Puppies

Hi, everybody. Claire here from Van Isle Labradoodles, and I’m here with the puppies from the Blonde Brownies litter. These are multi generation Australian Labradoodles, and when they mature, they’re gonna be medium in size. And this is our three week update, so as we do with all of our updates, we’re going to do a little bit of a personality snapshot for each of the puppies, let you know about the milestones they’ve achieved this week, and there’s been a lot this past week, so that’s going to take up a fair bit of the video today, and then we’re also going to go over two areas: house training and crate training. So that’s what we have in store for this week.

So let’s start with milestones. These puppies did a lot this past week. All of them have their ears open now, and they can all hear, so whenever we come in the room or when Spirit comes in the room, they’re up and ready and figuring, “Oh goodie, it’s time for something nice to happen.” They’re also all walking on all fours. You can see Gray Collar here is trying to walk around and find a new position. We may have to move about a bit more in this video today, because they don’t stay in one spot very much anymore.

We’ve also put pee pads in the welping box with them, and they’re really doing well with that. They’ve already all learned that they go to the pee pads to go to the bathroom on. Sometimes they poop in the wrong spot, but for peeing, they’re pretty much all going to the right spot, which is great.

They’re also starting to play with one another. There’s lots of growls and little barks going on. Sometimes actually quite loud barks, so they’re starting to interact quite a bit with one another and really become puppies. And the other major milestone from this past week is they’ve started eating solid food. So this, in this week’s video, you’ll see quite a few of them are a little bit messy, so for instance, Gray Collar here, rather than being black this week, she has lots of flecks of white on her, so we’re gonna find all sorts of bit of her leftover meal.

So what they’re eating right now is goat’s milk mixed with pablum, and the pablum is regular human baby pablum, it’s the plain rice formula, and they’ve all really taken to that really nicely. They’ve done a really good job. Gray Collar here, she was the first one to master eating out of the pan. So Spirit, she needed a little bit of assistance there keeping up with them, you can see how much they’ve grown, and we’ll go through their weights actually this week as well, because it’s kind of interesting to see how much they have grown from when they were first born.

So let’s talk a little bit about each of the puppies. We’re gonna start here, as we almost always do, with Black Collar boy, and as you’ll remember, he is a black and white Parti. Now, something interesting has happened with his color. He is starting to sable, and I’m just gonna try and find an example for you. Right inside his ear here, you can see he has some tan coloring, so that tells us that he is a sable. So he is actually a black sable Parti puppy. Mr. Black, when he was born, was the biggest puppy in the litter. He was 346 grams, and now he weighs a whopping 1.53 kilograms. He’s a bruiser. He is a big fellow, but you can see he’s also extraordinarily calm, he’s very quiet, he’s also very clever, but he’s definitely not a show off by any means. He’s really got lots of yawning going on.

He’s very easy going and what we like to call a gentle giant. He’s a very independent puppy, too. He doesn’t follow the other puppies’ leads, but he himself is not a leader. He just does his own thing. He decides what he’s going to do, when he’s going to do it, how he’s going to do it, and he is very accomplished at eating the pablum, so I expect that he will gain even more weight in next week’s visit. So that’s Mr. Black Collar boy, our little sweetie pie. Good boy.

Then, number two, what I’m doing this week is doing them in order of their weights, that’s how I’m picking them. So number two is Mr. Green Collar boy. You can hear his little growl there as he decides perhaps he doesn’t want his sleep interrupted. Hey buddy, hi. Hi sweetie, hello. So Mr. Green Collar, he was number two when he was born, and he still is number two. He was 332 grams when he was born, and today he was 1.49 kilograms, so he’s not very far behind Mr. Black Collar boy. In fact, when we weighed them midweek, he was just a teensy bit ahead of Black Collar boy, but Black Collar pulled ahead for today’s video.

So Mr. Green is quite different from Mr. Black Collar. He is extraordinarily confident. He is very outgoing and he is a leader. He’s quite bossy. He does not take well to being told that something is going to be different from how he thinks it should be. He also is extremely clever. He doesn’t, he’s not anywhere near as loud as he was in the first two weeks when he was always setting up a squawk if things weren’t the way he liked them. Now, you can see he’s a little bit more kissy, a little bit more lovey, but he definitely is a leader. He does tend to sometimes get a little frustrated at challenges and then we’ll hear his voice, so if he can’t quite figure out how something should work, he will get a little bit angry at it and go [inaudible 00:06:10]. Don’t you? Yes, but he gets over himself really quickly and he is just a great eater. He figured that out with no problem at all. So he’s doing really well. Still nice and beautiful, shiny coat, although it is flecked with lots of pablum right now. So that’s Mr. Green Collar.

Next we’re gonna talk about Miss Purple Collar, who’s way over here. Hey puppy. Hey baby girl. Hi honey. Hi. Okay, there we go. There we go. Miss Purple, she was number three in terms of her weight at birth, and she still is number three. She was 314 grams when she was born, and now she weighs 1.34 kilograms. She is a very placid, laid back little girl. She’s very thoughtful. She waits, she watches and she follows. She is not a leader at all. And she has eaten the pablum, but she doesn’t really think it’s all that interesting. She’s still very attached to Spirit and definitely a momma’s girl, and she’ll pick to eat from Spirit every time over the pablum.

She’ll have a bit of pablum. She knows what it is, she knows how to lap it, but she just doesn’t really think that it is anywhere near as good as eating from mom. And we got one that’s hiding there, so we may have to play a little hide and seek when we have to get that puppy.

Next one we’re gonna do is Peach Collar girl. Peach Collar girl was actually number eight at birth, she was the smallest one. I had thought it was Gray Collar girl, but it was actually Peach Collar girl. She was 263 grams when she was born and now she weighs 1.23 kilograms. Hello [inaudible 00:07:58], hi. She is a very independent puppy. She’s almost aloof. She is frequently separate from the other puppies and she likes to be cuddled, but most of the time she’ll argue with me about being cuddled, unless we put her on her back and rub her tummy. Not so today, she’s gonna make a liar out of me, but that’s usually what she likes. She really enjoys being on her back and having a tummy rub.

She is really good with the pablum, she enjoys it, but she’s similar to Purple in that she still prefers Spirit. She likes it, she understands how to get it out of the pan, but she’s, “Nah, I still wanna be with mom, thanks very much.” She’s very good at working things out and problem solving and she never becomes frustrated. She just keeps attacking it and is very persistent until she finds the solution that works well.

So after that, we’re gonna do Blue Collar boy. He’s over here. You’ll notice he has his head under the pig rail. So all the puppies naturally gravitate to put their head under the pig rail. We talked about that a little bit last week, when I was mentioning where to put their crates and their beds and how puppies all like to have something over their heads. They even choose to do that before they can see and don’t even know what they’re doing particularly. But, and then again today when we talk about crate training a little later in the video, we’ll go through that, but this is part of the reason why dogs like crates so much is the feeling of security from having a roof over their heads.

So here, let’s grab Mr. Blue Collar. Come on, chunky monkey you. Oh my goodness, he says, “I don’t think I can possibly move.” He was number four and now he’s number five, but just by the tiniest of smidges. Hi sweetie. He was 298 grams when he was born, and now he’s 1.21 kilograms. This boy is lovely. He is so balanced, calm, placid, he’s very quiet, but also quite self assured, and he absolutely loves eating the pablum. And he’s in the middle of the pack. He’s not a follower and he’s not a leader. He’s just a really nice, well balanced, really great guy. He always is happy to see us and he’s always greets us with a little bit of a tail wag now, which is really nice to see. Really nice puppy.

Now, Brown Collar is next on our list here. I just have to find Mr. Brown Collar here. There’s a couple of puppies hiding in behind me. There’s a couple hiding at the other edge here. This is Miss Yellow Collar, we’ll just put her over here, because it’s not her turn yet, and here’s Mr. Brown Collar. There we go, buddy. Hi. Hey boy, hi. There you go, sweetheart. So Mr. Brown Collar was number five, and now he’s number six, but again, just by a hair. These three are almost tied together. He was 293 grams when he was born and now he weighs 1.18 kilograms.

So this guy is our angel boy. We call him Mr. Invisible, but he’s such a sweet, cuddly, totally quiet and smart boy. He was the first one to figure out how to eat the pablum out of the pan, which is quite an accomplishment. They don’t know how to lick or how to get food up using their tongues when they first see the pablum, and generally speaking, they attack it from the bottom of the pan. Sometimes they almost knock it over or they jump in head first and slide all over and eat it off of one another. But Mr. Brown figured it out really quickly and he had no problem getting right in there and getting a good fill of food.

He’s a really clever puppy as well, and he also has excellent problem solving skills. He’s not … He too is in the middle of the pack. He’s not a leader, he’s not a follower, he’s just nice, even, very, very calm and very smart little boy. We just love you, don’t you? Of course we love them all.

And now, we’ll take a look at Gray Collar Girl. I have to find her. She’s hiding, so just give me a second here. There we go. Come here, little Gray girl. So, here we have our Gray Collar girl. Gray was number seven, but now she is tied at number six, seven in the litter. She was 275 grams when she was born, and now she’s 1.18 kilograms. So, this little girl is a squirmer as you can see. She is tenacious, fierce and oh, she’s a wiggler and a squiggler. You can see everybody’s playing around here this week. You can see they’ve really grown up a lot and there’s been a huge change, because they would never have done this in last week’s video, they all stayed nice and still.

From now on, we won’t get anybody cooperating and staying still, but as I was saying about Gray Collar, she is an amazing problem solver. She tackles everything head on and she’s bound and determined she’s gonna get a solution and it’s gonna work her way, and that is that. She is a real go getter. She’s small, but she is fierce. She’s just a lovely girl, aren’t you?

And last, but not least, is Yellow. Yellow Collar Girl was number six when she was born, and now she’s number eight, and that is because of her temperament. She was 284 grams, now she’s 1.11 kilograms. This little girl is quiet. She is the quietest in the litter. She just wants you to hold her. She doesn’t wanna argue with anyone. She doesn’t wanna figure anything out. She wants to watch, see what everyone else has done. She’s very thoughtful, very considerate, and then after she considers what everyone else has done, then she decides, “Yep, that’s the way I’m gonna go.”

She can problem solve, but she would prefer to have someone else work things out and then she just follows along behind them. She is a definite follower, and the reason why she is now number eight in the litter is because she never bosses her way around to get a good spot at the milk bar or to get the most pablum. She’ll just go and where she gets a spot, she gets a spot.

So that’s the kids for this week, and like I said, you can see there’s been quite a few changes. You’ll see over here that they’re starting to play together and they’re learning how to mouth one another, use their paws better. You may hear a couple of growls and barks while we continue on with the video. This is a really fun stage, and as soon as we finish this video today, we will be taking them out of the maternity ward and putting them into the Doodle Den. We just decided we would do the video first, because it tends to cause them a little bit of upset when they’re moved, because it’s everything’s brand new and they’re like, “Whoa, what’s going on?” So they probably wouldn’t appreciate if I was also handling them and picking them up and telling you all about their accomplishments for the week, but it is lots of fun to see them all interacting and playing with each other.

They all play really well together. There’s nobody who is mean. There’s no clear dominant dog in terms of play with one another at this point. And don’t forget, when we do the snapshot as we just did now, that could change next week. Some of their temperaments, qualities appear to be the same week to week, but they are changing and now that they’re really developing their personalities, you’ll find that there’ll be some changes in the coming weeks, and there Mr. Green just gave you a very good example of his wonderful walking skills on all four legs. Quite an accomplishment.

So now let’s talk a little bit about house training. I mentioned to you that we have their pee pads in the welping box now. When we move them into the Doodle Den, they will also have peep ads there. The pee pads have a slightly different texture than what we give them for bedding, and that’s intentional, because you want them to learn that this is the texture that we go to the bathroom on. We want to have it into their brains right from the beginning that you have a different texture for where you go to the bathroom. You don’t go to the bathroom on hard wood, you don’t go to the bathroom on tile. Unfortunately, carpet reads like grass, so that’s why we sometimes have problems with carpet, but basically we’re wanting to teach them that you look for a different location to go to the bathroom in.

Now, the dogs themselves, this is all dogs, not just Labradoodles. Labradoodles are just a bit smarter, of course, but all dogs know that they don’t go to the bathroom where they sleep and eat. So they instinctively want to move away from there, so when we put their pan of food down, the first couple of times it is on a pee pad, just for ease of cleanup, but after that, we’ll put it on a towel so that the texture is not the same as the pee pad and that it also doesn’t have any smell of urine or anything like that.

So for house training, what you are going to find when you take your puppy home from us is that your puppy already knows about going outside. They’re gonna start to use the doggie door right after the puppy family visit at four weeks of age, so by five and a half weeks, they pretty much have the hang of how to get inside and outside on their own, and by six weeks they’ll start to choose that they want to go outside. They’ll continue to use the pee pads, but only at night. During the day, when the door is open and available to them, then they’ll choose pretty much consistently to go outside.

So they’re already gonna come to you know that outdoors is where we go to the bathroom. What they’re not gonna come knowing is how to tell you they want to go outdoors, because we have a doggy door. So that’s the challenge. Now, if you wanna use a pee pad, you may. It’s totally up to you and what you feel more comfortable with. What some people do is they take the pee pad and they put it in front of the door that they’ve chosen that their dogs are going to use to go inside and outside with. Last week, we talked about finding the door that you’re going to use to consistently take your dog in and out of to go to the bathroom. So you could put the pee pad in front of that door, so that the puppy knows this is the door we’re going to.

The other thing you can do with a door is you can hang bells on it. You can buy Poochie bells or you can buy your own bells if you wish, and you can teach the puppy every time you go outside to ring the bells. Puppy soon learns that, oh, when I want to go outside, I ring the bells. Lots of people have really good success with that method. My only word of caution is sometimes you’ll get a puppy who goes, “Hmm, I wanna go outside, maybe not to go to the bathroom, but I just want to go outside,” and you get a lot of bell ringing, so keep that in mind if you decide to do that.

And then other people, if their door that they use as the exit for their puppy, sometimes they put the pee pad outside the door or at the area where they want the puppy to learn to go to the bathroom. So last week we talked about figuring out where in your back yard you are going to want your puppy to relieve himself, and so that’s where you’re going to take your puppy. Now, our suggestion is every time you take the puppy out, you carry the puppy directly to the spot you want them to go. Rather than walking them out, putting them on a leash, there’s so many things outside that are just so distracting when you’re a little one, it’s much better if you just take them out, focus on what you want them to do, keep them on a leash, so that they can’t be running all over the yard and looking at all the fun things there are to explore, but just keep it really low key, very calm, just keep saying your queue word. Make sure you’ve got your queue word, so if it’s go pee, you go out, you take the puppy, carry it to your spot, put the puppy down and say, “Okay, it’s time to go pee Fido. Come on. Go pee.”

Sound encouraging, but not too excited or anything until they go. When they go, then you want to be sure to get really excited and really, really enthusiastic, and of course, reward them with a treat when they do go. The main thing here again is, as we started saying last week, it’s consistency. Make sure you take them out every few minutes. What I recommend is that you use your cell phone or your oven timer, whatever you prefer, but some sort of alarm so that every 30 minutes, your dog’s going outside while they’re awake. Don’t wake them up to go to the bathroom.

Every time they wake up, though, out you go. Same thing. Pick them up and carry them out. This is true at night, too, so if your puppy is one of the puppies that doesn’t sleep through the night, and some will sleep through the night right from the beginning, and others will need to get up maybe once around three or four in the morning. If you have one of the ones that needs to get up, you pick your puppy up out of the crate, take it directly to the spot outside, and then you let them go, and then bring them back in and put them back in the crate again. But again, it’s really important that you remember to carry them, because if you let them walk, they’ll just go to the bathroom wherever it is that they are.

So those are the main things, so the keys to house training are consistency, praise, treats, patience, and diligence. You have to really, really remember to watch them all the time. Keep with that 30 minute time frame, and you’ll be amazed how quickly the pick it up. Labradoodles love to learn. Labradoodles are smart and they’ll get the hang of it in no time. So that’s sort of a basic synopsis for the house training aspect of things.

Now, the other thing that we wanted to talk about a bit today is crate training, so as I said, we’re gonna move the puppies out right after we shoot this video, and they’re gonna go out into the Doodle Den. When they go out in the Doodle Den, that is their first interaction with a crate. Don’t you just love how Brown Collar has his paw over his friend, Black Collar? I just love it when they do that. So sweet.

Anyways, sorry, when they go out in the Doodle Den, we have a crate in there, and that will be where Spirit will choose to feed them. She will go and lay in there and so they’ll learn right from the beginning, this place is warm, this is where mom is, this is where some of my food is and where most of my comfort is. They’ll probably all choose to sleep there for the first little while, and it gives them a huge amount of security, because again, just like this pig rail, they’re gonna have a roof over top of them.

Now, there’s two types of crates. There’s plastic crates, which are the ones that you see when dogs travel on the airplane, and there’s wire crates. Wire crates are easier to clean, for sure. There’s no problem at all with getting into a wire crate. You can take the entire pan out and clean it really easily. That’s definitely their feature, but they are open and they don’t provide that sense of security to the dogs. There’s nothing over their heads or at the sides that makes them feel safe and like they’re cozy. You can get covers for them, and if you want to do that, that’s great, then that really solves that problem.

The plastic ones are easier to move around. You just have to get right inside when you’re cleaning them. The doors on the outside of the plastic ones do come off fairly easily, so I don’t really find it a problem to clean them at all. It’s not difficult, either, to just undo the wing nuts and … I’m just gonna grab Purple Collar here. You can grab the wing nuts and you can actually split them in half from top to bottom, and then it’s really easy to clean as well.

We don’t, or we do have one wire crate, but the only thing we use it for is drying dogs in after they’ve been groomed. Otherwise, all of our dogs have plastic crates and they all still really like their crates and will go in on their own. So anyways, we’ve started them learning that the crate’s a good place. You want to use the crate for house training. It is a life saver for house training. If you have guests or you’re just busy and you can’t have the dog attached to you on your waist leash, then you’re gonna wanna put the dog in the crate. And your dog, especially if you have kids, your dog needs time out. Your Labradoodle puppy needs to have a place where he can go and feel safe and secure and not have to interact.

The puppies, as you can see right now, are … They were all moving around when we first started the video, having a great time, didn’t wanna stay in one spot, and now they’re all crashed. So, and you can see they’re like, really zombied out crashed. So they don’t have staying power. They don’t have a lot of stamina. They’ll get up and play really hard and then they need to go to sleep, so they need somewhere where they feel safe and secure to sleep, and that should be their crate. It’s also where you wanna put your puppy to sleep at night is in the crate. That’s the only way you can be sure that your puppy is safe and in one place and isn’t running around getting into things that they ought not to, or going to the bathroom where they ought not to go. So the crate is really an important part of the whole process and something that your puppy really enjoys having.

I know to people, you think, “Hmm, it’s like locking them up,” but really and truly, it is what they prefer and as an adult, your dog will choose to go into their crate and you just don’t have to worry about closing the door anymore. So one thing you can do to maintain that enjoyment of the crate for your puppy, when you get your puppy home, is have, first of all a special toy in the crate that doesn’t come out and is only for your puppy to enjoy in the crate. Something that’s a really high value toy for them. You also want to have a really nice, comfy bed for them in there and one that’s easy to wash. Usually you probably wanna have at least three crate mats or crate beds, whatever you wanna put in there for your puppy, because you’ll be changing those quite frequently.

Getting a bed that is able to be washed, as well, just like a regular sleeping bed, is also something you want to look for, especially if you live on the island or on the West Coast and your puppy is out in the rain a lot and has lots of muddy paws, then you want something that you can clean easily, because muddy paws make everything dirty very quickly when they’re in their beds and they come in from outside. Purple Girl’s just deciding where she wants to lie. I’m gonna see if she wants to sleep with her brother, here. There you go, sweetie.

So, you want them to be really comfy in there, so a nice soft, warm bed is really good. When you pick your puppy up from us, we will send you home with we call a puppy puppet, which is a little stuffy that mimics a puppy, so that they don’t feel so isolated from the rest of their litter, and not on camera, but right now, Purple Collar girl, who was fidgeting a bit there, I put her over with Black Collar boy, she got up and she chose to walk over to the pee pads and relieve herself, so that’s what I mean about them already getting the hang of the house training thing.

So, the other thing that we do with the crates is we get the puppies a special high value treat in the crate. It’s really good, especially at night when they’re getting used to sleeping through the night, to give them a treat that they can chew on, a safe one, obviously, that they can chew on for a while, that gets them settled down and then they just conk out. It’s really good to have that in there, so a couple of special things, and you can even feed your puppy in the crate if you like. Nothing wrong with that, because that just continues what they’ve learned here, that the crate is a source of warmth, comfort and nourishment.

Now, for the type and size of crate that you need, as I said, we prefer the plastic ones. If you want a wire one, that’s entirely up to you, but do get a cover or at least a really good blanket that will completely black out the crate for the puppy. Otherwise, it’s not going to have the impact you want it to have. If you plan on traveling anywhere with your puppy, I would say a plastic crate, for sure, and you’ll want an airline approved one, as well. Lots of people travel with their puppies now.

For the size, most people tend to buy a crate that’s far too big. The whole idea of the crate is a nice, cozy, safe spot. The dogs, our dogs in particular, will always choose the smallest crate they can get into, so this is not just a Labradoodle trait, this is all dogs. We had, our biggest dog was Checkers and he was 56 pounds and he would always try to go in the crate that we had, actually, for our mini girls when we traveled on the airplane with them. He always went in there and even if his head was hanging out, that was the one he would choose, because he was all cuddled up in it.

Same with beds. The dogs will always choose the smaller bed when they really want to be going to sleep. If they’re playing with their toys, they’ll choose a larger one. So what you just need is a medium size crate, so roughly 19 by 22 by 26, those aren’t precise measurements, but something in that range, and when you first get your puppy home, you’ll see that of course, your puppies are going to be a little bit bigger than this, but they’re not going to be hugely bigger, and that crate is going to seem quite large to them. Enough that they could be sleeping here and going to the bathroom here, so you want to get a box or something to separate the crate, because they only need about this much room to sleep in. They just need to be able to lie down, turn around, and that’s about it. They don’t need to sit up in the crate or anything at night.

So that’s basically it for crates. Obviously, if you have any questions about house training or the crates or what brands or anything like that, just pop a question into the comments here and I’ll be happy to answer them for you. And I’d really like it, too, if you’d go to the comments and give me some idea of what names you might have in mind for your puppy. We talked about that last week in the video, and if you have any questions about queues or if your name is appropriate, just go ahead and ask away. And next week, next Saturday, when the puppies turn four weeks old, it is our puppy family visit. So we won’t have a video that week.

Your video will, for the families, will be your in person meeting for the first time with the puppies, and it’s gonna be lots of fun. The puppies will all love it and you guys will just have a great time, and we always enjoy really having everybody there. So I hope you enjoyed today’s video. Give us a thumbs up if you did like it, and next week we will see everybody in the Doodle Den for our puppy family visit with the Blonde Brownies litter.

Thanks for watching.