Last day for all five

This evening, Haymitch (now "Gus") will go home with his new family. It is a very bittersweet day for me. I am thrilled that he is getting such a wonderful family and I will miss him very much. I wanted to get a last photo of them sleeping together. Should have done it earlier this morning as they were all in a pile. I've had the heater and fireplace on all day so the house has gotten warm. Thus, they are all spread out although Gael went over and snuggled with "Gus"after I took the 1st photo.

Cool weather

The weather has turned cool and the puppies are feeling their Wheaties. They had their 1st shots yesterday and I had thought they might be a little sore today but no signs of it. Gidget was a bit frisky as  well and kept taking toys from the puppy pen and bringing them outside. Yesterday, my rescue coordinator brought a raw bone for the puppies to gnaw on but they weren't really interested so we gave it to Gidget who promptly took it off somewhere and hid it (in the yard, thank goodness). I have searched high and low but so far no sign of it.

Some of the puppies have tried to go in the doggie door. It's a double flap deal so they have only gotten 1 so far. I think if it were a single, they'd have it. Here's a short video. You can see Gidget bringing a toy out the door a the end:-)

Haymitch is set to go to his forever home tomorrow. I am going to miss him so much. He's a good little boy and I know he will have a wonderful life with his new family. Here he is playing in the yard this afternoon.

Go Figure

I have been struggling with getting the puppies to eat well. I had them out this morning. (Good puppies, all went potty). When they came in, they started eating from the dry (Royal Canin) food that I leave in their  bowls. They had eaten a good breakfast around 6:30am of scrambled egg, ground turkey, canned Innova and dry Royal Canin mini starter. Gidget had gotten into the pen while the puppies were out and ate most of their dry food (she having turned her nose up at the plain dry food I offered her for breakfast:-). So I was going to put some more dry food in for them and decided to toss in a bit of the dry Innova puppy food I am feeding Gidget and that I had tried when they were first eating solid food. I wasn't expecting them to touch it as they didn't like it before but I am thinking I need to get them transitioned to something not quite so expensive before they go to their forever homes and I am about out of the Royal Canin (how's that for a long sentence?). Well, lo and behold, they scarfed it up. I ended up having to add another scoop as they licked the bowl clean. It's great news and will make my life a lot easier.

I buried some toys in the sand box this morning before taking them outside. They immediately got in and dug the toys out and chased each other around the yard to get whatever toy a sibling had. I had quit taking toys out there because they were far more interested in investigating the yard than in playing with toys out there but they kept them busy for a while this way. Reinforces their digging inthe sandbox, too.

I have been trying to work on "come" with them but have little luck with any other than Gael. He almost always comes when I call the puppies. However, I found that squeaking a squeaky toy gets them all coming en masse. So, what I will do is start pairing "come" with the squeaky toy and see how that works.

They seem to like taking food out of my hand. I am using mostly home made treats that I use for my own dog's training but also using Zuke's Mini natural salmon treats. They are pretty big and chewy but they like them. I can cut them into quarters so that I can give more and it doesn't take so long to eat but as I haven't been thinking ahead and as I keep a pocket full of the Zuke's to treat my dog and Gidget when they do things I like, I always have a supply on hand. The puppies know this too. They are about to chew holes in every pair of pants I own. Whenever I am sitting with them, they try to chew their way into my pocket:-)

Peel me a grape

I find that the puppies eat better out of my hand than out of a bowl. And, I guess I am spoiling them a bit but Haymitch carries it to the extreme. He was laying on his back next to me yesterday and I gave him a piece of kibble to see if he wanted it. Well, he lay there and ate as long as I popped a piece in his mouth. I was about to die laughing. All I could think of of was the line I used in the title of this post. He was perfectly happy:-)

I'm going to miss the "puppy pile on"

The battle of the toy

Gidget sometimes will take a toy out of the puppy pen when she leaves. I found this rubber doggie toy she had evidently tried to bury in the yard a while back. I had scrubbed and scrubbed it and it wasn't coming clean so I put it in the dishwasher. When I emptied it this morning, I put the toy back in the pen. Well, this has got to be the most wonderful toy in the world:-) I have no idea if it was because it was new, if it smelled yummy or if there was some other reason that they all wanted it. I don't remember them ever paying that much attention to it before. The battle had been going on for about 5 minutes when I decided to get the camera out and try to get some video. Usually when I do that, it is a signal to them to stop whatever cute behavior they were doing right away. But, they kept at it, even ending up in the litter pan:-(. Have a look. I thought it was hysterical.

I hit on a winning combination of food that they will eat with relish. Not a very complete ration but I was encouraged. I browned some ground turkey and scrambled an egg. They absolutely gorged themselves. Actually, Peeta threw it all up right after he finished and I hadn't thought he had eaten as much as Prim and Gael (who tend to eat the best, hence their much larger size). He was playing with me just before and went right back to playing afterwards so I guess he didn't suffer any lasting harm. I'll mix some of the ground turkey and an egg with some kibble for their lunch and see how that goes. I fed them kibble by hand earlier. They will eat food out of my hand when they will ignore it in the bowl. Their mamma is that way too, or was, she's back to eating everything that, as the saying goes, "doesnt eat her first". 

Haymitch is the first to get adopted

I've been going through applications and emailing and talking to people on the phone for several days. Tonight the 1st family to see the puppies came to our house. Lovely people who came thinking they wanted to adopt Katness and decided on Haymitch instead. He is so cute and his doe eyes really won them over, I guess. He decided he liked the mom and crawled up in her lap and that was all she wrote. He gazed into her eyes and I was a little jealous:-) I think he will be adored by this family and well cared for. That makes it all worthwhile. I knew it was going to be difficult to see them go. I didn't realize how difficult it was going to be to go through this process.

All the puppies were good although Katness and Peeta tended to stay in the puppy pen and didn't seem all that interested in meeting new people. Got to work on that one:-)

After the family left, Katness woke up and I went in to play with her a bit. She was being so sweet. I took her out of the pen and sat with her on the sofa for a while. Haven't done too much of that and it was so nice. My dog wanted to get in on the action but finally went over and lay next to my husband.

They're all tuckered out. Not sure whether its from playing outside or from the visitors.

sits... click and treat

I had a few small treats left in my pocket that I had been using when I was working with my dog on some Rally behaviors so I decided to see how it would go getting sits with the puppies. There were 4 puppies (Gael was sleeping) that mobbed me when I went into the pen. (probably should have tried this with 1 puppy at a time but I really wanted to see how it would work this way) I sat on the floor and Prim was the 1st to sit so I clicked and treated her. I was able to capture a few sits (mostly Haymitch who tends to be much quieter than the others) but occasionally Prim and Katness as well. I was able to lure them into a sit some. They were mostly jumping all over me and trying to get to the treats but I was seeing a few opportunities to click and treat so I kept it up. When I ran out of treats, I decided to see what would happen if I used some of their kibble. There was a bowl next to me so I just reached in and went to town clicking and treating any sit (Haymitch and Katness ended up being the calmest and getting the most. I was amazed that they were working for the kibble since the bowl is always out for them. Guess it was just the idea of getting it from me.

All in all, I was really pleased with how it went. Since they are not big eaters, I have been hesitant to do much training as I want them to view the treat as a reward and if they don't, then it wouldn't be much incentive for them to learn what I am trying to teach them. I will take them 1 at a time tomorrow and see how that goes. One benefit of doing it in the pen is that they are very familiar with that area. When they go out anywhere else, they want to explore and I will have a harder time keeping their attention. They are smart puppies and I think they will get the hang of it pretty quickly. Will let you know how it goes tomorrow.