Week 5 - 7/10/2016

Week 5 – These weeks seem to be flying by. Our adorable little puppies grow a little every day and with each day they are doing something new! This is when they start seeing toys as an exciting thing to chew on, carry around and play tug with. It's not just nibbling on our toes and chewing on each other anymore. It's adorable to see a little puppy proudly prance around with a toy in their mouth like they just won a prize (Nacho is one of the main toy lovers and does this frequently)! Toys makes interacting with them more fun (and less painful for us- those darn puppy teeth), and opens their world up to so many other fun games like keep away and tug of war. The tunnel, with big sister Zazu inside, is a favorite game as they launch themselves at the tunnel to attack Zazu! Watch out Zazu, they're starting to organize their attacks on you...

The puppies are starting to get some one-on-one time with us now so we can get to know them a little better and see what their personalities are without their siblings around. So far every pup that has come inside has interacted with us really well and had fun with us without the others around. It also gives them some time they can spend one-on-one with their mama Kyra as she'll actually play with them when there's not 10 chasing after her for a milk snack! Their personalities are starting to be more distinguished from one another, although all are really sweet with people there's definitely some that are more chill and others are more adventurous! This gives us more information as we spend any spare time we have to chat about puppies and which one would work best for their new homes!

Two of Kristy's co-workers brought over their 1 1/2 year olds to come play with the puppies last week. Although the kids liked the puppy toys a tad more than the puppies, it was still nice for the puppies to hang around with some young kids for some socialization! Next week will be a lot of fun since we will hold the Chicken Nugget Puppy Socialization party, which will bring a lot of people of all ages, with lots of objects to bring to the party to desensitize our pups to the objects. These objects could be a musical toy, balloons, bells, hats, balls, a cane, etc. Essentially every day items the puppies may come in contact with in their new lives to get them used to these new things in their world.

At home we'll continue with the noise desensitization and other objects like riding a bike near them or opening an umbrella. Since we had young puppies over the 4th of July weekend, it will be interesting to see if they are ok with firework noises when they grow up since they experienced some boom-booms in the neighborhood and were just fine with it all! Although the neighbor behind us did light one in their backyard right behind us, that even startled me, but I had 10 tough little puppies to protect me when they all went on alert and did a woof-growl at the noise before proceeding with playing in the back yard!

The Chicken Nugget litter (as always in order of appearance):