We've Had a Few Breakthroughs!

Yesterday and this morning things have suddenly started to click with both Maple and Gromit.

Maple is starting to go to the door to indicate when she needs to pee and poop.

Last night she slept through from 10:00pm to 5:00am. At 5:00am I took her out for toileting. It took a half hour to convince her to do her business on the cold, frosty grass, but finally she did. When she came back into the house, she happily crawled back into her crate and went back to sleep without a whimper. And she didn't want to get up until 7:00am when Gromit was agitating to go out. I think the training we did just before bed time helped to tire her out.

She can now come and sit on command. She can nearly drop on command, but still needs the encouragement of following the treat down to the floor from sit.

Maple is doing quite well with learning bite inhibition. She is not a nippy dog so this makes teaching bite inhibition quite easy.

Gromit is allowing Maple to play and even rough house with him.

Gromit allowed Maple to share his bed for a couple of minutes this morning.

More pictures to follow soon.

Day 3 at Home with Maple

So far, Maple is doing well. We took her to the vet on friday for a quick check up and to be microchipped. She weighed in at 6.0 kg (13.2 lbs), so she is not a small girl, but she is a very healthy one! It is very hard to take a good picture of Maple. Either she is moving, so the pic is blurry, or the light is not right, and with her dark colouring the picture turns out not very good. We'll keep working on it though.

Maple and Gromit have sorted out all their dominance issues. Maple is having a hard time understanding that a 12 year old male dog is not a maternal sort, nor one that wants to rough house with a puppy. But Gromit has accepted Maple into the pack fairly well. He does allow her to jump on him occassionally when they are outside, and several times when Gromit has been playing with us and one of his rubber bones, he has purposely given the bone to Maple to play with for a few minutes, before very gently taking it away from her again. He has even allowed her to scavenge in his food bowl once he has finished eating.

She is starting to learn that peeing is something that should be done outside. Last night she awoke at 4:00am needing a pee. I took her outside, but Maple did not like the cold, wet grass and constantly ran back to the door. I knew that if I let her back in she would run to the newspapers for a pee, so I persevered by taking her back out to the grass. I even went and got some newspapers and put them out on the grass, and then patio, but to no avail, she just wanted in again. So, after 1/2 an hour I woke up the Bored Dad and asked him to come outside and have a pee to show Maple what to do. She was quite interested, and after watching and then sniffing the area where Bored Dad peed, Maple immediately began sniffing around for a good spot, and went pee herself. We rewarded her with a treat, lots of praise, and of course the main prize for having a pee was being allowed back into the nice, warm, dry house!

We have started clicker training with her. As soon as she hears us pick up the clicker she runs over. She is getting fairly reliable with sit and come when there are no distractions. We will start her in puppy pre-school very soon

We haven't yet started retriever training with her. She will chase after a toy, but does not yet bring it back to us, so this is something that we will work on soon. Her favourite toy is a stuffed mallard duck, so we will work on playing fetch with that for the start of training retrieving.

Here She Is!

We picked Maple up this afternoon at the airport. She cried for about 2 minutes in her crate in the car, and then settled down and slept most of the way home.

Once we got home she was very timid and it took a bit of time to coax her out of her crate. She was sticking to us all very closely, and looking cuddles from everyone.

After about an hour she is now much more comfortable at home. She is trying to engage Gromit in play, and playing with some of her toys.

It is proving very hard to take a good picture of Maple, however, as she thinks that the camera is a toy and as soon as she sees it in my hand she runs over to try to play with it, grabbing the strap and trying to grab the actual camera itself.

Dog Essentials on a Budget, #2 - The Crate

Here is the crate that we made for Maple. It is multipurpose and can be made to be smaller for short periods of confinement, and then nearly double the size for when we are out for longer periods of time and when Maple is older. The measurements of the smaller size is 70X90 cm (28X36 inches).

Large crates are very expensive here in Australia, well over $100.00. For a collapsible wire crate the same dimensions as the smaller size given above would be AU$159.00. Ours cost us just under AU$63.00.

Bunnings Warehouse (a large hardware / builders warehouse store) sells wire compost cages for $26.90 each. The consist of 4 wire panels. So we bought 2 of them. We used 6 panels for the 4 sides, a top and a bottom. Then we used the extra 2 panels attached to the door panel so that they could be accordianed together to the door for the smaller size crate, but also stretched out to double the length of the sides for the larger size crate. Then we bought a length of linoleum (also at Bunnings) for $10.00 that we used on top of the wire floor panel and to extend out of the crate to cover the floor of the extended size crate. We used cable ties rather than the metal coil fasteners to attach all the panels to each other, and it is very sturdy with no wobble.

Here is the crate in the small size configuration all ready for Maple and then in large size formation (with the door open).

* we did buy a plastic travel crate for use in the car and also to use in the bedroom at night whilst toilet training Maple. But even factoring in the cost of that crate, we still spent less total on the 2 crates than 1 metal collapsible crate would have cost us.

Dog Essentials on a Budget - The Bed

Even though we have a few weeks to go, we are starting to prepare things ready for Maple. This is partly in anticipation and excitement, but also to help Gromit, our old dog to become accustomed to some new stuff around the house.

We have decided to try to save some $$$ where possible, but not where it will matter for health and happiness of our dogs.

The first thing was to make a dog bed rather than buy one. Gromit prefers to sleep up on 1 particular sofa in the house, and that is fine. But when Maple is here, until she is toilet trained she will not be permitted up on the sofa, nor into the carpeted kids playroom where the kid and dog sofa is located.

But I wasn't happy with the price tags on the dog beds in the various shops that I was in. When Gromit was younger he destroyed several beds and baskets etc. So the other day I took at trip to our local op shop. I was able to buy a single bed doona (polyester fill duvet) in fantastic condition for only $5.00 It was in such great shape that I actually considered keeping it for one of the guest beds! At the same time as buying the doona, I also bought a couple of blanket scraps for $1.00 each.

First I folded the doona into quarters. I tacked down each of the 4 corners of the folded size, and also tacked down in the middle of the short ends and 2X on the long sides. I thought that this would help the doona to keep the smaller size and not slip and shift around to become lumpy.

Then I took one of the blanket scraps and make a slip case for the doona. There was a bit of a hole in the edge of the scrap, so I had to patch that up. The slip case is a little short on the underside. I am debating whether or not to leave it as it is, or to sew some of the other matching blanket scrap onto the slip case to totally encase the doona.

I also made a smaller size bed to go in the crate out of an old, flatish pillow that we had lying around the house. Just put the pillow in a water resistant pillow protector, then in an old pillow case, and wrapped the left over blanket scrap from Vinnies around it.

As you can see, Gromit enjoyed giving the new bed a test run.

A Few More Pics

Here are a couple of pics of Maple and littermates at approx 4 weeks of age.

Thanks Jenny :-)

4 More Weeks To Go...

We have nearly a whole month to go before Maple is actually really our new puppy.  

I think I might go broke during these next few weeks because I can't stop myself from going into pet shops etc whenever I am out and about and looking at all the puppy gear available.   It is so hard to resist buying everything.

I am trying really hard to limit toy purchases though.   But I did have to get a stuffed duck for Maple since she is a duck retrieving breed.   The duck toy looks like a  mallard, but in a dead rubber chicken sort of body posture, and actually makes a quacking kind of sound when squeezed.   When I showed the duck to the Gromit - our kelpie X shepard dog, he was quite interested in it, and actually went into a partial pointer stance with one leg lifted and bent at the "wrist" while looking intently at the duck.  Perhaps Gromit will enjoy learning some retrieving skils with Maple?  Gromit certainly does love to play fetch,  but is not quite so keen on swimming.