Puppies

Hi, everybody. This is Claire from Van Isle Labradoodles. We’re here with the Shake It Up litter. This is the litter of medium-sized Australia and multi-gen labradoodles, and this is their week two update. This week, we are going to learn a little bit about each of the puppies, what their weight gain has been, what they’ve been up to in the past week, how Breezy’s doing. Then, we’re going to talk a little bit about how you are going to introduce your puppy to other people, strangers, family members, and especially how you are going to have your children interact with your puppy or your grandchildren. This litter has 11 puppies in it, and we have many young families who have many young children. So, this’ll be a good topic for everybody to learn a bit more about.

So, let’s get started with the puppies and what’s happened with them this week. We’ll just take Yellow Collar here as our first puppy, just because she happens to be right here. Now, Yellow Collar was, as we said, originally at black and white parti, and a black and white parti, as you’ll remember, is two colors. Yellow Collar is a little bit different, in that she’s an extreme parti, which means she only has her color on her head and nowhere else on her body. Now, if you’ll see up close on Miss Yellow Collar, she has gorgeous copper eyebrows. And if you look under those eyebrows, you’ll see the major accomplishment for the litter this week, the eyes are open. Everybody has opened their eyes. So, the puppies are all reaching a major milestone this past week.

So, little Miss Yellow Collar now weighs 1.02 kilograms. She’s done really well with her weight gain. She’s a really nice little puppy, about the middle of the pack. She’s fairly quiet, as opposed to the ones that you can hear talking, but she will make herself known if she needs to. So, that’s Miss Yellow Collar.

Next, we’re gonna look at Miss … the Green Collar puppy here, because Green Collar is the one who right now has all of the talking going on. Green Collar is a vocal puppy, always having something to say, always telling Breezy if he figures that he should get some more time at the milk bar. You’ll see Green Collar also has both eyes are open. Green Collar is also a black and white parti, but Green Collar is a marked parti, not an extreme parti. Green now weighs 809 grams. So, Green’s getting pretty close to that one kilogram milestone as well. So, this is our talkative puppy in the group. You’ll probably hear this voice throughout the video. There we go. We’ll put you over here.

Now, the next puppy we’ll do is Brown Collar, just because he happens to be close to me. So Mr. Brown Collar, here he is. He’ll show you his nice beautiful eyes, I hope. Maybe not. He has some closed right now because he was sound asleep. Now, Brown Collar is also another black and white parti. He is close to being an extreme, in that he just has this one black mark on his back, and then he has the markings on his face. He has what we call an open face with lots of white through his face. Then, he has this adorable ear that is mostly white with just a little smidge of black down there.

Mr. Brown is also quite talkative and quite demanding of Breezy. He is the heaviest nurser out of all of the puppies, and he is the biggest puppy. Mr. Brown is at 1.08 kilograms, so he’s a very good size. We’ll put him down with Mr. Green, and maybe they can together talk things through and work it out, since Green is having quite a lot to say there.

Now we’ll do this one here. We’ll see who this is. This is Pink Collar girl. There she is. Now, Pink Collar girl is also a black and white parti. She has quite a few more markings on her body, including right down at the very back toward her tail. She has a beautiful little beauty spot on the side of her face. Pink Collar girl has her eyes open. I think she’s showing those to you right now. Yes, she is. She’s looking around a bit.

Pink is up to 952 grams this week. So, she’s doing really well. She’s gaining nicely. She’s a lovely quiet girl. She doesn’t make any demands on Mom at all. She is just doing really well overall. Oh, there’s Mr. Green still talking.

So next, let’s take Blue Collar. Come here, Blue. Hello, Blue. Blue Collar girl is another parti, but Blue Collar girl is as sable parti. At first, we said she was a black and white parti because her sable hadn’t shown. But if you take a look around her beautiful eyes that are all open, you will see all these lovely brown markings. There are also visible where her parti markings are. You can see them really clearly here on the spot on her back. She has them on the side of her face as well. You can hear her making little growls. The puppies are all becoming vocal now that they have their eyes open. Miss Blue, she doesn’t fuss, but she does do a whole bunch of this baby growling noise. It’s quite fun to listen to.

Blue Collar now weighs 854 grams. This is Dark Blue Collar, by the way. We have a light blue as well, so I should distinguish that this is Dark Blue Collar. So, that’s her, little Miss Growler. We’ll just put her over here. And we’ll grab the puppy that’s next to her, which is Purple Collar.

Purple Collar is also a black and white parti. This is a very well marked parti with those three distinct spots in the back there. Purple has what we call a closed face, where it’s all the solid color, and then just the white showing on the top of the head. So, it’s probably a little harder to see on the video, but Purple does have both eyes open. And then, this lovely little white area on the face here, which helps to balance out the white here, makes really pretty markings.

Purple weighs 981 gram, so very close to that one kilogram mark. Purple is a lovely, calm, quiet, relaxed puppy. No demands ever, just goes with the flow. So, put Purple back down, and let’s take one of the blacks here.

This, I believe, is Light Blue. Yes, Light Blue Collar puppy. Here we go. Now, Light Blue is a solid black puppy. It’s probably going to be tricky, but you may be able to see the beautiful open eyes there. This puppy’s only white is on the little goatee here, which is courtesy of his grandma Bijoux on his momma’s … or on his daddy’s side, rather. Light Blue Collar weighs 818 grams, so doing really nicely. A little bit, one of the slightly smaller puppies. So, I’ll put Light Blue back over here.

Here’s Red Collar girl. She’s getting pretty close to me, so we’ll just take a look at her. Now, Red Collar is also a solid black puppy, but she has these little dipped-in-white toes of the back and then one on the front as well, and a tiny little bit of white goatee, too, and two open eyes that are really lovely to look at. Red Collar is also a quiet puppy, right in the middle. Never making a sound yet. Hasn’t found their voice yet. Red Collar is currently weighing 851 grams, so a little bit smaller than some of the ones we first looked at, but still a really good healthy weight. Gaining nicely. There we go. I put you over there.

Let’s see. We’ve already looked at you, and you, and you. And we’ve already looked at you. Oh, here. Here’s another one of the partis we haven’t seen. This is Peach Collar girl. Peach Collar is also a black and white parti. She has quite a good amount of black markings on her back there, and then another one closer to her tail. Then, she has quite a bit of black on her face, but it is balanced out by quite a bit of white around her nose, and then the little stripe that goes up her nose. Oh, she has both of her eyes open. She’s doing really well. She’s a quiet puppy, too.

Peach is weighing 687 grams, so she is the smallest puppy in the litter. She’s substantially smaller than some of them. With a litter of 11, it’s not too surprising that you have quite a wide variation in weights. So, she’s our little tiny girl.

I’ll just put her over here with her sisters and her brothers. We’ll get one of the bruisers out here. One of the solid blacks. This is Orange Collar, again, with two dipped-in-white hind toes and that’s it. Otherwise, black. I don’t think we have any white on the chest on this dog. Oh, a little tiny bit that you can just barely see, and a little smidge of a goatee. Oh, come on, Orange. Show us your eyes. There we go. Now you can see those beautiful open eyes.

Orange Collar is a really nice puppy. Again, a very quiet, middle-of-the-row puppy. Doing very well at the milk bar. Miss Orange weighs 921 grams, so a very good weight, but not a talker and not a demander have anything, just a nice, quiet, calm puppy. So, that is Orange.

Now, I think who we have left is Miss Gray Collar. Come here, Miss Gray. Here we go, little sweetheart. And here is Miss Gray. Miss Gray is another all black puppy, little bit of weight on the toe at the back, and that’s about it, a little goatee. You can see that she has her two eyes open.

Now, Gray Collar is also one of the smaller puppies. She is 781 grams. And she is a feisty little one. She always makes sure that she has a good place at the milk bar and gets her fair share, even though she’s the second tiniest in the litter. So, that’s all their puppies and their weighs.

Now, I want to tell you a little bit about this past week and the puppies, in particular Gray Collar girl. Last week, we noticed that a couple of the puppies had a little bit of yellow on their bums. And if you’ll see now, you still see there’s a little bit of yellow staining on some of their bums. Puppies’ poo is normally yellow. That is the color it should be. But, there was too much poo going on, and it was enough to be concerned. Gray Color girl in particular was very lethargic, and she was not showing us that she wanted to nurse from Breezy. So, we were concerned enough that we ran her into the vet and took a fecal sample.

We never did find anything. Everything was clear. There didn’t seem to be any reason why she wasn’t feeling well. She was definitely not feeling well. She was quite depressed, in terms of she wasn’t vigorous. I don’t mean she was mentally depressed, but she was quite depressed and what we call flat. She actually go out to the point where she was just didn’t have the energy to nurse.

So, we brought her back home. We put all the puppies on antibiotics just to be extra safe in case there was something that we just weren’t able to detect through their fecal samples. We stayed up with Gray Collar, and we gave her some extra goat’s milk with a syringe. We gave her some glucose and a product that’s called Nutra Drops, which is just a very, very high concentrated little drop that gives them instant energy, some more glucose, and helps them when they’re having any problems. So, it was a little touch-and-go during the night, but she … By the morning, she was great. She gained quite a bit of weight overnight, and she was back up nursing on our own with no problem in the morning. So, we were really relieved to see that.

Sometimes this happens in a litter. Sometimes I say our lives are ruled by poop because sometimes we have puppies with diarrhea. Sometimes we have puppies who are constipated. There is quite often something that’s going on. They’re very small. Their entire digestive systems are immature, and they’re easily upset. So, they’re all fully recovered. Nobody’s taking anything anymore. We’ve wormed them as well, and we’ve wormed Breezy, too. So, everybody’s feisty, and healthy, and happy, and everybody’s gaining weight as you can see there. So, that’s what’s happened with the puppies.

Breezy herself is doing really well. Last week, I believe in the video I mentioned that I had to handfeed her. She wasn’t having the best appetite. I don’t have to do that anymore. She’s quite happy to eat on her own. So, she’s eating about five pounds of raw a day, and she’s also eating some kibble. When the girls are nursing, they need a good amount of carbohydrates. So quite often, they will request to have some kibble in order to get some extra carbohydrates into their system. So, we leave a high-energy, high-quality kibble out for them to snack on whenever they wish. She’s taking advantage of that. She’s probably eating about three to four cups of kibble today along with her five pounds of raw, so no shortage of groceries going into Breezy. She’s maintaining her weight very nicely. She’s not too skinny, and she’s certainly not fat, but she has a lot of mouths to feed.

So, that’s the update for everybody and how everybody is doing this week. We’re really happy with their progress. Their coats are looking beautiful. They’re nice and shiny. And other than Mr. Green making his comments, they’re a lovely, calm, and fairly quiet litter.

So now what we want to talk about today a bit is how are you going to introduce these little sweethearts to your family, to your friends, when you meet strangers when you’re out with your puppy, and, most importantly, with your kids. So, one of the first things you want to do is find yourself a trainer. It’s really important to find a trainer that you are comfortable with and shares your same philosophies and approaches. I would tell you that I would recommend that you, first of all, check with your friends. Get some references from them.

Then second of all, when you’re looking into trainers, check their websites. See if they’re certified. Many trainers have no certification and no actual formal training, so you want to find one that is properly certified and has good experience. Then, I would maybe go and observe a couple of puppy classes and then ask them questions. See how familiar this trainer is with labradoodles. Labradoodles, as you hear me say many times, are a very soft breed, and they respond well to positive training and positive reinforcement. They do not do well in an environment that has any sort of harshness to it. That just tends to make them too scared. I’m just going to snuggle up with Green for a minute and see if that’ll get them to stop with all of his squawking there. Probably not, but we can always try it.

So, don’t be afraid to ask a trainer questions. Any trainer who’s good is going to welcome your questions and be able to explain in good detail to you what their approach is, their philosophy, and how they were certified, and by whom. So, make sure you do all of that. You probably should start booking your training now.

If you have children or if this is your first dog, I would recommend that you book a trainer to come in and do one or two sessions at home with you. You’ll find that to be invaluable. They can even help show you how to best set your home up so that your puppy is most likely to succeed in all aspects of their life and how it will work best for you. So, a good trainer is really important to have, and good trainers are usually booked quite far advance.

What you’re going to want to start with with your puppy is just puppy kindergarten. All that you really doing here is your puppy isn’t learning so much how to sit, or lie down, or come when they’re called, but more they’re learning how to get along in the world, how to embrace new people and other dogs, and how they interact with you. That’s mostly what you’re doing at puppy kindergarten. They’ll usually have a time for socializing, and your puppy will go and play with the other dogs and have a great time.

One of the things that the puppy school in Cowichan Valley does during their classes is called Pass the Puppy. So, you go and you have your puppy, and your puppy will of course be on a leash with you, and you’ll be maybe snuggling your puppy or your puppy will be on their mat. Then, you take your puppy and send it over to the person next to you, and you take the person on your other side’s puppy. This is a great thing for puppies. They get to be handled by many different people with many different styles, and smells, and approaches, and it helps your puppy learn that people are safe, people are good, and it’s fun to meet new people.

So, those are the types of things you’ll do in your puppy school. Then, after you finish that, then you’ll go on to the more formal training where you’re going to learn this sit, and stay, and come and go to your mat sort of idea. But at first your puppy’s just too young to learn all of these things. They’ll already come with a good start on some of their training, especially house training.

So now, what about introducing your puppy to the rest of your family members and your friends? Because you’re going to be popular. Everyone’s going to want to come over and meet your new puppy. What we recommend is for the first two, three days, you just spend the time at home alone with your puppy and your own immediate family that are going to live with a puppy every day, as opposed to having a whole bunch of friends come over. It’s just too overwhelming, both for you and your puppy. You want to get that routine established right away, want to start with a consistency, get your puppy used to their new environment. Because after all, they’ve spent their entire lives here with us and with their litter mates. It’s a huge change to go somewhere and be all on their own with completely different people, entirely different smells, and a whole different routine. It’s a lot for a little baby to take in, so you want to make it nice and gradual, very calm, and very measured. And if your puppy doesn’t seem settled after a couple of days, don’t feel guilty. Just tell your friends and family, “We need to have the puppy have a few more days on their own with us.” That’s the best, very best approach for you and your puppy.

Now, when you do have people come to meet your puppy, one of the things that puppies and all dogs do not like is when people approach them right on and they put their hands down to pat them. So, they have this great big hand coming down over them. That’s really frightening for a dog. What you want is to tell people to stop a little bit short of your dog to crouch down so they’re on the same level as your dog, put their hands out, and touch your puppy on the side or underneath of their face or the side of the body, not on top to pet their heads and not right in their face. It’s really important that your puppy feels safe and secure and that you’re providing protection to your puppy to keep your puppy safe from anything that your puppy doesn’t like.

Now, the other thing with your own children, and you, and I do this, too, is we all want to go kissy, kissy, kissy with our puppies, because they’re so cute and we want to kiss them. Well, dogs really don’t like getting kissed. They will tolerate it from you. Ripple comes up to get a kiss on my nose and we touch noses, so does Spirit. In the morning, as soon as I wake up, she touches touches noses with me. But if you want to teach your children how to properly handle your puppy and how to kiss their puppy, teach them this: Lick your hand or kiss your hand, and touch your puppies body, not the head, not the face. Try to start right from the beginning with your children that they don’t contact that puppy’s face, just the body. Your puppy will really appreciate that and be much more calm and much happier with how they’re being handled.

I want you all to go and check out a YouTube channel called Stop the 77. That channel is designed with videos for kids specifically. 77% of dog bites arise from the family dog. And it is, of course, one of the main reasons why dogs are surrendered. You don’t want your dog to ever be biting you or your children. The main reason why this happens is because people are too much into a dog’s face, or they’re not able to recognize the dog’s body language when the dog is saying, “Whoa, wait a minute. I’m uncomfortable. Don’t. Please don’t do that. Please, please, please.” They’ll say please a number of times with their eyes, yawning, licking their lips. Their eyes will open up wider. They may pant, they may yawn, or they may scratch themselves. Those are all signals from your dog that they’re stressed, they’re uncomfortable, and they need you to back off. So as the adult in the relationship, you need to be aware of what your dog’s body signals are, and then teach them to your kids.

So if you watch the Stop the 77 YouTube videos, they’re great because they’re done by kids for kids, and they’ll show kids what not to do and what to do. One of the things they’ll show kids is kissing your hand and touching your dog’s body, not on your dog face. So, it’s a really excellent series. And if you have been following our reading recommendations and are readings Sophia Yin’s book, you will see that she also has quite a few references to how to read your dog’s body language. And when you pick your puppy up, we’ll give you a little poster that you can keep on your fridge or somewhere where it’s easily accessible that will have very important signals from your puppy when they’re communicating when they’re stressed and they don’t want you near them anymore.

The other things you want to do is teach your kids not to sit on your puppy. Sometimes you’ll see on Facebook or other social media platforms pictures of small children riding large dogs. No dog enjoys doing that, no matter what the caption in the picture says or how cute it looks. Dogs are not horses. They do not want children sitting on their backs and riding them. This is a way to petrify your puppy, possibly harm their joints, and really make for an unhappy situation that’s potentially dangerous. So, make sure nobody is riding on your puppy.

The other thing is if your children are sleeping with the puppy, then have the puppy sleeping on your child, on your lap, on your arm, in your arms, but don’t have your children’s sleeping on the puppy. Again, the puppy does not like that. No dog likes that. The dog wants to be on top of you, not having you on top of the dog. It’s important that you always remember that you are bigger than the dog and the dog is always entitled to be on top of you, but not vice versa.

So, those are the main things about reading the body language and introducing your puppy. You’ll want to take your puppy out and have your … You’ll want to show everybody your puppy, take your puppy out for walks, and your puppy will be going to all sorts of places where they meet new strangers. So with that in mind, when someone comes up, hopefully they remember to ask before they touch your puppy. If they don’t, pick your puppy up, turn around, and give that person your back so that they’re not touching your puppy. If they ask, say yes. Put your puppy in besides you, hand the person a treat, and have them crouch down to the puppy’s level. Give them the tree, and instruct them not to touch the puppy in the face or on top of the head, and to go up on the side.

If your puppy looks nervous, isn’t enjoying the contact, say, “I’m sorry. She’s just an infant and she’s not ready for this yet.” Pick your puppy up and move along. Some puppies are really going to enjoy this interaction, and other puppies are going to say, “Yeah, I’m not quite ready for that yet.” So, just give them their time and their space. The last thing you want to do, again, is overwhelm them and make them frightened about that. You do want to take your puppy out lots. It’s really important that you do expose them to new situations and new people, but it always needs to be in a positive manner.

So, that’s your tips for this week. We hope you enjoyed the video. I hope you enjoyed Green Collar’s singing to accompany or video. And if you liked the video, please give us a thumbs up. We hope you’re subscribed to our channel and you’re following along with the updates for other litters. We really hope that you find this information useful and helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to comment below and I’ll be happy to answer any of your questions. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week.