Friday, May 14, 2004

JOEY IN THE LITTER

Lindzey is Joey's mother and Lindzey lives with Nicole. Today I had a long talk with Nicole and learned a lot about who Joey is. The first thing was that she has been calling him Joey *before* I even chose the name. How cool is that!!

Joey is very special to her because he gave her a good scare at birth. He was the first one born and he was HUGE. He weighed one pound at birth. Beardies average 6 to 8 ounces according to Nicole. So WOW!! He got stuck in the canal and had trouble being born. Nicole had to pull him out. She was afraid she was going to lose him but he made it.

Nicole says Joey is the most intelligent of the bunch (2 brothers, 2 sisters). He figured out how to get out of the whelping box one and a half weeks before the others did. Nicole would come into her bedroom and find him sitting there waiting for her outside the box. At night he'd break out and she'd find him asleep on one of her pillows that had fallen off the bed during the night.

One uncanny thing about Joey (which is like OOH LA LA for a future performance dog) is that he looks people straight in the eye. He's very focused on people, the quintessential people puppy. While the others are sleeping, Joey wants attention from people. She says he's demanding and that's super. A demanding puppy knows what he wants. And if he wants things intensely, then you have lots of things to use as reinforcers in training. Oh boy!!!

Lindzey is a Beardie who does what Nicole calls "fainting". You can hold her upside and she turns to rubber, flops her head and limbs out and just melts. Joey is very prone to fainting also. She says you can hold him upside-down and rub his tummy and he just goes limp. Well, guess what? That was on my list of relaxers to teach him as part of his ON-OFF Switch training. And there he is, already having a head start on learning to relax.

Nicole says he is a dog with a lot of bone and substance and is going to be a "coat factory". Oh no!!! That's one quality I did not want. Good thing I'm a master with the slicker brush (oops, hope Mama Susan skips that part ).

Nicole reports that the whole litter just loves to be bathed. Joey and one other boy lay down and relax in the bathtub. They've been exposed to some nice daily household noise - vacuum cleaner, noisy toys and even construction sounds from next door. There have been some killer Texas thunderstorms and the pups just sleep right through them. Great!! We don't have many in Oregon so hard to work that into the socialization plan.

The pups have had a lot of handling and have had people over to visit. Mama Susan will pick them up on Sunday to take them to her house for a week, then she will take them to Mama Pat's for a week. Another great plus, they will have travel experience and sleep-over experience. Oh boy!

Nicole's litter box has a 1 x 4 rim (pig rail) and all of the litter have learned to walk along this 1 x 4 railing. They walk all around the whole litter box. Talk about future agility stars!

Thursday, May 13, 2004

JOEY IS DUE TO ARRIVE!

On May 28th, Beardie baby, Joey, is due to arrive at Portland Airport. Joey is actually Brandmar N Chelsic Still The One.