Wowza, now the puppies are keeping us SUPER busy! They are running around full-tilt exploring their world and wanting to learn new things daily. We continue the daily Adventure Walks to expose to new sights and sounds. Being part of our household is really important now - so that puppies get used to all the regular household chores and experiences.
We are socializing pups these weeks with lots of people to make sure they will be outgoing adults. We continue clicker training to keep those little brains busy. By now our puppies are usually almost 100% pottying in the boxes during the day. Lots of visitors come to our home to play with puppies during weeks 7-8. Our friends know that during these weeks we are weirdly categorizing them into tall/short, beards/no beards etc because we want puppies to visit people of all sizes and shapes. We love visits from our friends with kids and grandkids during this time especially.
Puppy Party
The puppy party is a time that we invite friends and future puppy owners to come and train puppies. Our guests get to have fun playing with puppies, and we get to observe how puppies interact with new people. Puppies are exposed to yet more new equipment and situations. This gives us more information to help us make the best matches of the right puppy to the right family. Keep in mind that there is no “best puppy” in the litter, just the “right puppy” for the “right family”.
Here are photos of the first times puppies are asked to balance on disks and walk across mini agility equipment, and they are happily doing it with people they have never met.
Health Checks
At 7-8 weeks our puppies are examined by a regular Veterinarian and a Veterinary Opthamologist. Eye reports are submitted to OFA to be part of their health database. We are just double-checking that each puppy has no health concerns, even though we have already weeded out many potential health problems before the mating ever occurs by doing all available genetic health testing recommended by the PWDCA.