Appalachian Mountains Litter

I’ve started to notice the puppies moving away from their sleeping area to potty. This means it’s time to start separating the bed area from the potty area. I use the fleece to cover 2/3 of the box to create separation of bed space vs potty space. You can see from the potty pad that they are making an effort to keep the fleece clean.

My whelping box floor comes in two pieces. I remove a piece and the litterboxes take up 1/3 of the floor space.

I don't expect the puppies to use the litter yet- I only want to introduce the litter material before they start weaning to liquids and solids. Getting them on the litter material prior to that minimizes how much they might experiment with eating it.

On Day 21, we moved the puppies to the dog room and added the Jonart puppy pen to the whelping box.

The puppies are well on their way to finding their feet and they are on the move. They went from wobbles to disjointed walking.

Ellen steam-rolled poor Higby on her way to Irene.

We start introducing the puppies to different surfaces today. This is an exercise Brenda Aloff’s Puppy Chronicles describes. The puppies are put on a new surface every day- our intention is to desensitize and encourage exploration with novelty.

We also started bodywork this week. Bodywork is intended to teach the puppy how to calm itself and link that calmness to human touch. It is also a fabulous foundation for husbandry skills that your vet and groomer will appreciate.

Brenda’s Facebook post explains this far better than me.

All of the puppies are responding to noise by the end of Week 3. This marks the end of the Transitional Stage and the start of the Socialization Stage.

We begin exercising the startle-recovery reflex between 3-4 weeks of age. The puppies do not experience true fear at this age, so we can practice recovery without worry. What does this look like? I drop metal food bowls, close doors, start up and turn off the vacuum cleaner, start and stop a blender, etc. I want to induce that startle reflex with a short, moderately intense sound and see a quick recovery. The puppies have heard these sounds from outside rooms by now.

Next week in addition to startle-recovery, I will start playing Puppy Sounds and Indoor Agility Trial Sounds CDs from Dean Lake on low volume at first and gradually turn up the volume.