Naamah is really happy we kept a puppy. (Morgan’s pretty okay with that too, but not as happy about it as Naamah).
In some ways, Saffron is a certain amount of trouble. She did become less devilish and a bit more timid from six to eight week, which I’ve seen before, so I’m having to concentrate on socialization more than I’d hoped. She’s fine with people, which is good; she’s not reactive, which is good; but she’s a bit uncertain in new places. Pretty submissive too. This is all fine, it just means I’ll have to handle her carefully to bring her along and build her confidence.
However, in other ways, wow. This whole litter was very (very) easy to start with housetraining. Saffron herself has never had an accident. Eventually she’ll have to, so that I can tell her no and get that clear. But she is amazingly reliable for her age. I can say with authority that, if you raise puppies of the same breed, that are related, in the same home, with the same person handling training, then they’ll all become reliably housetrained between four and eleven months of age. The huge range reflects just plain individual variation. Sex of the puppy doesn’t matter. Season doesn’t matter, though you’d think it would. Nope. Just sheer individual variation. It’s great to have a litter that is all on the very easy end of this normal curve.
I brought Saffron downstairs to the bedroom to join the rest of us the same night the last of her siblings left us — I never leave a puppy alone in the puppy room. She was nine and a half weeks. She fussed just a bit (uneasy in new places, sigh), so I put her on the bed with me for half an hour. After she fell asleep, I settled her in a big crate with Naamah and she slept through the night. Now she’s comfortable downstairs with Naamah from the time we go down to the bedroom. She’s never woken me up at night.
I’ve started her on follow-me training and on leash training — I do both, separately. She’s doing fine with that, though she feels a leash is a strange and suspicious implement. She’s pretty much of the opinion that liver brownies are a good idea and make leashes more okay.
Anyway, very easy puppy, smoothly moving from early puppyhood into full integration into my family.
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