Cedar has settled in to his new home and is continually challenging us to find new ways to amuse him, keep him busy, and tire him out. He bed is a small crate in our bedroom for now and he sleeps really well through the night. We have to wake him and carry him outside a couple times in the night but he goes back to sleep quickly.
We have a larger metal crate in the kitchen/dining area which will eventually be his crate for sleep. For now we are using it when we feed him raw food because it keeps the raw chicken and fish contained and much easier to clean up. We are starting to have him nap in the larger crate during the day, with the door closed, in order to get him used to it. For now, he doesn’t mind being in the crate and napping as long as we are puttering nearby. We will start slowly leaving the room for short periods and hopefully in a couple weeks will be able to leave him for an hour or so.
At mealtime we have been feeding his kibble by hand and using his great ‘food drive’ to train basic manners. He learns so quickly, AND the little devil also quickly learned to purposely grab things so we will ask him to leave it and he will get a treat. Well that game ended very quickly.
Like most baby animals he is so cute and fluffy that it is hard to resist picking him up and cuddling, but it only takes a couple bites from those razor sharp puppy teeth to put an end to that temptation.
He is going for walks every day now and has been discovering his neighbourhood, including the beach where he excitedly rolled in the sand and got the zoomies. Every log and piece of seaweed was a great discovery, but he was a little nervous stepping in the shallow pool
He is all about exploring everything right now with his shark teeth and we both have the marks to show for it. We learned to keep on hand lots of tasty and long lasting treats for him to chew, along with ice cubes, a frozen cloth dipped in broth, and a kong filled toy. Although his toys help, they tend to wind him up and he gets very bitey, so play time is done in short bursts, usually after he wakes from a nap. His favourite toys at this time are a soft toy with a squeaker, a soft ball, and a rubber ball. He loves to chase whatever we throw and this week he started ‘stalking’ his toys by lowering his body, walking slowly toward his prey and pouncing on it at the last second , its so fun to watch.
We bought Cedar a harness which helps put less strain on him when he pulls and we use a retractable leash now on the trails so that he can run ahead and explore. He loves his walks and continues to look back for us when he runs ahead which is a good sign for later recall training. Part of his training while on trails is ‘hide and seek’. If he travels too far ahead, I will hide behind something, Chris will continue on, and suddenly Cedar will notice I am not there, usually quite quickly. He then runs back to find me and gets a reward. This has dual purpose – don’t get too far ahead, and always keeps both of us in sight.
We are trying to introduce him to as much as possible while he is young, curious, and unafraid, and so far he has shown curiosity for most things and often will sit down and observe something for a moment if he hasn’t heard or seen it before. It is quite something to watch him discover the world and to know that he trusts us so much already to keep him safe. He looks to us for direction and to guage our reactions all the time.
We took him to observe a puppy socialization class to see how he may fit in and were very happy with his positive reaction, so we have decided to give it a go. The class is run by a couple that train dogs for Agility competition and they incorporate some of that trainng in the puppy classs so it should be a lot of fun.