight gain. We switched him from Flynt River to Wellness SM5 for large breed puppies and that seems to have helped his slight tummy issues plus he's now putting on more weight...which for him is good.

Anyhow, this was basically just to catch us up since we've been so busy this summer.

[Leslie du Mont]

Have fun at puppy class, Jane! We all really enjoy ours.

How often to work outside of class probably all depends on how quickly your puppy learns. Each week as Atty learns a new command, we add it to our repetoir and practice them all together. We have two or three "training sessions" per day where we get out the treat bag and the clicker. And then throughout the rest of the day we do the commands at times when they make sense without having the treat bag and clicker out. It is working for us. We were very lucky to find two good trainers at our local Petsmart. They answer all of our questions during the week if we have them, too. I also read "the Art of Raising a Puppy" and "Puppies for Dummies."

These dogs seem to be so smart and so easy to train. I must with everyone on Doodlekisses.com that Doodles are indeed special!

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Guinness starts puppy class on Friday. How much do you work with outside of class to have him so well trained at this age?

[Michele Barton]

Wow, you must have ESP. I was just thinking about Atticus today and wondering how you were doing. Thanks for the update, I'm so glad that he's doing well!

[LuvMyAbby&Kaela]

Atta boy Attie!

[Linda,Yankee & Finn]

Nice to hear from you and so glad that Atticus is doing just great. Enjoy!

[Adrianne Matzkin]

So glad you are keeping us up to date with Atticus. DD will be thrilled to see how big he has gotten and all the tricks he can do. Keep checking in and let us know how yo BOTH are doing.