Puppies

Hi, everybody. Claire here from Van Isle Labradoodles, and we’re here with the next episode for the Cafe Noir litter. This litter is a medium-sized, multi-generation Australian labradoodle litter. The puppies are now one week old, and so we’re going to do our update, let you know what they’ve done in the past week, tell you a bit about how Oceana’s feeling. Then, we’re going to talk a little bit about training and choosing a vet.

So, we’ve got a few things to cover today. The first thing we’re going to start with is this little box of chocolates that we have here. This is what we put the puppies in when we weigh them. So, we take them out of the whelping nest, we weigh them, and then we keep them in this box. This keeps them safe, and they’re also all close together so they stay nice and cozy warm. And Oceana doesn’t worry at all when they’re there because she knows that they’re all secure. And you can see Oceana’s just relaxing right now, enjoying having some time off, and getting a tummy rub. She really likes to have her tummy rubbed.

Oceana herself is doing really well. She’s out chasing the ball quite regularly. She’s eating about six, six and a half pounds of raw food a day, and she eats quite a little bit of kibble as well. We do not feed our dogs kibble, but Oceana lives in a guardian home. And for whatever reason, when Oceana’s with her guardians, she doesn’t care for a raw. She only prefers kibble. Then, when she comes and stays with us, she is not so found of the kibble, and she only wants the raw. So, we just accommodate her. Right now that she has the puppies, she wants to have both of them, so we let her have whatever it is she wants to eat.

She also enjoys lots of fresh bones, and quite a few liver treats, and other goodies like that. We do supplement her with a product that’s called Doc Roy’s Healthy Bones, which is a tablet. It has additional calcium, but it also is appropriately mixed with phosphorus, and vitamin K, and vitamin D, and magnesium, and other things so that the calcium is actually well absorbed into her system. Obviously, there’s a huge demand on her body for calcium feeding these nine hungry mouths of hers that she has.

We also have another product that’s called Oxy Momma. That’s a product that’s a supplement that’s designed specifically to support mommas who are lactating. So, we gave her that for awhile. And to keep her milk supply going, and a generous milk supply, we also supplement her with fenugreek. Fenugreek is an herb that is used by women to increase their breast milk, and it works really well with dogs, too. So, that’s what Oceana’s eating and that’s what she’s doing. She’s totally relaxed this time. As I said in the last video, if you watched it, this is her retirement litter, and her fourth litter. So, she’s well accustomed to the role of being a mom and very comfortable in it.

So, let’s get to the puppies. Let’s see how much they weigh today and how much they’ve gained since last week. We will start here with light blue collar boy. You’ll probably remember from last week we have seven boys and two girls. So, this is one of our little boys. This is little light color blue boy, light blue collar boy. He’s a real little sweetheart. He’s right in the middle of the pack. He’s not showing us anything that’s outstanding at the moment in terms of being particularly loud or quiet. He’s handling all of his milestones very readily. He now weighs 545 grams, so that’s an increase of 252 grams from week one. So, he’s pretty much doubled his birth weight. You’ll find all the puppies pretty much have doubled their birth weight, except for one, which we’ll talk about.

Now, in last week’s video, I told you we do little challenges for the puppies each day. I’m just going to show you an example of that, because they haven’t had them today other than being weighed. It’s really simple. All we do is … That’s it, something that wouldn’t normally happen to the puppy. It’s just so they have an experienced that’s out of their normal realm. We make sure they’re comforted right after and that they realized that new experiences are something that are positive.

The other thing that’s happened with the puppies is we’ve changed their collar adjustments. I have adjusted them three times this past week. That’s how much they’re growing. So, they really, really increase their size quite a lot and really rapidly when they’re little. You’ll see little light blue collar is trying to nurse on my knuckle there.

So, we’re doing great. We still do our scenting. We still come in and talk, and hold them, and rock with them. We we pick them up and handle them about four or five times a day. You don’t want to overstimulate them, but you want to make sure that they’re familiar with and comfortable with humans all the time. We’ll put light blue collar down, and show you some other things with other puppies so he doesn’t have all the stresses on him. We’ll just leave him there with Oceana.

So now the next one we’ll pick up here is green collar boy. Hello, baby. there’s Mr. Green collar boy. Mr. Green, we have a few things we’ve discovered. You’ll see, I hope he, has a little smidge of weight on his chest here. We didn’t see that initially. Sometimes in all the excitement of being born and getting everybody settled, things like that get missed. So, he a little spot of white on his chest and he has a little goatee. Mr. Green color boy, he weighs 629 grams now. He has gained 279 grams, so he’s a really good size.

One of the other things that we do with the puppies each day is we handle their feet. We already are putting our fingers all over their feet, in between their toes, and in their pads so that they’re completely accustomed to having their feet handled all the time. These guys’ claws are already long enough that we’ll be giving them a little trim either later today or tomorrow. So, that’s Mr. Green collar boy. We’ll put him down here with Oci, too. Oh, she wants to say hello. I’m just going to move over a bit so she has a little bit more space to lay down with her babies.

Now we’ll look at one of the party boys. This is brown collar boy. Here we go. Hi. Hey, baby. Hi. Hello, sweetheart. This is one of the two brown and white party boys. Brown weighs 509 grams now, so that is a gain of 217 grams for him. He too has almost doubled his birth weight, which is really a great sign. That’s what we’re looking for in the first week is to pretty much double their birth weights. You can see how he’s looking for my hand. He’s still looking for something to nurse. Pretty much, that’s all these puppies do right now is eat and sleep. That’s it. They still can’t hear anything. They still can’t see anything, and they still can’t eliminate on their own. So, Oceana’s entirely responsible for all of their elimination processes. She does that by stimulating them by licking them.

We’ll put Mr. Brown down here with Oceana. There we go. And now we’ll go to Mr. Red collar. Hey, baby. You’ll see I’m still talking to them even though they can’t hear me just because I always do talk to them. Red collar boy doesn’t have any white on him. Oh, he’s going to show you his big, pretty mouth. There, a great big yawn for Mr. Red collar. Red collar boy weighs 630 grams, so that’s a gain of 277 grams. He is a very nice chunky monkey. You can see he’s quite solid. You can see he’s a little broader in the back there than the party boy was. So, he’s a good-sized boy. Very nice little fellow. I’m just going to put him down there.

Now we’ll take a look at Mr. Orange collar. Mr. Orange collar has more variation in his color, I think, than pretty much anybody at this point. You can see he almost looks like he has ripples down his back of the lighter brown sort of caramel color. So, he has quite a lot of interesting tones in his coat. He’s got a little smidge of white under his chin, not a lot, and he doesn’t really have any on his chest. He has one little dot, but that’s it. So Mr. Orange collar, he weighs 665 grams today, and he has gained 298 grams, so another one that’s pretty much doubled is weight and really done a great job.

All these puppies are right in the middle of the pack. They’re not a big talkers. They’re not very quiet, they’re just all pretty much the same. So, we have an extremely consistent litter here. We have one who is a talker, which we’ll get to in a minute. And of course, we have a biggest and a smallest, which I’ll also tell you when we get to those ones. But, they’re a nice, quiet litter, and we’re already able to sleep through the night. I think we slept through the night now for two nights, so that’s really good in the first week that we’re able to do that and not have to get up with them at all. So, we’ll give Mr. Orange down there to Oceana for her to look after. You’ll see that Oceana looks after everybody as soon as they come back. She gives them a little check to make sure that there isn’t anything she needs to be aware of.

Now we’re going to look at Mr. Purple collar. Now, this is one of the puppies I was just referencing. This is our biggest boy in the litter. This is the biggest puppy in the litter overall. Purple weighs 645 grams, and he has gained 305 grams. Sorry, he’s not the biggest. He’s gained the most weight. Orange is the biggest, because Orange is 665 grams. Purple weighs 20 grams less, but Purple gained the most weight this week. Purple is the most forward dog out of the litter. He is always able to find the milk bar, and he is always very skilled at finding the best spot in the milk bar, so that’s why he’s gained more weight than anybody.

He does not have any white on him at all. And he is, if you see him next to Oceana here, if you just take a look at the two colors side by side, you can see he’s considerably lighter brown than Oceana is. Oceana’s so dark she’s almost black. So, he’s a beautiful, beautiful, sort of the milk chocolate color. There’s Oceana wanting to kiss him, and welcome him back, and just make sure that everything’s fine with him.

Now we have one of our little girls, little peach collar girl. Hey, baby girl. Here she comes. Here Miss Peach. She’s a sweet little girl. She’s a really nice little dog. Thank you. That’s a very cute girl. Peach now weigh 627 grams, and she’s gained 299 grams. So, she’s done really well. That’s excellent. She was not one of the larger puppies to begin with, and now she’s right up there in the 600 range, so that’s a really, really good weight. She’s clearly managing quite nicely. Oh, she’s going to give you a nice yawn and a little bit of a stretch. We can already see where those teeth are going to start coming in not too long from now. We’ll give her to Oceana as well. There you go, Oci. There you go. Oceana’s busy cleaning somebody, so we’ll just let Peach find her way.

Now we will do pink collar girl. Now, pink color girl is one of the puppies. I was also saying that has something to talk about. A couple of things with Pink. She has some white on her chest, which we didn’t see at first. There it is. You can see that she’s moving around considerably. She’s the squawker in the group. She talks. She tells me when she’s upset. She does not stay still. And she is very forward in making sure we all know what it is that Miss Pink wants. So, I would say that right now she’s the bossy one out of the group. Don’t expect that this will stay the same. She could end up being the quiet is puppy in the litter by the end of the day. But for now, she’s the talker. Pink weighs 578 grams today, and she has gained 263 grams over this past week. Now, we’ll give her back to Oceana.

Our last little puppy is dark blue collar boy, the other party. This fellow is the smallest in the group. He is very petite. He is also the least forward out of everybody. He will often just give up and not go and find a spot at the milk bar if it requires too much effort. We spend a lot of time putting him on a nipple so that he is sure to get enough groceries. He is the only one who has not doubled his birth weight since last week. So, he ways for 441 grams, and he gained 166 grams. So, you can see he’s considerably smaller and hasn’t gained as much as the others. He’s robust, though. He’s perfectly healthy. He’s just a little bit of a quieter, laid back fellow. We’ll put him down with Oceana now. And because he’s last, he’s not going to get one of the prime spots, but we’ll keep an eye on them there and move him.

We’ll put the basket just away now and our book with all of our numbers. We’ll just get Oceana maybe to move over here so we can see everybody a little bit better, because it’s much more fun to look at them. Right, Oci? That’s a good girl. So what I want to talk to everybody about today is training. One of the things you’re going to want to do if you’re on the Cafe Noir litter list is start looking around and finding a good trainer to work with.

Now, training has changed remarkably. A lot of you that are on our reservation list, you haven’t had a puppy of your own as an adult. You’ve grown up with a puppy, or if you’re perhaps retired, you had a puppy when your children were younger, but you haven’t brought one up for more than 10 years. And in the last 10 to 20 years, training of dogs has changed remarkably.

So previously, a lot of what was done was with the human being dominant and with the human beings sort of what was often referred to as the alpha and always being in charge and the one who was … The dog was submissive to you and respected you, but that respect wasn’t an earned respect. It was more a you-will-respect-me kind of approach. This is the kind of thing you will find in books that were written by Cesar Millan or the Monks of New Skete. Cesar Millan is excellent with a certain type of dog, and those are usually what we call red zone dogs who’ve had a dreadful life and are emotionally traumatized. They need some very different treatment than a labradoodle. An Australian labradoodle is probably as opposite from one of Cesar’s red zone dogs as you can imagine.

The Monks of New Skete wrote their first book, I believe, in 1978, and they republished it recently. They have some excellent ideas. They raise German shepherds, and they have some wonderful ideas. But, I was really disappointed when they released their new book that they didn’t adapt any of their training styles, so they still tend to have that have very strong focus on being the dominant one in the relationship.

What we see now in training is much more what we call a bond-based approach. That’s where we have a relationship with our dog. We recognize that our dog is not our servant, and is not here to just do what we tell it to do. We want our dog to have a strong feelings for us to like us, to love us, and to respect us. We want to earn that respect, not beat it into them. We want them to do what we want them to do and behave in the way we want them to behave because they want to and because it’s pleasurable for them as well.

We also recognize now that dogs have a considerable level of intelligence. Now, Australian labradoodles in particular are a very intelligent breed. They love learning, and they learn really quickly. They also are very … With with being so clever, you can’t get away with a lot of things with them. They’ll know if you’re trying to trick them, and they also quite often play jokes on you. So they can … They’re easy to train because they want to be trained and they want to learn, but they’re also clever and very intelligent. They’ll recognize if you’re being phony or if you’re not being honest with them. So, that’s something to keep in mind.

We have a series of suggestions for reading for you and trainers that we like. We’ll have the links below the video for you for those. Sophia Yin is a veterinarian who has a really great approach and one that we follow most closely out of everybody. Ian Dunbar is another vet. We also like his approach, although we don’t follow him anywhere near as much as we follow Sophia Yin’s approach.

When you’re looking for a trainer, one thing to remember is there’s no regulations for dog trainers. Anybody can put their shingle up and say, “Oh, I’m a dog trainer.” So what you want to be searching for is one that is actually certified by something and someone. Then, when you find that trainer, go and check out what it is they say they’re certified by. Are they certified by ABC School of Dog Training where they took one 15-minute course or did they actually go to a program and learn something hands-on from from a true trainer?

There’s two sort of broad approaches to training. One is called luring and one is called shaping. Luring is when you use a treat. So when you want your dog to sit, you have the treat, and the way you position the treat in front of the dog causes the dog to naturally sit. Then, you say, “Yay! That’s great. Good dog,” and use the word sit and give them the treat. The other thing is shaping. Shaping is where you wait for the dog to do the behavior, and then you reward them, and you use a clicker, normally, to mark the behavior.

Karen Pryor is probably one of the pioneers of shaping behavior. You’ll find quite a few vets … or not vets, trainers, rather, who are certified, are Karen Pryor certified. It’s a fine method. It’s not my preferred method. I find it disconnected, but it works for a lot of people, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. It is a very well regarded program.

Luring is more what I prefer to do. Maybe it’s because I’m impatient, because you get results faster. I’m not a huge fan of clickers. I much prefer using the treats. It just works for me personally better. So, ask your trainer when you’re looking for one. Do you use a shaping method? Do use the luring method? And please be highly wary of any trainer who talks about being the alpha in the relationship, focuses on things like not letting the dog eat before you do, go out the door before you do, and those types of things. Those are more Cesar Millan, Monks of New Skete based type trainers, and really are not successful with labradoodles.

Generally, what happens with that type of training is while you may have a dog who’s extremely well behaved and sits on command and doesn’t move, you have a dog that doesn’t have very much confidence. These are the types of dogs that you see that become insecure, may be aggressive on the leash, may be aggressive to people, are generally very unhappy in their lives because there are so cowed, and they’re so controlled, and they haven’t learned any self-confidence. If you’ve got your dog, and you’ve worked with your dog together, and you’re a team, and you’ve earned your dog’s respect, and you have a great bond-based approach with your dog, your dog is going to want to sit because that’s what’s fun, and because your dog’s happy, because you’re happy, and everyone’s happy. And yeah, you may have a dog that sometimes gets up when it should have been on a down-stay for half an hour, but at the end of the day, I find your dog will be much better behaved overall.

So, those are my thoughts on training. So please, take some time. Start looking now. Now, if you’re on the reservation list for the Cafe Noir litter, please go to the Van Isle Labradoodles private owners Facebook page and ask for recommendations there for trainers. We pretty much have puppies all over the Vancouver Island, scattered throughout the lower mainland, and throughout the province of Alberta as well. We don’t tend to have our puppies go further, because we don’t ship our puppies. But, we do have one in this litter, our first one, that’s going to Manitoba. So for that puppy, that owner is going to have to do her own research to find a really good trainer because we don’t have anyone else in Manitoba at this point. So, we’re really excited to have her join our family and extend our reach. Reynold is from Manitoba originally, so it’s an extra bonus for us.

So anyways, start looking for your trainer now. Start asking on the Van Isle Labradoodles Facebook page. You can even post here on YouTube asking people for comments. I’m sure you’ll get some recommendations. Also, just use the internet and use YouTube as search engines to look for good trainers in your area. Now, if you happen to live anywhere between Victoria and up to Qualicum, you can also make use of Taylor, our assistant, who is a fully certified trainer. Taylor does use the luring method. We sent her to school to become a trainer, and she focuses really strongly on puppies. So, she has lots of experience with that, and she will travel for you. She lives here near us, but she will travel up and down the island to work with your puppy. She works with pretty much all of our guardian dogs, too, so we think she does a fabulous job. The other trainer we really recommend is located in Sydney. That’s CommuniCanine, and that’s Darcy and April. We’ll put the links for Taylor’s company, which is Pawsitive Results and Darcy’s CommuniCanine under the video as well for you so you can contact them.

Now, no matter what training are you use, the most important thing when you first get your puppy home is to go to a puppy start class, a puppy kindergarten. There’ll be lots of names, but what you want is to have your puppy in a group. It’s really important the puppy is socialized not just with people, but with other dogs. Now, these puppies have seen mostly labradoodles, so you want to start exposing them to other breeds of dogs. And yeah, dogs can recognize their own breed. So if you’re out and there’s 10 different breeds of dogs, your dog is going to be able to go, “Oh, there’s another labradoodle,” zero in on that, and that’s where your dog is going to go first. They are able to recognize their own kind, so to speak.

So, that’s some advice on training. I’ll have the books that I recommend that I think you should read to get an idea of what you think your style might be. And I have to be honest, I probably read a half a dozen training books in the course of the year, and I tend to get bits from each of those books and put them together for my style. I also, because we’re busy with puppies so much, which is lots of fun, we tend to rely on Taylor to actually do the formal training for our dogs. Usually, our dogs are the ones that are the worst at ever being housebroken. They end up being the oldest because we’re always running around doing something else and we don’t follow our own advice. So, we want you to do what we say and not what we do in that respect. Full disclosure there. We’re not the best of following our own advice.

Now, the other thing I want to talk to you about today is choosing a vet. If you don’t have a vet already because you don’t have a pet or anything, please take some time to thoroughly investigate and interview vets. Well, vets should be willing to be interviewed. You should offer to pay for that, but I always ask a vet for a consultation before I ever think about taking one of my dogs there.

Now, you want to decide what your approach is. Are you more looking for a natural, holistic approach or are you looking more for a traditional vet approach. So for us, we use a more natural approach. Our vet is not a holistic vet. Our clinic is a regular traditional vet, but they also are very respectful and quite knowledgeable of natural and holistic techniques. They know that that’s our preference. They know that’s where we start with any issues. So if we have a dog that has, say, an ear infection …

So, Smoochers had an ear infection. He had a rather persistent ear infection when he was a puppy. It’s really unusual for a young puppy to have an ear infection. Generally, that comes from being bathed too much and they get too much water in their ear. Then, the moisture builds up and bacteria lives there, and you get an ear infection. With Smoochers, it was a case of being over vaccinated. He came from Mississippi, and there is a dreadful problem with parvo in the southern states, so they heavily vaccinate for parvo to protect the puppies. But as a result of him having had so many vaccinations, he ended up getting this chronic ear infection.

So, we treated it the first time with Surolan, which is an antibiotic, but it didn’t really clear it up. So, we took him back and had his ear looked at again, and yeah, his infection was back. We went to a more natural approach. In one of our later episodes, I will show you the products that we use for cleaning ears and what we use when we do have an ear infection. So, we used the natural product and that was what actually ended up clearing up the ear infection. The other thing that really helps is being on a raw diet. A kibble diet tends to encourage dogs to have ear infections that happen regularly, whereas the raw diet tends to discourage ear from happening. So anyways, that’s something you want to ascertain. First of all, what is your approach going to be? And secondly, then you want to have a vet that follows that approach.

You also want to find a vet who’s somewhat at least familiar with labradoodles. You’ll probably have to educate your vet what the differences between an Australian labradoodle and a labradoodle. And if you haven’t already learned that from our website or from speaking with us, please just ask the question in the comments and I’ll be happy to explain what the difference is. Oh, I’m just going to get little light blue collar boy there. He was just having a little roll job. There we go. Put him back with everyone. You can see everyone’s having a good feast here at the milk bar. You just saw Oceana do a little adjustment in her position. That is her accommodating the puppies so that she rolls over so that all 10 faucets at the milk bar are fully available to the puppies.

So, back to the vet. So, you’ll want to have a vet who is at least familiar with labradoodles, and is fond of labradoodles. Many vets are purebred dog breeders, and some of them are not crazy about labradoodles, and that’s probably not the vet for you. We also encourage you to look for a vet who does minimal vaccination and is well aware of all of the contemporary trends and the need to do as few vaccinations as possible. You’ll also want a that who is at least supportive of a raw dog food diet, because that is what your puppy is going to be weaned to, and that is what we’re going to have you feed your puppy, is a raw dog food diet. Some vets are vehemently opposed to them, and so that’s not going to work really well for you. If ever your dog has something, they’re going to blame it on the raw food diet when probably it has absolutely nothing to do with that whatsoever.

The other thing that I suggest you look for is emergency hours and care. Our clinic shares emergency hours and care with a variety of other vets. There’s only four vets in my clinic, and so that way they’re not consistently on call. So, find out what the vet has. Emergency clinics are fine if it really is a true, true emergency, like your dog was hit by a car, but they’re are not generally the best place to go for something that you would prefer to speak to your own vet about. So, find out if they’re available after hours or not. Do they work on weekends or not? What’s going to fit with your schedule?

And like I said, once you narrow it down to two or three, then book an appointment, go in, and have a consultation. Tell them you’re getting an Australian labradoodle puppy. Tell them it’s from Van Isle Doodles. Give them our information so that they can check our website out if they wish. Hopefully you have a vet who’s interested enough to really know what you’re doing and give you some advice. And if they pose any questions to you that you’re not sure of, don’t hesitate to ask me. I’m happy to tell you what the answers are.

So, those are the two things we’re going to get you to work on for this week. Next week, we’re going to do another update and we’ll cover some more topics. What we’ll start with next week is how to set up your house in preparation for your puppy, some of the supplies that you’ll want to be looking at getting, and off course an update.

Now, if I can just get Reynold to put the camera down onto the puppies again, I want to show you dark blue collar boy, the one who is the smallest, and you’ll see how he’s nursing quite vigorously right now, whereas everyone else is pretty much petered out and fallen asleep. Pink’s still hanging on there just for something to do, and Peach is nursing a bit. But that’s Blue’s role right now. He comes in at the end, and he’s nursing a bit more vigorously because the flow has slowed down because somebody else was already at that faucet. So, that’s why he’s a little bit smaller right now. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to end up being the smallest in the litter permanently, but for now, that’s where he is. When they start eating solid food, he may be the one who eats the most.

So, that’s our update for the Cafe Noir litter of Australian labradoodle puppies for today. We hope you’ve enjoyed the video. If you did, please give us a thumbs up. And don’t forget, if you want to be sure to be notified right away when our videos are published, subscribe to our channel and be sure to follow this litter along. We’ll see everybody again next week. Thanks for watching.