Puppies

Hi everybody, Claire here from Van Isle Doodles, and we’re here with another update for the Blonde Brownies litter. This is their five week update. I can hardly believe that they’re already all five weeks old. You can see there’s a big difference from the last time that you saw them at three weeks. They’re all fully mobile, they’re moving around like crazy. They’re playing with toys as you can see, they’re playing with each other, and also all growl, they bark, and they all have teeth.

You’ll notice throughout this video, that they’re putting everything in their mouth, including me. This week we’re going to give you a little update on all the puppies. We have some big news for one of the puppies, and then we’re going to talk a little bit about socialization. There’s a lot of questions usually about socialization, and the health risks that go with that with your puppy.

We’ll get into that after we do our usual update for each of the pups. We’ll give you a little bit of an update on how they’re all doing, how their personalities are developing, and we’ll let you watch them play, because that’s the most fun of all. I think we’re going to start with Purple Girl here, because she’s the one who’s right here up in my face. Purple Girl was a little bit quieter before, and she was in the middle of the pack, not a leader, not a follower, just a fairly quiet, soft-spoken little girl.

Well, she has come out of her shell. She is no longer a quiet, little soft-spoken girl. She’s a little monkey, she gets right into everything, she is doing all the things that all the other dogs are doing. She plays like crazy with everybody, she growls, she barks, and she’s well able to stand up herself. Some of them just take a little bit longer to come out of their shells, and Purple Girl’s definitely one of those.

She is a cuddle bug, she is a sweet girl, and now she does not hesitate to push her way in to get attention. You can tell, because she’s the one who came right up to me first, right up to my face. She’s also spent some time with Peyton, who is our little young puppy socializer. Peyton is four, and Peyton comes and spends time with all of our puppies. This weekend, Peyton was here with her auntie Taylor, because we were away with Ripple on Ripple’s honeymoon.

Peyton has told us which of the puppies are the most friendly with her. Purple is definitely one of those, so that’s always good to know. Next puppy, here we go, look who’s here next. This is Gray Collar Girl. This is our fiercest little girl, still the tiniest, but definitely still the most fierce. She has become a little less noisy. She doesn’t talk anywhere near as much as she was before. What are you doing monkey?

She is very enthusiastic about life. She runs at the top speed when she hears us come into the Doodle den. You can hear the growling going on there between the couple of … That’s Purple and Green Collar. She comes running at full speed, comes right up, and she wants to be picked up and get attention right away. Oh, that wasn’t very nice. She likes to play with toys, she’s eating the raw food really well, although she still does prefer [inaudible 00:03:29].

She’s doing great, she’s still fierce, but she’s nowhere near as … It wasn’t so much that she complained, but she did talk a lot about things that didn’t go her way, so she’s doing great. Here’s Green Collar, he, of course, was our most talkative, and most outgoing boy that we had in the litter. You’ll hear them crying, that’s because of course they can see Reynold behind the camera, and they’re like, “Hey, why aren’t you picking us up? Do you have some food? Come on, pay attention,” so you’ll hear a little bit of complaining in the background there.

Anyways, back to Mr. Green. Mr. Green has become one of the most quiet puppies now. He no longer complains, he doesn’t make a racket. He problem solves really successfully now, and he gets along with everybody much better. As I said, the puppies do change their temperament quite a bit as time goes on. Mr. Green, who was all blustery and full of himself before, you can see he’s much more cuddly, much more interested in people.

He makes really fabulous eye contact, and he loves to give kisses. He loves to give kisses. He also really enjoys playing with the toys, and he’s already started to show us that he likes to do a little bit of fetch, well chase the ball I guess, as opposed to fetch. He doesn’t actually know to bring it back yet of course, so he’s just coming along really nicely.

He too, is a huge lever of kids, and a real Peyton fan, so that’s Mr. Green, who’s probably going to be sad now that I put him down. That’s my boy, there we go, and over here you can see Miss Purple over here, she’s jumping up, because she can see some of the shadows from the light. She’s a very curious and very inquisitive and very outgoing girl, so she’s always looking at things, and trying to test them out, right Miss Purple? Yes.

Next, if you don’t mind, we’re going to do this puppy here, and this puppy here is Mr. Brown Collar, right? You are Mr. Brown Collar, yes, just making sure that this is the boy and not the girl. His collar’s not on, so Mr. Brown Collar, as you know, is one of the smaller, one of the quieter, more hanging back type of puppies. He too, has got some confidence now, he’s still super cuddly and affectionate as you could see.

He loves to be held, and he’s absolutely crazy about Peyton. He is just a real perfect little puppy for kids. He’s also very gentle, even though you can see he’s biting at my earring, and biting at me. He is not biting me as hard as many of the other puppies do. He does have all of his teeth though, yes, we have all of our teeth don’t we? Oh, yes we do, so he’s just come out of his shell quite a bit, and is much more outgoing, but still a real cuddle bug.

That’s quite a growling going on over there, and next over here, we have Peach Collar Girl. Oops, there’s big a war going on with Green and Blue over there. We don’t have any pee pads in here while we’re filming, because we’re in the smaller area, so they are peeing on the floor there, but they are really doing well with their pee pads. They are peeing and pooing on them almost all the time.

We have had to put bricks on the pee pads now, so that they don’t take them and play with them, because of course the pee pads are the most fun thing. This is little Peach Collar Girl. Miss Peach is still a very soft, quiet, adorable little girl. It’s a little hard, I’m having to compete for sound here with these kids. Ow, ow, ow, somebody’s biting me too hard there, that’s you Miss Purple, that was me that you got there.

That’s Miss Gray that was making all that racket, yes, Miss Gray, oh, so much of a growl. Back to Miss Peach. You can see she’s much quieter, she doesn’t hardly ever say a word. She’s very affectionate, very cuddly, and she hasn’t changed as much in her temperament as the other dogs have rather. She’s still quite a soft-spoken little girl. She’s not a leader, but she holds her own. Hey kids, hey, that is so much growling Miss Purple. Miss Purple doesn’t like anyone else having attention I think.

There we go, how about we do you next? This is Miss Yellow, and Miss Yellow, our little sable girl. She was also one of the quiet ones, and she’s fairly good friends with Peach. They’re quite similar in their temperament, quieter, not quite as interested in doing all the all-out free-for-all like you can see over here that these ones are doing. If you can hear them, and you can see them, that they’re interacting quite a bit more.

You can see Blue and Black over there as well, much more interested in establishing who they are in the hierarchy, and what they’re doing, and where they rank in the pack. Whereas Peach and Yellow collar, they’re just happy with life, and where they’re at, and they’re not so worried about that competitiveness, so that’s Miss Yellow. I’ll put Miss Yellow down here. We already saw you Miss Gray, you don’t get to have two turns.

Now, over here, I’m just going to grab Mr. Black Collar. Come here breezy, oh my goodness, I practically need four hands to pick you up you’re so big. He is still our biggest fellow, and he still is a doll and a half. He’s very, very, very people focused, and this is the puppy we have some big news about. This puppy already has a name, and his name is Fisher. The reason why he has a name, is this puppy has been selected to become a certified service dog.

The gentleman who will be training him, and doing the service training work with him, came and did an assessment on all of the puppies. This was the one that he decided would be the best candidate as the service dog. We’re just delighted, and so proud to be selected as a breeder to have a dog to become a certified service dog. Fisher’s off on his way, and that’s what he’s going to be doing, so he will not be part of our allocation process.

You can see, he interacts really, really well. He’s just a doll and a half, he’s just the sweetest little boy. Yes, so proud of you baby, and then the last puppy we haven’t talked about, is Blue Collar Boy, and he’s way over at the other end right now. I’ll just see if I can get Mr. Blue Collar to come to me. Come on Mr. Blue, come on, come on Mr. Blue. Oh, here he comes, here he comes.

Make sure I’m not going to sit on anybody behind me here. I just gotta get this little monkey here who’s trying to escape. I’m just going to move the ex-pen closer to me, they can of course push everything out right now. There’s Mr. Blue Collar. Mr. Blue Collar is doing just great. He is a confident, outgrowing, full of fun little boy. He’s probably not going to sit still right now, because he wants to go play with everyone.

When it’s time to play, it’s time to play, so he is a real go getter. We really like this boy, he has a lovely balance of calmness and cuddles, as well as being confident and outgoing. He’s just a great little puppy, and if you just look over here, you’ll see that they are very curious now. We have another escapee, so that is I think Brown Collar. It is Mr. Brown Collar Boy, he thought he would go and take himself out on a different little adventure, and not stay part of our party.

That’s all the kids, that’s how everybody’s doing, that’s how their temperaments are coming along. Next week, when we do our video update, I’ll give you even more details about how they are. We’ll also give you information after they’ve been to their wellness exam, and let you know what we found when we were at the vet. Now the other thing we’re going to talk about today, is socialization.

Socialization is important for all puppies, it’s not just Australian Labradoodles that we worry about socialization for. What most people struggle with when they get a puppy is, is it better to take my puppy out, and have my puppy in new situations, or should I worry about the fact that my puppy hasn’t had all of their shots yet? What’s the risk to my puppies health?

The risk to your puppies health, is both mental and physical, those are the two things we want to keep in mind. We want to do a balancing act with those two things, so as a general rule, the primary reason why puppies are returned or surrendered for some reason, is because they haven’t been socialized properly. By socializing them, what we want you to do, is have your puppy experience as many different things as possible in a positive manner.

It’s really important that the socialization be positive. We don’t want you just to take them out and have them exposed to all sorts of different things and new sounds and have them scared and have a bad experience, because that can do more damage than nothing at all. What you want to do, is have them in situations where it’s a positive experience that they get something out of it, and they learn not to be afraid.

We’ve been doing that here with your puppies all along. We do things such as we have the vacuum in here, we put different music on for them. They’ve been listening to thunderstorms, firecrackers, sirens, car horns, traffic sounds, dogs barking, cats meowing, all sorts of different sounds, pots clanking, things that we throw around. We make all sorts of noises, we go “Woo woo woo woo,” and you see, they all stop and they look, but nobody’s afraid, nobody’s running, nobody’s trying to hide, and you can do all sorts of things.

I can clap my hands, and they stop, and they look, and they go, “What? Hey, what is the human doing?” I’m sure they think that we’re somewhat crazy, but they’re also not afraid, and that’s because we’re always giving them new situations, and at the same time we cuddle them afterwords, we use happy voices, and they know they’re safe and secure, and there’s nothing to be frightened of.

That’s what you want to continue doing with your puppy after you bring your puppy home. You want to spend the first few days when you get your puppy home, letting your puppy settle into your routine, to your house. Ideally, you don’t have too terribly many people home initially, and you just let your puppy get used to your own rhythm, and then you can start introducing your puppy to your friends, and your friends kids, and your friends dogs.

Those are all experiences that are all ones that they’re sure to enjoy. Then you also want to try and introduce them to 100 different experiences in their first hundred days home with you. That’s a lot of things, and ideas for what I mean by experience, is take them to a school at recess time. Start off on the opposite side of the street, stand there, just stand there, let them listen and watch all of the kids playing and having a great time.

Then the next thing you might want to do is go to a soccer game, baseball game, football game, whatever kind of sporting activity that’s easy in your area you can take your puppy too. Just be on the sidelines, again, just let them watch. When you feel that they’re confident doing that, and happy doing that, you can see once again, we have another escapee who has decided that toy is way too interesting, and I have to have it just for myself, that’s Yellow Collar Girl.

Once you feel that they’re confident, and not at all worried about being on the other side of the street, and listening to activities like recess, lunch hour, soccer, football, then move closer, to the side of the street, to the sidelines really is where you want to be. Go closer, walk down a busy street with them, stand on the sidewalk if they’re worried about something. Take them over to an emergency in the hospital, and make sure they listen to sirens, and see things moving quickly.

All sorts of situations like that, there are so many stores now that let you bring your dogs in, and people just go crazy when you bring a puppy in. It’s absolutely the easiest way to socialize your puppy quickly. You can go to Winners, you can go to Home Depot, you can go to Home Hardware, you can go to most doctors offices, lawyers offices. You can go to the library generally, all sorts of places are going to take you and let you bring your puppy in.

In fact, they’re going to be really excited you brought you puppy. You will be the most popular person there. Hey you, quit that biting, so those are all fabulous experiences. You want your puppy to see kids, you want your puppy to see men with beards, men with hats, uniforms, all sorts of things like that. Mr. Blue, that is not very nice, that is hurting me. I’m going to put you over here, yes, that’s too nippy.

I like Peach, because she’s so soft and quiet, and she doesn’t bite me as much, so that’s why she’s getting up here more. Those are examples and ideas of things you want to do with your puppy. You also want to be sure you take your puppy out in the car. Now the one place that you want to avoid, is places where there’s lots of dogs that are all in a small area, and you have no idea who the dogs are, and whether they’re vaccinated or not.

That would be a dog park for instance, you’re not going to take your puppy to a dog park. We don’t recommend that at all, it’s overwhelming for the puppy, and it’s also not safe. You also want to avoid the vet office. The vet office, of course, is just like the human hospital, that’s where all the sick dogs are. When you do take your puppy to the vet, because, of course, you have to take them to the vet, then you want to put your puppy in a crate, do not let their feet touch the ground at the vet office, and bring a blanket for them to use when they’re on the table in the vet, on the examining table.

That’s the safest way you have of keeping your puppy safe. Now you’re probably thinking, “Hmm, it’s okay to take my puppy out to all these strange places, and do all these things when they haven’t had all their shots?” It is, the chances of your puppy contracting parvo or distemper, which are the two main killers of young dogs, is highly unlikely.

When there’s a parvo or a distemper outbreak, everybody knows. It’s on the news, other dog people will tell you. Pet stores know, your vet knows, I’ll know and I’ll let you know, and then you avoid that area of course. Your puppy does have some immunity, not their full immunity of course, so you have to use some caution, and that’s why we say avoid dog parks, or other areas where you don’t know who the dogs might be that are congregating there.

If it’s your friends, and it’s their dogs, you know that they vaccinated their dogs, and you know that, that’s safe, and it’s okay to take your puppy there. If you’re going to Home Hardware, yeah, there’s a chance that there’s going to be a dog that’s been there that’s not vaccinated. It’s not a big risk, most people who take their dogs to all these locations are very, very trustworthy, responsible dog owners.

It’s much better to have your dog out and about, and getting socialized, and you don’t need to worry about any of the health risks. You will also want to start your dog off in puppy socialization, or puppy kindergarten. Generally speaking, most of these programs require only that you have the first set of shots, which your puppy will come home with, and that’s it. Those classes are invaluable, they’re just play classes, you’re not learning to sit, stay, or shake a paw.

All you’re doing is having your puppy meet different puppies, different people, and have a really good time. It’s lots of fun for you too, to meet all sorts of puppies, and you can say, “I have a Van Isle Labradoodle, that’s why my puppy’s smarter and cuter than yours.” I know you won’t say that out loud, but you can sure think that. We’re pretty sure that your puppy will be the top of the class, that’s what most of our families tell us.

It’s great to go to those things. Many pet stores offer that as a free thing. Take advantage of that, take your puppy to all the different situations like that that you can. Give them lots of opportunity to explore, meet new dogs. Dogs have an ability to understand that … Oh my goodness me, a dog that they see is a Labradoodle, which is the same as what they are.

If it’s a German Shepherd, they know that another dog is a German Shepherd. Now your dogs have met many different types of dogs, but they have seen Labradoodles more than anything else. You want to make sure you’re introducing your puppy to different breeds of dogs, different sizes, different looks, different everything. They’ll know, I don’t know how, but they do know. They can pick out a Labradoodle a mile away.

If you’re taking your puppy for a walk, and there’s another Labradoodle, your puppy will spot that Labradoodle, and gravitate to that dog really easily. It’s an uncanny ability that they have. Even in the litter, even though they don’t know what they look like, they have no idea, like Purple doesn’t know that she’s a brown do. She has no idea what she looks like, but she picks always to go and hang out with the sables over the black dogs.

Who knows why, it happens in every litter. Somehow they have an uncanny ability to identify what they are looking like, and find similar like, similar looking dogs, and that’s who they gravitate towards. That’s a little bit of a synopsis there for socialization, and what you want to start doing when you first bring your puppy home. With this litter, you’re bringing them home during the holiday season, so you have a fabulous opportunity to have a lot of people who are home from work, and have time on their hands, that you are going to meet when you go out on the street, and walking your puppy around.

You’re gonna run into all sorts of different people who are on holidays. Everyone’s going to be in a good mood, dogs will be out, and it’ll just be a terrific time to introduce your puppy to new people. Then after New Year’s, when school goes back, then you can start doing that going to the playground, going to schools at recess, and that sort of thing. Don’t forget to take your puppy in the car.

When you go in the car, you make that so much fun, you give them treats, a toy, something to chew on, so that they think the car is the best thing. Make sure that you leave them in the car for just a few minutes at a time, so that they become accustomed to being left in the car. Don’t worry about that, and don’t bark their heads off or cry when you’re out trying to do your shopping.

There’s lots of fun things for you to do. You’re going to be really busy, and just having so much fun with these little guys. We hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s update. We’d love to have you make some comments if you have any questions. What we’d really like to hear about, is where you think you’re going to take your puppy for socialization? What’s in your neighborhood that’s going to be a good choice of things for you to do with your puppy?

Have you met any friends that have a new puppy that you’re gonna be taking your little Labradoodle out to meet? Maybe you even on the Van Isle Facebook owners group, you’ve met people that you know, and you’re gonna take your puppy to meet some of our other Labradoodles that we have been in around various areas. You can see the kids have grown, it’s been a great time.

Give us a thumbs up if you enjoyed watching them today, and all of their growling, and big, ferocious killer dog selves. Oh yes, they’re just so mean, especially Miss Gray Collar here. Oh, big toughy, and we’ll be back next week with another update. We’ll talk a little bit more then about treats, feeding your puppy raw food, and a few other topics that we’ll keep as a surprise for you, so thanks for watching.