Our Adventures with Molly

[Dawn and Molly]

Well, it has been an eventful few months on our puppy journey.  Molly is 5 months now and I wanted to update things from my last blog post to hopefully encourage those of you still in the puppy stage.  About a month and a half ago I was so worried about the mouthing  and biting.  She would jump and bite my kids' clothes and me as well at times.  I tried my best to follow Doggy Dan's advice and it did help.  However, I realized when my son came home from his first baseball game and she tore a nice size hole in his uniform shirt, that we needed more help (he looks super cool with the red patch I had to fix it with by the way).  We signed her up for puppy kindergarten.

So, we enrolled Molly in an 8 week course and hoped this would help.  After one of the first sessions I realized an important thing.  This course was for me as much as it was for Molly.  The trainer called her up as a demo dog and she did the skill like she was on a training video.  The training method they use is based on a lot of positive reinforcement.  I think Molly learned a lot, and I did as well.  It was also great to have the social interaction from all of the other dogs.  She has a BFF next door (a yellow lab that is a few months older), but it has been great to see her with all different types of dogs in a safe environment.  

She graduated from Puppy Kindergarten last week.  She is doing so much better.  She is listening, doing great with loose leash walking, and my biggest excitement is the mouthing/biting has pretty much stopped.  I also wonder if the fact that she has lost a lot of her puppy teeth has helped.  Our clothes have all remained hole free.  We do, however, need to watch out for our socks.  Molly is a sock eater.  The first time she did it, we were able to get her to throw it up.  The second time we had to take her to the vet emergency room and they got her to throw it up. That was not a fun night.  We have a consult appointment to help with this behavior with our trainer.  She will sometimes grab towels or things she is not supposed to have and run from us.  I just thought the money for the consult would be worth it if we can avoid taking her in for emergency surgery.  She is a smart dog, so I am hoping we can train her (and us) on how to help with this behavior.  

Did I mention Molly is also known as super girl?  I posted on here about a month ago that she had jumped our baby gates in the kitchen.  Well, yesterday she got over our chainlink backyard fence.  It was because she was in the backyard and wanted to get to me in the front yard.  With the summer coming, I am going to take her to the water and see how she likes dock jumping... I am trying to be positive.  I will have to let you know how this turns out.  

Having a puppy is never dull.  We have our first grooming appointment this week, so I will post a picture afterwards.  Stay tuned for our continued adventures or misadventures, in puppy life.  

[Dawn and Molly]

After her grooming appointment.  She can see!

[Linda, Charlie Brown and Beau]

Thank you for sharing your adventures with Molly.  She is sure a cutie and a character!  I love that.  Looking forward to seeing photos of her new hairdo!

[Amy and Annabelle]

Annabelle was a sock eater as well. She is like me and ice cream, I know I shouldn't have it, but it is so tempting. I can just see the longing in her eyes when she sees a tasty sock on the floor. However she leaves it alone. Me and ice cream...not so much. So that day will come for Molly. Jumping the fence though is scary. We live in the country and have an abundance of wildlife. One of the critters dug a hole under our fence and Annabelle found it and escaped. Last summer she would have run off, but yesterday she just sat and waited until my husband went to get her. Between the training and getting older they become well behaved doods.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Great blog!! Sounds like things are working out. My Vern is six and will still try to eat a sock if we don't put them up. My husband is 59 and still won't put his coffee cup in the dishwasher in the morning :) I think some things are just easier to do ourselves. LOL

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

I enjoyed reading your blog update on Molly. It was entertaining and informative - not always a winning combination.  Good luck with the sock stealing - our last foster was 5 and still had that bad habit, but since socks were the only clothing item she stole, it wasn't impossible to keep socks picked up.