Day 28

Tomorrow I will try to get a picture of the current setup in the puppy’s pen, although it’s likely to change again soon. The puppies had all been getting out of their whelping box on their own, and basically what they were doing was tumbling over the side, landing on a soft dog bed. I wasn’t thrilled with that, but still wanted them to use the box, so I covered Sport’s agility contact trainer board with fleece and made it into a ramp leading in and out of the whelping box. (For the agility people reading this, I did leave part of the yellow exposed so the puppies will touch the contact. 🙂 ) It was an experiment to see if the puppies would use it. Sure enough, they all have started to use it. It is so fun to see puppies climbing up the wall, then walking down the ramp. Some of them have even gone back up the board into the box when they get tired. This is not to say that puppies don’t still tumble out of the box over the wall on occasion. I think perhaps they don’t mind it as much as I do.

On to the pictures.

Can you believe the puppies still like to use this tube?

Here’s a puppy using a wobble board. It’s a circular board with a ball on the bottom. This teaches the puppies to get used to walking on something that moves. A lot of people like to use a wobble board before training a young puppy to walk over the teeter in dog agility, but there are some instances in real life where a dog might need to walk on an unsteady surface. Puppies seem to take most everything in stride at this age, and none of them showed any negative reaction to the board movement.

In this next picture I’ve sneaked up on the puppies in their hideout (the puppies are camped under a doggie chaise lounge). BTW, dogs love these kinds of raised beds– you can find them at Kuranda Bed. Usually they sleep on the top, though you often will find Sport underneath, just like her puppies.