(Photo by Sam Weaver)
Sonic will be 7 weeks old this coming Saturday and the time has come to go and visit them to make our official puppy selections on Sunday. Although I think we all have a pretty good idea which pup we want we will be temperament testing all of the pups before choosing. It sounds like the litter is still very close potential wise. My favourite, Little Man seems to have quite a few fans at the moment so I think I will be breaking a few hearts if he ends up being my final choice. Certainly a bit hard to not fall in love with that little face of his...
I also need to finish preparations for my training schedule. I know that I want to follow Susan Garrett's training methods as although my three year old border collie Riot is not the speed demon that I originally hoped for he understands his job beautifully. So I'm happy that Susan's work is the direction that I want to take with Sonic. Her book Ruff Love has a program that I will follow while Sonic is between 8 weeks and 7 months of age. It will include Sonic being in a crate whenever he's not supervised (he will be in a pen while I'm at work), he will be allowed to play with other puppies while on lead but I will call him out of play frequently and reward him, no free running with my other dogs at all, no unsupervised play, work on him eating part of his dinner from his bowl and the rest from my hand, work on hand targeting and various games. I hope to schedule about four to five short training sessions per day. I think I'll need to actually put together a training plan on paper to help fit it into my daily routine. It is always so hard to incorporate a puppy into your normal daily life as they don't believe in doing anything that is routine!!! As much as I look forward to him coming into my life I will also be enjoying these last couple of weeks of peace and quiet before he arrives...
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