Well, our little puppy is 12 weeks old now. She went to the vet yesterday for another vaccination, and weighs 24 lbs now, double what she weighed when we first brought her home. Her top coat is starting to come in, so before too much longer, we’ll know what her coloring will be like as an adult. So far, most of the guard hairs are concentrated along her spine (I think you can see them pretty well in the picture at the bottom of the post), but we’re guessing she’ll look a lot like her mother, Briya. Speaking of which, Happy Mother’s Day, to all the mothers out there!
Freyja’s ears are still working on standing up. So far her left ear is doing pretty well, but as you can see, some days they’re down and some days they’re up. The photo above was taken last week; the one below was taken this morning.
Freyja is doing a great job with training. As long as she isn’t overexcited, she does a very good job sitting and staying, and sometimes even heeling. At the very least, she has learned that she needs to sit and stay before she gets fed. She is also doing a very good job learning no, off, drop it and leave it. That hasn’t stopped her from chewing on us sometimes, but we’re hopeful that the end is in sight.
The above picture is partially just to show how much bigger she is than when we first brought her home.
We may have discovered one of Freyja’s aptitudes in the past week or two. We found a little park in our neighborhood, with a field and some play equipment and the like. Jeremy has started taking her there during their early morning walks, and got her to climb up on some of the playground equipment when no children were around, just for the experience of going up stairs and over and under things. Now she really seems to look forward to playing on the equipment, and has even taken to the slides.
Jeremy had to go in front at first, but now she hardly needs encouragement, and runs right around to the stairs to go back up for another trip. We’re starting to think that agility training might be a really fun job for our Freyja to do, so we’re going to look into local agility clubs when she gets a bit older.
the pup’s really growing…soon you’ll be feeding the likes of a teenager and wondering who eats more, the dog or the people! 🙂
ps – hand commands can also be a very useful learned behavior for places with lots of noise/distraction or, in my case, because george is deaf.