Puppies

Hi, everybody. We have the Cinnamon Swirl mini multigeneration Australian labradoodles with us today. These puppies are from Van Isle Doodles, and this is their update. We are going to be doing everything about the puppies mostly today, talking a little bit about each of the puppies, a bit about Hazel, and we’re also going to be talking a little bit about communication with your puppy and how to do that. We’ll also go through a little bit of bite inhibition, because these puppies all have teeth, and they all like to bite now.

So, we’ll start off with Cinnamon here. She’s just sitting in front of me. So, Cinnamon is, as you know from our previous videos, she is a beautiful chocolate phantom, and she’s what we call a dilute chocolate. That’s why she has the lighter color chocolate as opposed to the other two puppies in this litter. Cinnamon is the one who is the most confident, the most lively, and the most outgoing out of all these puppies. She is also the one who’s the snuggliest, the loveiest, and really just a beautifully balanced puppy with a really nice temperament. She’s quite quiet, and she is already enjoying going outside and playing. She really enjoys toys, and she’s also been enjoying bones this past week. So, that’s Cinnamon.

Here, who’s the next one, who’s biting me at the moment, this is our little boy from the litter. This is Choco. He too is a chocolate phantom. Now, he has quite different colors to Cinnamon because his chocolate is not diluted. He has the nice dark color, and his phantom markings really show up. Chocolate is quite an outgoing puppy as well. He is also very affectionate, although he has a time limit for how long he likes to be held, and then he’s, “Thanks. That was great. I enjoyed being with you, and now I’ve got things to do.”

Choco’s really enjoying going outside as well. He’s been out exploring all over the place outside, and he is a huge lover of chew sticks and all toys. He is definitely teething and wants everything in his mouth right now. He’s really big on the chewing on the bones and really likes it when there’s lots of bones and chew sticks in with the puppies.

And our final puppy, since we only have three in this little litter, is Swirl. Swirl is also a chocolate phantom, and she has these beautiful white markings on her. So, she is a little bit different than Choco was and more similar to Cinnamon by having the little white spots that you can see. Her phantom color is different from Choco’s. Choco’s are more of a coppery color and Swirl’s are more of a sort of creamy light tan color.

Swirl is the quieter puppy out of the three. She is a very thoughtful puppy. She thinks things through. She’s a very intelligent puppy. She has a lovely temperament. She’s very kissy and very affectionate. We just think she’s super. She too is enjoying going outside, although she’s usually the last one to go through the doggy door. Cinnamon is usually first, followed by Choco, and then Swirl goes along. She’s also really enjoying eating the bones and chewing on everything, although she’s a little bit less exuberant about all of these things.

So, that’s a little bit about their temperament and where they’re at for now. Now, I just want to point out that, as I do for every litter, that their temperaments change week to week. Just because Swirl is the quieter puppy this week doesn’t mean that she will remain that way when it’s time for the puppies to go home. Usually by now we can pretty much say where they are in the group and who is the most outgoing, but they often surprise us. And by the time it’s week nine and pickup time there’s been a change with the puppies. But, this is where they’re at today.

You can see Choco is busy chewing on my finger. This is something that puppies do. Now, if you have children or just yourself, it’s not really pleasant to be bit by a puppy with their little razor teeth. So, what’s the best way to deal with it? So, bite inhibition is what we want to do. So when your puppy bites you, you want to pretend you’re a puppy and go, “Ow.” You make the sound that’s similar to a puppy, and then you have no eye contact. You don’t interact with the puppy at all. This time Choco’s just going to leave and go off and see his brothers and sisters. But in your home, there isn’t going to be another puppy to play with, so you want to be sure to aim for a good 10 to 20 seconds of no interaction with the puppy and then you find a chew-appropriate item, give it to them, and start over.

Sometimes it seems like the biting stage is never going to end, but, like everything with puppies, it goes in the blink of an eye. It is one of the times that’s a little bit more frustrating because you do tend to get a few bruises from them and you think they’re never going to stop chewing on you. But believe me, they will once their teeth come in. It’s just an instinct to them that everything goes in their mouth because they’re working so hard to get those teeth through. And at least they don’t drool like human babies usually do when they’re teething.

So now, going on a little bit more about their temperament and communicating with the puppies. Ow! That’s how we do it when they’re biting us. Then, we don’t have any interaction with them. It’s a little bit harder for me here because I can’t get away from them. But normally what I would do would be to walk away, turn around, and then I come back and say, “Hey. Hi. Here you go. There you go,” and give them something that they can chew on. So, that just gives you an idea of how to manage them when they’re biting you, because their teeth really are very sharp. I have lots of bruises to prove it.

So, this is one way we communicate with our puppies. And as I was saying, each of the puppies you’re going to communicate with slightly differently. So Choco, for instance, is a little bit more confident, so he is quite able to have me go, “Hey,” to him and, “Uh-uh.” He can start learning those things now because he has the confidence to deal with that. He’s not going to be overwhelmed, and be all upset, and have hurt feelings if I put him away from me and say, “No, that’s not okay.”

If you have a quieter puppy who’s more sensitive to things, then that’s not how you going to want to communicate with them, not now and not in the future. So, when Swirl bites me, she’s not so sensitive than I’m worried, but I’m going to be a little bit softer with her and go, “Hey. Uh-uh,” and just put her over here. Whereas with him, I can be a little bit more, “No, that’s enough.” And you can see he is not hesitating to come back and continue to try and bite me, and Swirl is, too. No, that’s enough.

So, you just have to judge. Let your puppy communicate with you. Watch the signs that they’re showing you. Are they getting too upset? Are you being too harsh or are they not responding because, hey, you’re being too gentle? I don’t mean you’re going to be mean to your puppy, of course, but you sometimes have to be a little bit more stern.

So, what we recommend for when you want to tell your puppy no rather than always saying no is going, “Uh-uh.” That sound tends to get their attention, and they know instinctively that that’s something negative and not a sound that they really enjoy hearing. So, right around the six-week age is when we start really introducing uh-uh and the word no to them so they start to understand that there are limits on their behavior. Up until then, we let them pretty much do whatever it is they want to do. Yeah.

And you’ll see and you can hear that they are also doing the same thing with one another. It’s right around after the five-week up to seven-week period that you start to see them actually wrestling, growling, and establishing where they fit in the group. So, you can see just now Choco was growling and biting at Cinnamon, and Cinnamon’s response was to go, “Ow,” and she backed away from him. Whereas if somebody was biting Choco, he will continue to argue back with him and try to establish that he was the leader of that situation. So, these are how things you want to watch for, be sensitive to, and aware of.

One of the things that people seldom talk about when we’re communicating with our puppies is our body language. Body language is so important. Dogs read our bodies all the time. They pick up so much knowledge and information from our bodies that we’re totally unaware of. As humans, because we’re verbal, we rely much more heavily on verbal cues and tone of voice as opposed to what someone’s body is actually doing. The dogs will also rely on your tone of voice, for sure. Uh-uh. But they are also much more sensitive and much more reactive to what your body positioning is.

So, one of the things we all do instinctively is we smile at our puppies. We go, “Oh, hi,” and that’s great. But when you look at your smile, it’s teeth, and teeth are a little bit of a bad thing if you’re a dog. A great big face with teeth showing is, “Oh, are you going to bite me?” Puppies and dogs learn really quickly what your smile is and that your face is open and what you’re expressing. But, be aware at first when you smile. Try not to have a huge big smile and maybe just make it a little bit softer so it’s not quite as intimidating, same as if you have your puppy in a group of people and they’re all smiling and all showing their teeth. That can be a little bit of an awkward situation for a puppy to manage. So, just try to get everybody in your group and in your family to understand that smiles are perfect, a nice, happy, open face with wide open eyes are great, but just try to limit the teeth exposure if you can.

The rest of the body communication that you’re going to do is very similar to when you’re with people, when you’re talking to your dog and you want to be showing them something, this is not how you want to sit, and this is not the facial expression you want. All this tells your dog is you’re mad, you’re not someone who can be approached, and they’re going to avoid you. You want to have your arms open, your body open. You want to have your shoulders down, be relaxed, and have a nice open face. You want to be open to your dog at all times.

Then, when your dog is doing something that you don’t want them to do, then you want to have more of the closed hands and the finger. All of our labradoodles know precisely what the finger means. I don’t have to ever say a word. I can just look at our dogs like … and they know right away, “Oh, I’m doing something that Mommy doesn’t want me to do.” So, it’s really important to understand how incredibly intuitive these dogs are with respect to your body language.

Now, labradoodles have been bred for a specific type of temperament, and this is, of course, what attracts so many of us to the breed. They have been breed and we have continued to reinforce the temperament in them that is a very soft, gentle, open, fun temperament. So, along with this softness comes dogs who are very sensitive. Labradoodles are well known for their good ability as working as comfort dogs and therapy dogs, and that’s because we’ve breed these lovely soft temperaments with lots of intuition. So, be aware that labradoodles, more than probably any other breed, are very aware of you, your body, your state of mind, and read that very well.

So, labradoodles and many other breeds of dogs, but labradoodles it’s what we’re talking about today, are also well able to pick up on what you’re feeling. So if you’re particularly anxious or if you’re particularly stressed and worried about something, your puppy’s going to know that and be able to understand that just by being near you. That’s not the time to try and teach your puppy a behavior. That’s not the time to be interacting with your puppy in any sort of learning situation. Just let your puppy come and play with you. Your puppy will intuitively come and want to help calm you, make you feel better. Labradoodles are excellent for understanding your mood, and your frame of mind, and knowing, “Oh, I need to be quiet now because something’s wrong,” or, “I need to come up and give kisses because comfort’s needed.” It’s amazing how intuitive labradoodles are. It’s just it’s one of the most remarkable features of the breed, and one of the most loved features of the breed.

But, don’t try to do something with your puppy when you’re not in the right frame of mind. Wait till you’re feeling good, you’re happy, and you yourself are open to learning as much as you are to teaching your puppy. Because believe me, your puppy will start training you the minute you walk out our door with your new Van Isle Doodle puppy. They will test you. They will be worse than any teenager for drying to push the envelope and having you trained. But unlike a teenage person, they will be delightful, adorable, and charming in their approach, and they can fool you in a blink of an eye. They are very intelligent dogs, and they are quite able to train the people better than we are able to get them to behave the way we want sometimes. So, just be aware of that.

There’s lots of great resources out there for learning about communicating with your dog, understanding the relationship with them. Some of the reading material that I’ve already talked about in this litter and in our other videos, particularly the one Bones Would Rain From the Sky, helps you to understand a dog’s emotions and understand how their mind works and their feelings work so that you can work with them even more closely and establish an even stronger bond with them.

So, that’s our little video for today and our update to talk about communication with your dog. One final thing, you heard the puppies growling, and you will hear your puppy growl when you take your puppy home, when you’re playing tug, or playing with toys. You never want to discipline your puppy for growling. Growling is how your puppy communicates and says, “Hey, I’ve had enough. This is my last warning before I’m going to bite.” What you need to do is honor what your dog is saying to you. Your dog is saying, “I need out of this situation.”

So, you need to be the one that is proactive, understand that, pick your dog up, take your dog away from whatever it is that’s causing them to growl. Not if you’re playing tag or something, obviously. That’s perfectly fine. That’s a play growl. But if your dog ever growls at a person or another dog that’s strange, then you want to remove your dog from that situation right away. It’s really important that your dog trusts you and understands that you’re there to protect them and keep them safe from any situation that may arise. So, you need to listen to their verbal cues as well.

You’ll understand how their barks differ as well. There’ll be a happy bark, excited bark, an alarm bark, a “Oh my goodness. Somebody’s at the door and they’re going to kill us,” bark, all those different things. So, those are all things to be aware of. And after you get home and settled a fair bit, and you’ve got your puppy well on the road to behaving the way you want, then’s the time to start to delve into a little bit more learning about communicating with your dogs and understanding what they’re saying to you. And if you bite me on my chin, I’m going to bite you right back. Oh my goodness. Tone of voice as well. How you speak to your puppy is important. All of that’s part of the communication.

So we hope you found this video helpful and that you enjoyed it. Please give us a thumbs up if you liked it. We hope you’re subscribed to our channel and watching the updates for all the other litters. We try to talk about something a little bit different with each of the litters. So if you watch all our videos, you’ll get the benefit of everything we’re trying to share with you. So, thanks for watching, and see you again next week with the Cinnamon Swirl litter. Oh, [inaudible 00:17:05] so bad. Oh, you’re so bad. Do you see why you’re very bad? Those are my monkey. Hello, Cinnamon. Hello. Oh, you’re using your voice. Did you hear that, Swirl? Oh, you used your voice, too, Cinnamon.