Day 31

Over the past 4.5 weeks, we have used both the vacuum and broom to clean up around the kitchen. When they are very young, they will not be able to hear the vacuum because their ears are still closed, but they will be able to feel the vibrations on the floor. Once their ears are open, it is very important to make sure that they do not hear a terrible noise coming from something that is running back and forth on the floor and get frightened. That is a concept that can be very scary to such young puppies and can make or break their attitude towards a vacuum.

Another thing that we do is putting the big machine that moves and makes a terrible noise in the puppy pen (turned off) so that they can explore on their own.

We have used it a few times in the past few days. The first time they definitely hear the noise, we can tell because they were looking around to see what that was, but didn’t show fear. Then today we had this as our reaction. It is very important to condition them to be ok with the vacuum now and with their new families. Our adult dogs are so used to the sound, that they are literally in the way during its use. Sometimes we even have to ask them to move so that we can clean where they are standing.

It is also time to start to introduce something that is called manding. It will take a bit for the puppies to get used to the concept of it, but once they do.. they do! The basics of manding are that the puppy has to be sitting to be touched, picked up, or basically have any interaction with humans. This is one of the hardest things for us to teach ourselves, but it extremely beneficial in the ling run for the puppies. This is great as a base for not jumping up or really a majority of anything that you would like to teach.

Puppy of the Day

Sky is our puppy of the day. She is energetic and loves to cuddle with us and her siblings. She easy to identify because she has the most markings on her face in the litter! She is pretty vocal about what she wants and isn’t afraid to let us know either. Her name comes from a bridge in Florida. She is Chalet’s Sunshine Skyway.