We have our first updates from the scattered Wildflowers. This first one is blooming in North Carolina and our update comes from Eden:
Kadi formally known as Mariposa surprised me how well she handled her rather abrupt change from her first home to her new home in Raleigh. Her first day from her morning stay in the hotel and then off to the airport, she was calm and didn’t fuss much. She was the hit of our fellow travel passengers and she met 9 new people that day. Kadi has come to live with her Auntie Jannu and my husband, Chuck. We got our first Berner over 33 years ago so we have a little experience with the breed and raising puppies.
KIM PERRY PHOTO
Kadi sleeps in a crate in the bedroom and is now making it 7-8 hours before asking to go out. During the day her favorite place to sleep is on the tile floor under the kitchen island. When we cannot watch her, she stays in the “Office Suite” which is an x-pen in the office. Kadi is really good about settling down without much protest whether it is a crate in the car, bedroom, or x-pen.
We have short play training sessions during the day. I am using clicker training for much of the sessions. We are working on foundation training such as come, sit, down, stand, watch, loose leash walking, and basic manners. She must sit before she is petted or fed. Since things have been going so well with the basics, I have added shake and crawl training the last couple of days as well as my indoor teeter trainer at the lowest level. Kadi is wicked smart and it doesn’t take long for her to catch on. Our dogs have free access to a fenced back yard. We have been working on her learning how to come back into the house which is up a ramp and then 1 dog door into a screened in porch and a second heavier weather insulated dog door into the kitchen. We thought with her small physical size it was going to take a few more weeks before she was strong enough to push the heavier dog door by herself. Much to my surprise Wednesday she had figured out how to jump on the heavy door and make her way into the kitchen. Kadi is amazing. Now we are working on reversing the process so she goes out to the yard by herself.
KIM PERRY PHOTO
The puppy socialization period up to 12 weeks of age is very important so our goal is for Kadi to meet 100 different people by the end of that time. Our neighborhood makes it easy to meet a lot of people but I also have taken her to places like Home Depot and Farmers markets. As of Sunday, she has met 77 people.
She weighed 15 lbs at her Veterinarian appointment on Wednesday. My Vet thought she had a nice temperament. She received her DAP shot and her first Heartguard plus treatment.
Although Kadi may sound perfect, she is a puppy. She has her landshark moments and a couple of accidents when we were not watching close enough. She has yet to learn to put her toys away.
Thank you, Eden, for giving Practically Perfect Kadi such a perfectly wonderful place to grow and blossom into all of her amazing potential. I am sure Kadi understands there is no sense putting toys away if one plans to use them again ;)
This next update comes from Colorado about the puppy formerly known as Paintbrush — Mariya shares:
There has been much deliberation on a name for this puppy. While progressing in training, I found myself struggling with the names that I had tried on thus far. I needed something that ended on a high note, positive, full of energy, fun to say, and very clearly a call name.
I explained to Mary-Ann that my roots are Norwegian and Polish, however our family has taken on much of the Norse culture as my Grandfather was 100% and still spoke the original Norwegian dialect (which much to my grandmother's distaste, the elderly women in Norway adored when he visited). We grew up very much in traditional Norwegian style with lefse, krumkaka, cold weather Nordic activities like ice fishing and nordic skiing, and yes, "Uff-da." I spent many years in Fargo, ND, popular for the movie, and certainly after a drink or two (or with my sister/family), the Minnesooooda drawl comes back out. I had looked into popular Norwegian names that start with a K, but struggled to find the right one. I'm not entirely sure how I ran into this one, but I'm loving it, along with it's meaning - so I've decided on "Kjempe" for Paintbrush's name. Pronounced "Shem-puh" he responds surprising well, as if it were his name all along. Kjempe means "Giant" or "Titan" in Norwegian - certainly we will see him fit this name sooner than I think ha ha! It also has an interesting slang - meaning to "super-size" which can be a prefix attached to anything: kjempefint (super-good), kjempenysgjerrig (super-curious), and my personal favorite? "Kjempe Hund" (Super-Dog).
Training and potty are going quite well (far better than I anticipated since getting home). He is very content in his crate - I can tell it has become his special place. His schedule is very routine at this point, which is helpful for me to plan my own activities around. We are holding potty up to ~3-4 hours when sleeping, and so long as we take a #2 before bed (at 8:30-9), only get up once in the middle of the night to go potty. It works out to be timed when I typically would get up anyways. We wake up between 5:15-5:45.
Socializing, we are now comfortable with a collar and leash, so I am more confident to take him along with me to stores, breweries, parks, etc. He still gets a little frighted by other dogs barking (though that has improved a lot these past few days thanks to Mary-Ann's advice on confidence and treats during barking events), and was a little nervous about a car driving nearby yesterday - more treats helped with that. We had one outing to a pet store to buy a collar - because he was not yet collar/leash trained, I did not let him down. He got a little squirmy, but did well.
He has met all of the neighbors, a play date with another dog (Portuguese water dog named Howard), a number of visitors to the house, a few contractors, the vet, and a few people at the pet store. He has met 24 people now (25 including myself) and I've had him for 2 weeks tomorrow.
His favorite toys are a small giraffe with a squeaker, a teddy bear that he sleeps with (and will literally drag to bed with him), a squeaky tennis ball, and his "girlfriend" a big Gnome that I call "Nomi" because I guess it's a girl gnome, if you catch my drift...!!
I'm finding that he does not like the homemade food as much, so I am still exploring recipes that Mary-Ann provided. He does like Stella and Chewy's raw and likes Orijen kibble. I would like to get him into homemade because I've found this makes for healthier #2's with a prior puppy. Though, no issues on runny stool with Kjempe yet. I do also incorporate the Fortiflora. He also is not that into peanut butter, which surprised me. Has a tendency to prefer dark/red meats (duck/beef) over the white meats (chicken/turkey), and definitely likes fish.
The current challenge we are working on is not chasing/biting the cats. We're working on being "nice" and approaching them slowly, but it is something that is taking some patience...any pointers on that would be great!
Growing fast - my scale was not tracking with the vet scale so I have a new one arriving today.
Thank you, Mariya — love the name and all the meaning! As for cats and puppies — I trim the cats nails and then just let them all work it out. Cats are usually very good at training puppies ;)