|
Ellie's Diary - The Arrival
 My friend Mel, also has a puppy from Ellie's litter. We went to collect Ellie and Mel's pup, Mikki, together. Mel's husband drove and we carried the pups on our laps. Ellie shivered a little on my lap although Mikki seemed quite content. During the journey they got hot on our laps so we put them in a cage together. They slept for a while and Mikki was a little sick just before we reached home.
I brought Ellie into the house and carried her out to the back garden to meet my other dogs. They sniffed her in my arms then I put her down on the ground. I had hoped she might need the toilet but she just hid behind the wheelie-bin, shivering. So I brought her back inside and put her in her new cage, near the radiator in the kitchen. I offered her some food but she only ate a couple of mouthfuls. Then she went to sleep. She seemed to sleep for ages.
It took a couple of days for Ellie to settle in. She was very wary, particularly of the other dogs. She seemed to wee all the time. She was happy to go to the toilet in the garden but she would still wee every 10 minutes, wherever she happened to be! It felt like I was clearing up accidents all day.
After a couple more days I started to introduce Ellie to the sound of the clicker. Whenever I put her food bowl down (she was diving enthusiastically into her food bowl by this stage) I would click a couple of times. She didn't register the click at all but soon came to realise that a click happened when food was around.
During that first week she became much more playful. She met her brother, Mikki, again and started to play with my other dogs. By the end of the week she had become quite rough with Darcy. I even had to tell her off for hanging off Darcy's ears. Poor Darcy is such a "nice" dog that he didn't want to tell her off. Fortunately Bradley is not that tolerant and Ellie received a few reprimands from him.
It is important that Puppies learn acceptable doggy behaviour from other dogs. They only learn that they have gone too far if the other dog lets them know... That is why it is so important that puppies are socialised with other dogs through the critical socialisation period which continues from 7 weeks to 12 weeks. I am lucky that I have plenty of friends with healthy, vaccinated dogs that we could visit, or who could visit us in the few weeks before Ellie was fully vaccinated and could go out and about freely.
|
