Day 4 - 20th September

The puppy training books that I have been reading say that separation anxiety is stress experienced by the puppy when the owner is away for a period of time. I think I will have to get Lewi to read the books! They have it the wrong way round.

I had to go out for about 4 hours today, and although it would have been OK, as it turned out, to have had Lewi with me there, the long journey would not have been fair on him after the long trek from Wales just a few days ago. So I arranged for dog sitters, the friend with two young children would come at meal times to feed and toilet him and the teenage girl living next door would come in between whiles to play with him and allow him out in the garden for his exploration work. How should I leave him? I decided that he would be in his cage with the door open, in the kitchen. Although I had explained all the routines etc before hand on their visits to see him, I left notes taped all around the kitchen with instructions; all his toys were there (I will get round to putting some of them away for another time one day soon). I tried to appear unconcerned as I left, and as I was not doing the driving, was able to text a couple of time on the journey to make sure he was OK. When I returned, I was not going to make a fuss, be calm so he does not think of it as a stressful situation. I walked in the door, calmly took off my coat and walked into the kitchen. He was sat in his cage with not a care in the world. I didn’t know whether I was pleased or upset. Mind you his sitters had spent so much of the time there that I had been away, I think he’d had more “human playtime” than normal. The kitchen was clean and dry. The sitters told me that there had not been a single bark or whine.

For the first time this morning he woke me up. At about 5 am (round about my normal getting up time anyway) I heard that “Please can we go out in the garden” yapping sound. Just a couple of barks but enough to get me downstairs and take him out for toileting, not wanting to sound too crude, but I am amazed that so much liquid could fit into such a small body! So I am pleased that I did get up for him. Then it was our special playtime before breakfast.

We seem to be beginning to understand each other a bit now. One thing we both understand is the bottom up head down ears back stance in dog language with a “Rough” in human. If he does that to me and I return it (Thank goodness no one can photograph that) we have a bit of “rough” play. It helps him burn a lot of energy off and usually ends with me laying on the floor laughing – that hasn’t happened for a long time before he arrived. He did get a bit carried away this morning and bit my foot (well if you can call it biting, no skin puncture) but I let out a purposeful “ouch” It made him jump and he came round to my face to check we were still friends. The blame was mine really, but it is something to work on over the coming days. Mouthing is cute in a puppy but could be unpleasant if I allow it to continue when he is an adult. My teenager dog sitter, Charlotte, says that she presents him with a closed fist when he wants to nibble her fingers, he can’t get his mouth round it and usually ends up licking.

Sometimes, he asks for the “rough” play and I refuse him. He just runs off and has a mad ten minutes with his toys. He has more energy than I do.

I frightened myself today. Although my Internet connection seems to be very temperamental at the moment, I managed to log onto the Kennel Club site for a read of their puppy advice. They said that a puppy should not be given free access to the garden, but taken out on a lead for toileting and kept indoors for most of the time. I can understand that from a safety point of view, to a degree. I was lucky, I suppose that I knew from February that Lewi was going to be coming so I have had the best part of the garden year to prepare. Fencing all round, draining and filling the pond, building a new puppy proof shed for the dangerous tools, researching every plant and removing all the toxic ones (the rhubarb was the hardest sacrifice) and most importantly, a whole season with no pesticides the slugs and snails have had a bumper year as a result! He is not unsupervised in the garden, but I believe that the opportunity to explore under shrubs, behind containers and in the secret places is good for his psychological development. Now the owner anxiety cuts in, I hope I haven’t got that wrong! He has his special areas in the garden; there is one bit of soft unplanted bed where he likes to dig a bit. I have tried burying plastic toys for him to find but he’s not very efficient at that at the moment! He’ll learn. By sheer chance he chose, himself, the best part of the garden to leave his little toilet parcels. It was the same place I had decided on, furthest from the house – of course. It happened that he started leaving the parcel there before I realised. I did praise him, so he seemed to decide that it was a good place to use.

On to more tasteful subjects, I have been playing another game with him, learning to come when called! I’m sure he will get it right 100% of the time sometime. I let him go into the undergrowth then call his name and spend a minute or two fussing him if he comes straight back to me. It sometimes works, sometimes a particular leaf, or petal on a rose is much more important. I also call his name when I put his food down – that’ll only work if he’s hungry!

The puppy classes we will be going to when he is vaccinated and allowed out, use the clicker method. I used to use something similar with young children. No not a clicker but when they did something deserving a reward a smiley face went on their chart. At the end of the day, there was a reward for a full chart. The trick was not to devalue the smileys but to try to ensure success in filling it. So the first trick is to link the clicker with a “real” reward. In the books, that’s easy. You just have a training session where you give a click and reward with a small treat. Do it a few times and the click becomes a conditioned reward. Lewi’s attention span is not more than a few seconds at the moment, when you are that young, there are so many interesting things happening in the world around you. I shall persist; we have had a couple of very short sessions a day. Time and patience. I have plenty of the former and am learning the latter. I’m determined that he will be the best pupil at the classes.

He has proved how fast he can learn; when I got the hoover out today he gave a yap and went straight away under the coffee table. He’d remembered yesterday’s incident!

My puppy playpen has arrived so tomorrow, we are visiting my son’s house and he can play in the new pen while we service the MGB.