Puppy report #2

After thinking she needed a real name of her own, we have decided to call her Duchess. She is going to be a regal dog someday and that is a pretty good name for her. Right now she is a puppy, and such a sweet thing too. We will still call her Babe at least 1/2 the time, I figure. But being a puppy means a few other things too --

1) Chewing on stuff.
I let her out of the pen yesterday so she could get used to our back yard on a Sunday while there wasn't much traffic going through here. She found a treasure under the roses out under our back yard trees -- a dead bird, great for shaking around and pulling feathers out of and chewing on, until it grossed me out and I took it away. An old kitchen towel with a knot tied in it satisfied her a bit this afternoon; also good for chewing on and shaking around, but no crunching when she chews... We'll see what other good stuff she finds, or destroys, with her teething.

2) Making friends.
Almost the very minute Kelli and the boys drove out of the driveway to take Lizzie home with them, Duchess decided she'd better make a new friend quick. She is not good at being alone. She really, really wants to be friends with Omar but he is not so hot on it all. The upside is that he's not jealous of the time or attention she gets. The downside is that he'd rather she maintain a good distance from him altogether, so he often ignores her. She is persistent, however, and I think she will win him over eventually. Reminds me of how he treated Boris, only Boris sat in one spot so Omar could run and attack him. Omar jumps up and moves somewhere else when the active pup gets to nosing around.

I have spent a lot of time outside and she seems to have started liking me quite a lot, too. She'll come when I call, and if I go into the house, she isn't sure what to do next. I am trying to teach her that the deck is a good place to hang out because I can see her from my window in the kitchen or utility room, and it is a good place for her to see around the back yard without danger of being run over or stepped on by anyone. This has become more important now that she has become an ...

3) Escape artist.
Dogs traditionally don't like fences, in my observation. They dig under, climb over, or find a hole to get out. Out here it hasn't been a problem with our dogs -- we don't have fences in the yard, and the pig fences are to keep the pigs IN (and sometimes they even work that way) We contain them when they're little and they learn as they grow where the boundaries are. Lou and I spent an afternoon building a cheap and temporary fence/pen for the new puppy before they arrived, over by the old shop; a place where we could feel we could put her and she'd be safe if we weren't home, etc. It turned out well and we were ready. Temporary lasted 3 days. Today, Duchess decided she didn't want to be penned up in there. Before today, even if she didn't like it much, after I put her in for the night or to go to town, she'd cry a bit and then retreat to the doghouse that is just her size and settle in. Today she cried, whined, yelped, and howled for the better part of an hour at lunchtime when I put her in to be sure the pickups coming through for lunch wouldn't find a confused puppy underneath a tire. She ran back and forth, putting her head out of the fence holes, trying to find a hole big enough to fit her body through. No luck; just her head came through and so I was worried she'd hang herself if she tried it on a hole that was too high up, but she always got it undone. Tonight I put her in there again for the night -- she needed to eat something and it was starting to rain. Her doghouse is pretty water tight, so good deal, right? No way. She went through her howling and crying routine as I came back inside. I watched her while reading the newspaper at the dining room table to be sure she wouldn't hang herself ... she was determined to get out of there through one of those holes in the pig panel. Darned if she didn't succeed after about 10 minutes! I thought she'd give up trying after she realized she didn't fit, but now that she's had success in escaping, I think the puppy pen is not going to be trustworthy, at least until she grows enough not to fit through the holes! She is sleeping nicely on the deck on some towels I put out there for her, but I'll probably have to chain her up somewhere for her own protection in the night so she won't follow Omar off somewhere and get lost or become coyote bait. (maybe in the pen, but it will have to be a short chain lest she fit through the fence again.) Can't put her in the scale house like we did with the other puppies since the door to the outside is so old and deteriorated that it flaps in the breeze and wouldn't hold her for 3 seconds.

Puppies are so fun!