But I kept thinking about the Freecycle ad. I couldn't get those puppies out of my head. I sent a reply, asking if they still had any left. I was kind of hoping that the answer was no, all the puppies were gone. But instead the owner replied that he had 8; males and females. I sent David a text, asking what he thought. We went back and forth for a bit, and he agreed that we could go look at them. He knows me well enough by now to know that meant we'd be getting a puppy.
I had it in my head that I wanted a female. We arrived at the owner's home, and were shown to the room housing the 8 puppies. I mentioned that I was looking for a female, and they were all pointed out. They were cute...after all, they were puppies, how could they not be?...but didn't really speak to me. However, there was a little tri-colored male that David seemed to be taken with. After several minutes of deliberation, we decided on that puppy.
Next we needed a name. That required more discussion, but by the time we arrived at Petsmart to pick up supplies we had decided on Ryley. We headed home...and then we had a dog. I've had dogs before, but its been a while and I wasn't sure what to do with him. Everyone I know recommended crate training. I had never done that, but it seemed difficult to keep him under control. We went to bed with him in his crate in Sammie's room. He didn't fuss, but he did soil himself. The next night the same thing happened. I went online and did some research and found a site that really seemed to be what I was looking for. I started following the author's advice for housebreaking a puppy and had results almost immediately. Since then we've been following a loose schedule during which Ryley is closely monitored, spending a good deal of time in his kennel. We take him out to play quite often, but he also gets a lot of down time.
I've been doing a lot of reading about puppies and dogs in general, and border collies and Australian shepherds in particular. Both of those breeds on their own are very intelligent; I'm curious to see what the combination gets us. Ryley is doing remarkably well with his training; he's already showing a lot of progress with his potty training. He's adapting very well to the household.
Its been years since I've had a dog...at least 10...and I'm really excited about seeing what this dog can do. I'm going to start him in puppy socialization classes soon, and go from there. Stay tuned and see what comes next.
2 comments:
FWIW...we trained our border collie to "go" on command. It's pretty easy to do (use whatever command you want when the puppy is going potty early on and they associate that command with going potty) and comes in really handy when you want the dog to go quick and come back in the house :)
Thanks, Tami. I've thought about doing that; he's doing really well with his potty training and generally "goes" as soon as we take him out. I also want to have him use the same area of the yard to do his thing. What command do you use?
Post a Comment