Puppy Play

The puppies will be 7 weeks old tomorrow, and they are getting extremely active and playful. They are daredevils, too, getting much more coordinated and wanting to leap from the table to the slide, swing, furniture, etc. I’m feeling the pressure of keeping them in one piece before they go to their new homes starting in a week’s time! 😀

Playing with and watching puppies play is so fun, and they can play for a really long time. The challenge for owners is finding the right balance of appropriate length and type of play and managing it well. Puppies are sponges before 16 weeks of age, so they will learn from and internalize the lessons from their experiences extremely quickly.

Incorporate some short training sessions into your playtime, so focusing on you becomes a fundamental part of their world. Practice recalls and reward every recall with something the puppy enjoys, Don’t let play go on too long. Intersperse your play with calm times so the puppy learns to settle in the midst of play. During those times remember to breathe, keep your voice lower instead of being high pitched, pet the puppy with long, slow strokes. When puppies get tired, they don’t always go down for a nap on their own. Oftentimes they get hyper, overexcited, and bitey. If the puppy gets too high and can’t calm down, it’s probably past time for a nap. Give them something to help calm them like a chew, a stuffed Kong, a snuffle mat, a licky mat with cream cheese on it, or just calmly do a slow scatter of some kibble or treats to help slow them down. They usually will crash hard after that.

Playing with other dogs should always be done under close supervision. Even if the dog is in your own household, I recommend disallowing rough play especially at this age. The way your puppy learns to play with their own housemates or frequent buddies is how they will expect to play with outside dogs, so think carefully about how you want that to look at this point. Oftentimes the adult will start out playing nicely with the puppy, but as they become more aroused, or the puppy starts becoming too much for them to know how to deal with, even tolerant dogs may start playing too roughly. Try to divert or interrupt before that happens.

Here’s a few clips of the pups’ grandpa Ronan playing with the puppies. He had already been playing with them for several minutes before I started recording, and started out just rolling and chewing on the bone with all the pups swarming all over him and his head. Now he seems to be gently setting more boundaries.

I helped Ronan out a little by handing him toys to help redirect puppies in this next video.

In the next one, he started getting too amped up with the slide play, so we called an end to playtime. 🙂 Both he and the pups were done since they were all running amuck and barking. Ronan and the pups got to have cream cheese licky mats to calm down, then the pups went back in the house for a long nap time.

Speaking of sleeping, the pups have been quiet/sleeping through the night in their pen for the last several days, from approximately 10pm to 7am. Yay!