We've Graduated!

The puppies are nine weeks old. They have worked on the Head Start equipment for four weeks, exploring three new configurations a day, sometimes indoors, sometimes outdoors. All four puppies are confident in new situations, eager to learn and explore new things, and ready to take on the world. All will be fun to train, and all will be great companions.

These puppies have now started the next stage of their journeys. In the next five days, all will go to their new homes: one is going to Wisconsin, one to San Antonio Texas, one will stay with the breeder in Holliday TX, and one will stay with us.

The puppies have been in the program for just four weeks. They are very comfortable and very stable on all of the equipment. In fact, we call this picture: Graduation.  

Now that the pups are eight weeks old, they are enjoying their green nylon toddler tunnel. On this day, it started raining heavily while they were outside. The puppies demonstrated their Head Start training: they all went into the tunnel and waited to be brought in. Not one got wet! 

Puppies are seven weeks old

The puppies are now seven weeks old. They went for their temperament testing today (January 5, 2005), and you could see the results of their head start experience in the results. All four walked or ran to the stranger who was the evaluator, climbed in her lap, and covered her face with kisses. All four demonstrated high prey drives (pouncing on a rag or other item that was dragged across the floor in front of them, and shaking it or tugging on it). All four were high on retrieving, running after the item, picking it up, playing with it, and bringing it back to the examiner. All four were very high on food drives, working diligently to get the food out of the examiners closed hand or out from under the upside down food dish. All four followed the examiner wherever she went. In short, they each demonstrated on their own without the presence and support of their littermates that they will be a joy to train and wonderful companions in their future homes.

It has been raining here in Dallas for the past four or five days. That means that the outdoor play yard is not available for them. So we have exercised all of our imagination to keep the indoor play yard a fun and challenging and continually changing environment for the puppies. Today, we put together a very complex arrangement of dog walks, tippy board and cardboard tunnel, and the puppies soon were putting every part of it to use. Enjoy the pictures.

When they see me with the camera, they stop playing, perhaps looking for dinner! 

In fact, the puppies found this configuration to be very stimulating. Some went into the tunnel and laid in wait for their siblings, darting out at them. Others walked around the three dog walks and balanced on the tippy board.  

Exploring every niche of an intricate indoor configuration. 

The rains closed the puppies in this week, and the challenge is to keep the environment changing and interesting. The small slide can be brought indoors, and they can climb the stairs and go down by themselves. 

Neisha really enjoys the puppies and is very gentle with them. 

Configuration outside last Friday, before all the rain started. Puppy Head Start depends on continually reconfiguring the same equipment in new ways, giving the puppies new things to explore and new problems to solve. 

A new configuration is ready for the puppies. We try to make sure that there are at least three different configurations each day. As long as the weather permits, these are done outdoors. When the weather closes in, then we use the indoor play yard, and keep changing it around.

The grandchildren enjoy the play yard as much as the puppies!

December 29, 2004

The puppies are now six weeks old and in the past eight days, we have seen a lot of development. They are very sturdy on their legs, and they are eager to explore everything. Today, they had a visit from three more grandchildren: Matt, Josh and Charlie Cameron. The puppies' biggest accomplishment? As of today, they are able to climb the stairs to the platform and come down the slide on their own.

Following Green Girl's example, Red Girl gamely climbed the stairs and went down the slide on her own. 

This morning, the puppies were out very early in the morning, but they were ready to explore. 

Grandchildren Josh, Matt and Charlie and the puppies are delighted to see each other!  

Children have an instinctive gentleness: here, Matt gently rubs the tummy of one of the puppies. 

Charlie gets down on the floor with the puppies. 

There is nothing quite like a grandchild with a puppy.  

Green Girl sets the pace, climbing the stairs and taking turns sliding down the slide with the children. 

Wait for me, Red Girl seems to say, and climbs up the stairs after Charley, and . . . 

And down she comes! 

If you can do it, so can I, and Red Girl tries to climb up the slide so she can slide down it.  

Another configuration: this time with what we call the silver tunnel. This tunnel is actually an air-conditioning duct, soft and squishy and pliable. They have also learned that pulling on the string of the plastic duck toy makes it go "Quack-Quack!" 

It doesn't take the puppies long to find the opening to the silver tunnel. They eagerly chew on it, use it for rest breaks, and eventually go through it. 

Not only can the puppies go through the silver tunnel, they can climb the stairs and go over it via the ramp to the slide. 

The puppies do chain behaviors, going through the tunnel and out to the tippy board and then up the stairs to the ramp. 

As the day progresses, the puppies use a different configuration, this time with the cardboard tunnel, tippy board and stairs with a ramp to the slide. Someone did make it to the slide because the rubber balls that were up there ended up on the ground! 

Early morning and the puppies find a new configuration, using the A-Frame and a ramp to the castle and slide. 

Puppies start exploring the new configuration immediately.  

December 26, 2004

Tomorrow will mark seven days of the puppies being in Corally Burmaster's Puppy Head Start program. In the past week, they have adapted to a new living arrangement, spending their days in four areas (their puppy pen for napping and sleeping; their indoor play yard; their outdoor play yard; and our kitchen and surrounding areas). They have grown bigger and stronger, walking, trotting and bounding sturdily; walking up three steps and then down three steps; trying to climb the plastic steps to their slide; maneuvering along an 8" dog walk without falling off; handling unstable surfaces like the teeter totter and tippy board; and much more. They drag scatter rugs from one place to another, try to drag each other, and have no fear of strangers or of the bigger dogs.

After a long day of learning new things, meeting new people, and having free range of the kitchen while their people were cooking and eating, the puppies were only too glad to sack out and go to sleep. There are three in this picture. Can you find all of them?

We added an overhead swinging toy to the puppies outside play yard to see how they would react to it. . . 

The puppies played hard with the new overhead swinging toy, grabbing it and running with it under the ramp to the slide. 

Wrestling with each other enables the puppies to learn three things: (1) Teeth hurt, (2) if you get hurt, screech and the other one will let you go, and (3) if the puppy you are chewing on screeches, you better let go!

Their indoor play yard contains a half crate with a cozy fleece mat where the puppies can retire for a nap whenever they choose. 

Under the watchful eyes of Neisha (Coldstream Ovation O'Jubilee), this puppy goes down the slide. She pranced away with her tail up and went back to the stairs (which she cannot yet climb) for another turn. According to Corally Burmaster, equipment like the dog walk and the slide helps the puppies learn for themselves how to concentrate on what their back legs are doing. 

After three days of freezing temperatures and their equipment being covered with snow, the sun came out today, and the puppies returned to their outdoor play yard. They have mastered walking the full length of their 10-foot dog walk that is just four inches off the ground. 

Hard to see the plastic florescent light cover on the white tile floor, but the puppies took to this surface as readily as the ones they already knew. Pat Hastings says that all puppies by seven weeks of age should have been on seven surfaces. So far, these puppies, who are two days short of six weeks old, have been on carpet, newspaper, grass, rice mat, gravel, fiberglass crate, concrete, tile, wood, grass mat, plastic stairs and slide, two different grooming table surfaces as well as a dining room table with a very slipper finigh, and this latest surface. Nothing stops them or gives them pause. Just as the puppies in Corally's article, they bounced over this latest surface as though it had always been there!

Red girl ponders whether she wants to walk across the snow-covered dog walk; she decides not to, but tomorrow is another day. 

Even though it was quite chilly today, the puppies did enjoy an outing before the sun went down and it got really cold. 

Ben joins in, using what we call the Quack-Quack pull toy to get the attention of one of the puppies. 

Puppies and grandchildren are meant for each other. Here four year old Zack plays with two of the puppies. 

Two days and growing. . .

So far, the puppies have taken to all the new challenges in their environment with curiosity and innovation. The "tippy board," which is meant to get them used to moving on an unstable surface has been turned into a miniature merry-go-round, with one puppy on it, another standing next to it and pushing it to turn. They have explored tunnels, learned to walk on low dog walks (only four inches off the floor), show no reaction to tipping the teeter totter, and even, when it was still warm a day ago, going down the slide in the outdoor play yard.

They are puppies, very young puppies, so they spend a lot of their time sleeping and growing. They eat heartily, sleep, wake up, and want to play. If they have been sleeping in their puppy pen, they awake and start yammering to go to their play yard. We know this because when they are yammering, if we open the gate to their puppy pen, they tumble out and run to the indoor play yard!

The adventure has just begun.

Same equipment, but a new configuration: the 4X4s become steps for a ramp. 

Sometimes, it is just relaxing to curl up on or under the equipment and take a nap. 

All of the puppies gathered round the metal tunnel, first chewing on it, but then, following the lead of green girl, not only going through it, but using it as a place to take a nap. 

Red girl is the first to enter the cardboard tunnel 

Five-week-old green girl explores the ramp to the tunnel while making friends with Neisha. 

Within hours of their arrival on December 21, the puppies had made themselves right at home, playing on the "tippy board," . . . 

The largest equipment was used for the outside play yard; the smaller equipment for the indoor play yard. 

This is the large equipment that we collected for the Puppy Head Start program. 

The Puppies Arrive

The puppies, a litter of four Airedale Terriers, arrived on December 21, 2004 at five weeks of age. They had been weaned the preceeding week.

They came to us to do the Puppy Head Start Program developed by Corally Burmaster, long-time Airedale Terrier breeder and one of the nation's leading clicker trainers. In an article about the program in The American Airedale, Corally wrote:

"If it were true that there was a critical pe­riod in puppies during which they would accept without reservation whatever was present in their environment, I speculated that this period would probably begin at about 5 weeks of age. This time frame seemed to fit most logically into the criti­cal periods that were defined by Scott and Fuller, and also on the observations I've made during a lifetime of raising puppies."

In preparation for the puppies' arrival, we had put together an array of equipment for a "puppy head start school." This equipment, which can be arranged and rearranged in a continually changing environment, challenges the puppies to figure out ways to use the equipment, and in doing so, they teach themselves how to deal with change. We collected several different "surfaces," such as door mats, plastic runners, and a plastic rectangle of 1/2 inch squares used to cover lights; several different "tunnels," including a cardboard concrete mold, an air-conditioning duct, and a toddler's play tunnel; 12 two-foot lengths of 4X4 wood; two 8' lengths of 1X8 wood for dog walks and teeter totters; one 6' length of 1X10 wood for a ramp; a miniature A-frame; a Little Tykes stair and slide toy; a "tippy" board (a round board with a short pedestal); and a large assortment of stuffed, pull, and other kinds of toys.

Now it is up to us to keep the equipment rotating and the puppies to make use of it!

The Puppies Arrive