1 Month "Pup"date!
We've already had Kiah for one whole month!
Time sure flies when you're having fun! We wanted to give you all a one month update (pupdate!) on how things are going since adding this sweet and sassy little boxer pup into our lives!
Firstly, in one of my recent blogs I talked about all we had been doing on the training front. None of that has changed and every single day we have worked on crate training, recall, impulse control, and obedience. It's all just interwoven into how we interact with her. She knows sit, lay down, and stay, and we are starting to add distance and distractions to the stay command. She has been absolutely crushing recall, as she really just wants to be near us anyways and is a very engaged pup overall. She is just now starting to sleep in her crate like a dream (and crates up with her Kong and some wet puppy food when we need to leave the house for a bit). It can be so easy to want to keep your puppy around you all the time, but try to resist that and take advantage of the early weeks to teach them routines that will benefit them (and you!) in the long run, your work will definitely pay off!
Secondly, I had also talked about how we were just working with coexistence with the other dogs and not forcing them to have any kind of relationship. It's always best to go slow and steady with this and to manage your expectations. It can be disheartening when you're not seeing your dogs play with your new puppy, or worse when they seem grumpy about the new addition. But just know this is totally normal behavior and, as always, just give it time! Would you be happy if all of a sudden someone new moved into your house without warning and had way more energy than you and wanted to climb all over you and eat your food and drink your water and claim your bed? Probably not!
Little by little, you'll start to see the walls come down as everyone starts understanding each other and they develop their own style of communication and play. We are just now starting to see consistent play between them all and it still doesn't happen everyday, but when it does it's beautiful! And the rest of the time they are interacting well with each other and coexisting peacefully. It's a small price to pay for a lifetime of a happy pack!
Thirdly, we are starting to introduce her to other dogs and people through our Puppy Potential class! Socialization is crucial during this imprint period, it helps to have her meet other dogs, build confidence, and overall just have her experience new situations so they don't take her off guard later on.
Finally, loud noises, like the vacuum, don't phase her one bit thanks to that early desensitization work. Woohoo! That's a huge win in my book, as this house can certainly get chaotic and loud at times!
All in all, she has brightened our lives in so many ways and brought a great spunky energy to this house that we didn't we were missing. Stay tuned for more Kiah pupdates, and enjoy this video of some great play between Kiah and Lexi!
