A Taste of Things to Come

The puppies have been spending their weekend in Hopedale.  We have been working almost non-stop at the house since Friday morning.  We are almost done with the kitchen and dining room.  After that we will move upstairs to the bedrooms and bathroom.  The puppies have done well in their new home, even if they've only been visiting so far.  There is still a lot of clutter around because of the upcoming yard sale.  Their favorite thing about their new house is definitely the stairs.  They love to run up and down them.  We've also been able to take them for a few walks around the pond that is right around the corner.  They love going into the Parklands and sniffing around.  On our last walk we met the cutest Beagle puppy who was the same age as Tessie but smaller than Skippy.  

The puppies have both come pretty close to mastering the "wait" command that we've been working on at puppy kindergarten.  When they're focusing I can walk the whole length of my mother's backyard with them sitting at the other end "waiting."  Of course, if they don't want to do it or are distracted by something then we have a problem - which is what we have to work on now.  We practiced this command at puppy K again this week and both puppies got complimented by our trainer for how well they did with it.  Next week we will have two puppy kindergarten graduates.  We have signed up for the follow-up class, Puppy Graduates, which will begin on May 17th.

I started something new on Flickr to kind of go along with this Puppyhood blog.  I began a new account where I will be uploading all of my pictures (I got fed up with Picassa's space limitations).  Each puppy has a "one a week" album where I will upload one picture a week of each of them.  I think it will be a fun way to look back at their growth.  As I was starting them this morning I realized we have only had them for a little over 6 weeks.  I couldn't believe it, as it seems like they've been here forever.  Here are links to each album:

Tessie - http://flickr.com/photos/kris10brown/sets/72157604754731030/

Skippy - http://flickr.com/photos/kris10brown/sets/72157604754737292/

Skippy the Superstar

Skippy is the Daily Puppy!  Visit http://www.dailypuppy.com to check him out.  I submitted both puppies but I have many more pictures of Skippy for one reason - Tessie doesn't stay still.  I've been trying to get good pics of her all week while I've been off but she's a tough cookie to catch.  

Vacation Week - woohoo!

This picture is of Skippy and Juma, the Mastiff that lives in the house behind my mom's.  I mentioned him in another post and I've been waiting and waiting to get a shot of them together.  There is a chain link fence between the two yards and every time I let Skip and Tessie out over there the first thing they do is run to the fence to see if Juma and Bindi are out.  Bindi is an American Bulldog that the family also has.  Their mom tells me they do the same thing.  They love coming out to see the puppies.  Bindi and Tess will run up and down the fence together over and over and over.  

This week I am off from work so my plan is to do some training with the puppies.  It's hard to work with them when I'm at work all day because 1. I'm tired and 2. they want to play not work.  At this point they both know "sit," "down," and "shake" but we say "paw."  We haven't gotten to "Stay" at Puppy K yet but that's definitely tops on my list for this week.  Skippy has been starting "sit up" because that's his natural inclination when he's sitting and I'm holding food over his head.  Tessie seems less inclined to learn the fluff commands.  She took to "down" right away but getting her to give me her paw was like pulling teeth.  I'd like to work on the leash walking too but that has to be done when I have someone else to help me.  The puppies and I will also be working on packing things up for our move to Hopedale.  I'd like to be able to bring a load of stuff down their each day but we will see how it goes.  We should be into the new house by the end of May.  I can't wait.

Another thing we've been working on is getting the puppies to stop eating mulch.  I've never seen two dogs that want to eat mulch more than these two.  I think Skippy took to it after watching Tessie but now they both do it.  It's particularly bad when I take them to their mom's.  I don't want them ingesting it so I end up having to chase them to get it away from them.  Yesterday my dad put up garden fencing which seems to work so far, although Skippy stuck his head through it a couple times.  

Other than the mulch issue, we've had a great couple of afternoons going down to Milford to play.  They love seeing Bindi and Juma and they love being outside.  Yesterday was pretty warm so I put some ice cubes in their water, which Tessie loved!  It looked as if she was bobbing for ice cubes and when she would get one she would lie in the grass and eat it, she loved them!  It distracted her from the mulch for a while too, which is a very good thing.  

Here are a couple videos of the puppies shaking paws....

Spring Fever

The forecast for this weekend was grim.  Rain, rain, rain.  It had me wondering what we were going to do to keep two energetic puppies busy indoors for the whole weekend.  And when we were on our way to puppy kindergarten this morning it seemed like the forecasters were right.  However, when we stepped foot outside after puppy K, it was a much different story.  The sun was shining and it had to be close to 70 degrees!  We headed down to Hopedale to get the puppies acclimated to what will be their new walking trail around the pond.  They loved it!  We even let Skippy off leash for a while (well, on leash but no one was holding the other end).  He did great coming back when he was called and staying right with us.  

After that we headed over to Milford to run around in the fenced yard for a bit.  Tessie did some digging, Skippy did some fetching, and they both got sprayed by the hose - which Tessie loved!  In fact, she even took a few steps in

to the pond today while we were there.  I had heard that many Satos can be frightened of water but fortunately that doesn't seem to be the case with her.  She was running back and forth through the hose and she loved getting wet!  We can't wait to take her swimming this summer.  She is most definitely lab.

I wanted to share some pictures from the afternoon....

I was able to get a really good shot of each puppy:

Here is Skippy with his curly tongue:

And Tessie with the hose:

pup-itude

Our puppies will be 17 weeks (Tessie) and 12 weeks (Skippy) this weekend.  Next week we will have had them 

one month but it seems like they have been here forever (in a good way, haha).  It is so much fun to watch them as puppies.  Even though they have their moments they are both very good puppies.  Looking back on the time we've had them - 24 days to be exact - they've already changed a lot.  They have such interesting personalities and in the past few days have been developing a lot of attitude - or pup-itude as I call it.  

The night we brought them home Tessie stayed on the dog bed and watched.  She watched everything that went on around her but she wouldn't get off the dog bed.  We carried her to the water bowl and we carried her outside.  We laid on the floor next to her and tried to make her feel comfortable in her new home.  24 days later Tessie can be seen running as fast as she can from the bedroom to the living room, barking when her brother has the toy she wants, and jumping with excitement when we come home.  She will let me chase her when we play outside and she loves it.  We're still working on a few things like walking on the leash, not being scared of new people, and playing slightly less rough with Skippy but she has made so much progress since March 11th.  

Skippy is a champ.  He's a big dog in a little body.  I know he wishes his legs were a little longer so he could keep up with Tessie better but he definitely holds his own for a little guy.  I still have no ides what mix he is or what size he will end up being but we will find out soon enough.  He still loves to be held and give kisses.  He's getting a little more wary of his surroundings, which he could be learning from Tessie.  When we first got him he was kind of oblivious and happy-go-lucky.  Now he notices noises a lot more and is a little less inclined to go and cuddle up to a new person.  It could just be him getting bigger and more aware though.  He's very curious and will follow me around constantly to see what I'm doing.  His favorite - when I unload the dishwasher.  He'll sit and watch until I finish.

I've been looking at pictures of the time we've had them and can already see differences from the first days and our latest pictures from the Cape.  We love them both so much.  Thinking about how things happened on the day we decided to go to the shelter in Sterling makes me really believe that these puppies were meant to be ours.  There were just so many things that happened that day that normally wouldn't have that I can't help but see how we were brought to them.  I'm glad we were.