Month: November 2018

Now a solid month in, Amelia (River) continues her progress as a part of the clan. Now as a full-fledged four-month-old she has begun to exert a bit of independence. 

To begin with, she has chosen to change her name or at the least convinced us to change it for her. We found early on that she was having trouble distinguishing the name River from her brother’s name Cooper, yes even with those ears. Since Cooper has had his name for five years we thought it best to apply any adjustments to River. Since she was actually named Riversong Krueger, a nod to the Dr. Who TV series, we pivoted to Amelia (Riversong) Pond Krueger. Another strong Who reference. The name has played well for her, it has a nice length and mouthfeel that lends to singsong which she particularly enjoys.

As stated in the one week report, Amy is completely crate trained and owns two very nice crates with all the pads, blankets, pillows and toys any princess could ever hope to call her own. She has a nice oversized bedroom crate, for sleeping, and a smaller but well-appointed family room crate, for napping. So yes Amy is perfectly crate trained and has two beautiful crates that she no longer uses. Her brother and sister have taught her that dogs, at least Krueger dogs, don’t lay or sleep on the floor if a perfectly good bed, couch or chair are at hand. And so Amy is now perfectly bed, couch and chair trained. 

She affirms her independence now by retiring to the master bedroom on her own at all times of the day. In fact, if we can’t find her immediately at foot she is either outside screwing around or in the bed watching TV or the fire in the fireplace. Not that she’s a sleepy girl all of the time, though she is a sleepy girl much of the time, I’m told she spends a good bit of time in the office at Shari’s feet or with one of her siblings in the dog bed in the corner of the room fully maximizing her Office Dog internship (unpaid). 

Her older sister Peekaboo (12) has emerged from her state of denial and is becoming a little more accepting of Amy. She isn’t much for active play but loves to watch when Amy and Cooper wrestle and is perfectly willing to play referee and step in when active play becomes more active than she will allow. We’ve also caught Amy and Boo cuddled up together on occasion but Boo denies this and decries it as Fake News. Cooper continues to teach through play and through just being Cooper. Amy is grateful that he taught her to use the bed stairs even though she’s grown enough to easily jump on the bed. I know this because I caught her in the backyard standing in our 40” raised garden bed planters looking for snacks. I don’t think she knows how she did it and to my knowledge hasn’t since. But in any case she doesn’t know she can jump on the bed, the stairs must be used to access that bit of heaven. She also briefly did the “beg” trick based on seeing the other two do the same. She did it by observing and with no prompting from us. She has yet to repeat the trick in spite of much prompting from us. Stay tuned on this one. 

Probably Cooper’s biggest struggle with Amy is that he is not a morning dog and tends to wake up rather grumpy and stay that way until after first breakfast and usually second breakfast too. Amy is a puppy. She has only three speeds – about to sleep, asleep and full-on. And until 10 or so in the morning that just pisses Cooper off. 

Did I mention the growing? Holy cow. We started feeding her a little more to put a little meat on her ribs. She is overly skinny even for a leggy, lanky pup. But it would seem that all the food goes straight to her legs. She is now taller than both of her siblings. Cooper uses this to take shortcuts under her legs when they are playing with their stuffed rabbit co-toy. She uses it to boop him on the head from a greater distance. 

And, of course, she’s teething. She has her new front teeth, those were easy. Now she’s working through some of the larger teeth – the bigger ones that actually cut the gums. She’s had a couple of rough days and nights, and so have we. She just wants up, she just wants to nap on a chest and that’s pretty okay with us. 

So as of now, Amelia is potty trained. She is fully conversant in our double doggy door system – one from the master bedroom to the 3-season porch and the other from the 3-season porch to the fenced backyard. She no longer relies on Cooper to show her the way, she no longer relies on us to tell her to go. When she has to go, no matter where we are in the house or what we may be doing or what time it is, she trots to the bedroom doggy door and goes outside. I can say with confidence that other than a couple of over-excited piddles, she has been accident-free for at least a couple of weeks now. It’s been a long time since I’ve potty trained anything, we usually just let the other dogs do it,  but I think that’s pretty good. In fact, I think she’s quite surely brilliant. 

Amelia still continues to struggle with tasks. Few of her genetically endowed Shepherding instincts have emerged at this point. She is actually better suited at interfering with the completion of tasks by the others. I think she “gets” it but is still driven by excitement over intellect, fuzz over clarity. The sock to the laundry experiments has had lukewarm success in that now we find stray socks, slightly soggy stray socks, everywhere but the laundry room. This seems to hold for my slippers as well. Where we had early success with her bringing me one or the other when I come home from work now we just find them on the bed often with a soggy sock stuffed in them.

Teaching her food manners has been quite a bit more successful. Amelia knows what is expected. She waits her turn for treats and Shari has her sitting and waiting, unrestrained, for her breakfast and dinner as she always eats last as pack order demands. She still needs the slow-eat bowl and we’ve improvised an eating closet for her so she can’t chase it all over the house and tip it out. She is getting better, eating slower and respecting the others as they eat. That’s big progress. Just this week she’s learned to catch her treats. She began with a miss every time and has graduated to a miss only once in awhile – she’s particularly good when she really wants what is being tossed which incidentally is pretty much anything being tossed. But, alas, not repeats of the “beg” trick she inadvertently mimicked in week one. 

Amelia has become a little more independent but she still loves her routine. Weekdays start with my alarm at 5:45 followed by Go Outside, Get Treat, and now instead of heading to the shower with me, she heads back to bed with the others. I dress, she waits. Then it’s breakfast and goodbyes. I’m told she naps after first breakfast until second breakfast and then heads to her internship in the office with Shari to put in a solid day’s work of watching Shari write. Evenings, when I get home it becomes Cooper and Amy playtime – wrestling, racetrack, and tug-of-war – followed by dinner, then settling in for the evening in front of the TV or the fire, and later followed by sleep. And repeat. Weekends are looser but we’re all together and that matters. It’s consistent and she’s happy because it is and that works for us. 

All in all, she is happy and healthy, with an energy that is beginning to match the pace of the house. She’s independent but wants to please, wants to cuddle and wants to hug. She still loves to respond to a whistle and does so with complete abandon. She has discovered that her new name is shared by several popular songs and loves to have them sung to her with an emphasis on the parts with her name in them. She can’t wait for the morning so she can wake Shari up by climbing on her head and giving hugs. She is observant and curious and loves to explore her backyard, watch the world from the master bed and taste test anything she finds on the floor in case it might be delicious. Often, it’s not but that doesn’t stop her from trying again next the time.

She is still her Mom’s Sweet Pea and my Sweet Girl.

Her first week in as a part of the Krueger pack, River has shown remarkable progress for a pup of barely 3-months. 

With many thanks to her foster parents, she is completely crate trained. In our home, she has two crates to call her own. The larger, designed for two, is her bedroom quarters. It is complete with her Hope Blanket and several favorite toys and her bison horn. While she usually joins the puppy pile in our bed every night before lights out, she with little protest goes to the bedroom crate for nighty-night. River sleeps or with the help of the previously mentioned soft toys and her bison horn rests quietly for the entire night. Her daytime crate is a smaller and more portable single version and sits in the kitchen area or family room with the door open in case she feels the need to rest nearer to the normal daytime and evening activity in the house. She is using this option less and less as the days pass opting to lay or sit on one of the many dog beds, rugs or therapeutic mats placed throughout the active spaces in our home. 

River is smart enough to know she is supposed to go outside for potty but just fuzzy-headed enough to forget until it’s too late sometimes. She has easily mastered the doggy door to the outside and no longer even looks for a treat on the other side every time she goes through. She does not yet have the confidence to consistently use the doggy door to let herself out when she needs to but will always follow Cooper out and will always relieve herself if she is outside. She’s a little scared to be alone, does not like the dark much and is not too sure about rain. But she is remarkably well potty trained for her age and has strung days together without an incident as long as we are a little bit vigilant. 

A few warm fall days afforded River the opportunity to spend time with us on the 3-season porch where she has learned to jump up on the couch to cuddle or rest. She is learning from her older brother and sister that dogs should not have to lay on the floor if a perfectly good couch, chair or bed is available. 

River’s older sister Peekaboo (12) has, in protest, kept herself mostly out of the puppy business, for the time being. Her brother Cooper (5) has been instrumental in teaching her habits both good and bad. This week she has learned to climb on the porch couch, use the doggy stairs to climb on the bed, use the doggy door from the porch to the backyard, tear ass-over-tea-kettle around the backyard “racetrack”, sit pretty in the “food semi-circle” (the area around the cupboard we keep the treats), jump on her Mom and Dad just like Cooper does, growl (but she’s not sure why), bark when Cooper gets picked up and boop Cooper on the head with her giant paw when she’s feeling playful.

We’re not new at this. As longtime owners of another high intensity, high energy, highly intelligent breed that loves to work – terriers – we are pretty familiar with the ins and outs of managing all that will and all that energy. They need tasks – Cooper brings my lunch bag to the kitchen every day after work just as his fore-brother did before him. Peekaboo manages his work as her fore-sisters did before her. Cooper also carries various laundry, kitchen towels mostly, to the kitchen to be put away. He does this because he had been taught at Max’s knee that this is the family business and an honorable one at that. Boo supervises his work and takes her cut of the treats as she is in management and so entitled. River seems to understand the need for tasks. She routinely herds Cooper around the house and yard, much to his displeasure. She also routinely tries to interfere with the completion of his assigned duties also to his displeasure. She is currently being tasked with finding loose socks under the bed and bringing them to the laundry room. This is meeting with mixed success but we have high hopes for her future development assuming she can still get under the bed in another month or two.

River is learning to wait her turn for treats and for her breakfast and dinner. She has a slow-eat bowl but she’s learned to tip it over. She is a good sitter especially in the food semi-circle but still charges for the treat and swallows the hand giving it to her. She has not quite learned her place in the treat getting pecking order 1. Peekaboo, 2. Cooper and 3. River. She feels it is unfair and should be 1. River, 2. River and 3. River. She’s a little thin so we’ve increased her feeding schedule and suspect as she matures and learns that there will always be more food she will calm down enough to train. Strangely, if we hand feed her puppy kibble from the kitchen table she sits pretty, waits her turn and takes it “easy”. Now to translate that to other food behavior.

River came home on a weekend to a fairly unstructured environment. But once the new week hit on Monday at 5:45 AM she was introduced to the Krueger family morning routine. The terriers like structure, and none so much as Max. The other two, with Max’s passing, have lapsed into a much more leisurely routine of wake up for morning medications, go back to bed, get up for breakfast, go back to bed, say goodbye to Dad, go back to bed and so on. River seems to respect the morning routine and I feel it helps her start the day right. We wake, go outside, take a shower (me not her but she’s in the room), go outside, get dressed (me not her but she’s at my heel), make coffee, eat breakfast, leave for work – every weekday. Same way, same time, every day. She hears my alarm and is ready to get up and get started. And she’s happy because it’s consistent, safe, known and comfortable. Just what one rescued from unknown conditions by a kind foster Mom and adopted just a few weeks later by her new family needs. 

In all, she is very healthy. She is energetic but can be calmed. She’s willful but responds to a firm voice, she loves to come to a whistle, to have her name sung to her in the tune of various popular songs, to lay on her Mom and Dad’s head, and to give hugs. She is bright and inquisitive and loves to explore the house and backyard but tends to stay within sight of her people when indoors and Cooper when outdoors. She leans toward the naughty if she doesn’t get enough nap time the day before, she is always at my heel but naps willingly if I settle down long enough. She is her Mom’s Sweet Pea and my Sweet Girl.