I have made videos of each of the puppies doing area searches for their food bowls. The game is very simple. Their bowl with some food in it is hidden in a
slightly rough area of the garden where the grass is a little longer and
we left fallen leaves, twigs and even the odd branch or two lying
around to help hiding the bowls. In theory there shouldn't be any other
animals there, but today Waldi escaped and was running around (he knows
that he is not allowed to come and do the search though), Priscilla the
cat decided to check things out, albeit from the top of the fence post
and Obi ran up and down the fence behind the camera. So the puppies had
to work really hard. We have been playing this game for about 1 week
now, and they love it. Chanel initially was particularly good at it. In
today's video she is still the quickest by far, but both Nina and Lacxi
show that they really now what they are doing. What is nice to see is
even when Nina was badly distracted, she kept focus and kept going.
We are playing this game as a precursor to future nose games of all types, which all my dogs love.
Pyreneans are smart, you probably gathered that by now. However, they are truly smart as this little video will show you. Those of us involved in dog Sports, particularly Agility and Freestyle are constantly looking for things to improve our dog's balance and body awareness. Well these puppies have just invented their very own "Balancing Dome". This is a shade net dome which we place loosely over a small fish pond to keep the tiny Jackaranda leaves out of the water. Often bees come and drink ... Continue reading...
Pierre went to his new home today. For people who frequently breed this may not be such a big occasion, for Anthony and me it was terrible. We have been on tranquilizers since yesterday and despite the chemistry I was crying my eyes out ....still am. And yet, this is such a wonderful story. When the puppies were about 4 or 5 weeks old a friend phoned to ask if she could come for a puppy fix and some "puppy breath". Well, of course. When she arrived she sat on the floor in front of the puppy pen... Continue reading...
The puppies are almost 9 weeks old. In many ways they are so big already, but in many ways they are still such babies. Our biggest problem is that Lollie still wants to feed them and it is a battle to create a good puppy-raising-environment, with mum around to teach them about life and yet keep her away and supervised enough that they can't drink from her. Lollie overseeing things
I believe in a ballanced life for puppies, where they learn from everyone in the household - humans, cats, the env... Continue reading...
The past week just seemed to have dissapeared. The puppies are taking up more of my time, as their waking hours become longer and I am trying to fill their expanding minds and increasing body awareness with ever new little challenges. A typical day starts at about 6.00 am, after I made myself a cup of coffee, I open the "jail gates" (at least that is how the puppies think of their puppy pen ;-)). I still need to help them get to the outside quickly, before the bedroom carpet receives all thei... Continue reading...
Yesterday was a very exciting day for the puppies and a totally new experience. Johann Theron of the Animaltalk Magazine came to take pictures for an article they do that features Pyrenean Sheepdog (among other breeds). He first took action shots of Chippy, followed by a few portrait shots of Lollie and then lots of puppy pictures. This one Johann posted on his facebook page this morning :-)
Johann wanted some action shots of the puppies running across the lawn together and suggested Anthony h... Continue reading...
The puppies are exploring their surrounding and learning to interact. These video clips were taken last week when the puppies were not quite 4 weeks old.
We had mum Lollie, granny Quincy, uncle Chippy (Lollie's brother) and of course the puppies in the garden together.
They definitely are starting to develop little identities.
Granny loves to play with the puppies and Lollie is getting more and more relaxed about it (previously we had to "sneak in" some time without Lollie knowing about it ;-))
The boys like to have some time together - BB, HB and Chippy
Even Chippy's toys are interesting (most things qualify as toys for Chips, this was a stick ... Continue reading...
I am reporting that the
puppies have “discovered” real food and I couldn’t get their little faces out of
the dish this morning :-).
This is quite an achievement, as I have been trying to get food, other than Lollie's milk into them for some time and they were just not interested. I have a fairly good imagination and I tried everything I could think of - singly and in combination. But bar a few polite licks, I had firm decline on all my "cooking".
