Introducing Callie the Puggle!

As a lot of you know, a little over a week ago my family and I adopted a new Puggle puppy named Callie. She came from a reputable breeder in Kentucky. I as going back and forth about adopting a new puppy, wondering if I had the time to put into it and the energy. I pretty much left it up to fate. I knew that the right puppy would be placed in front of me and all I had to do was follow the signs. So let me tell you how that worked. I had been looking at this breeder for some time and about a month ago I saw he had a litter of puppies. On a side note, I had been looking at shelters every day to see if there was a puppy or dog that stuck out but there never was one. I inquired about two puppies that did not have an adopted sign on them but they said that the website hadn't been updated and all the puppies where accounted for. Well about two weeks go he posted on Facebook that the puppy I wanted was available. I inquired about her and he said that they were waiting to see if the original people who wanted her were going to take her or not. Well about two hours later he called me and said that she was ours! I couldn't believe it. A week later they dropped her off to me and she came became part of the family. She didn't miss a beat. She wasn't scared or timid. She was just excited. She knew this was home. So that is the back story to how we adopted Callie.

Callie will be my next partner with Consistent Canine Training so it is very important that she is trained well. The moment she came home we started working on potty training and chewing. My kids, who are 7, 5, and 2 learned quickly that if you don't want the puppy to bite you, redirect with a toy. Callie has picked up on that very quickly. She still tries to go after the kids but they either jump on the couch or grab a toy. Even in one week she has been biting less and going after her toys more. It is very important to start good habits off from the get go so you don't have to fix the bad habits, which is a lot harder to do. With the potty training, we started off right away letting her out every 15 - 20 minutes while she was out of her cage or awake. I can not stress enough how important it is to let your puppy out that frequently. The can not hold it very long and the more you are on top of it in the beginning the faster they will be potty trained. I would say for the first full week we were letting her out every 15-20 minutes. Since yesterday she has been able to go a little longer, probably more like 30 minutes. We also watch her signs for when she has to go outside. The first week is definitely a learning curve but we are understanding her better each day. We also watch her consistently when she is out of the cage. Yesterday, Sunday, was the first day she didn't have any accidents in the house. So far today not accidents as well so we will see how it goes. She doesn't tell us she needs to go outside. We just watch her signs and let her out a lot.

A couple things we are doing with her potty training

* Letting her out every 15 - 20 minutes in the beginning and building up each week.

* She is only allowed in the family room/Kitchen area so we can watch her. It also doesn't give her the chance to sneak off and potty somewhere else in the house. We have caught 90% of her accidents and taken her right outside and gave a reward for finishing pottying outside.

* When we can't watch her she goes into her cage. When she wakes up, we pick her up and take her straight outside.

* When she is napping during the day, she goes into her cage. The reason for that is if she wakes up and we aren't around, she can't potty in the house.

* At night, she sleeps in her cage that is in our room. For right now she wakes up once a night and goes outside to pee and poop. Little puppies can't hold it all night right now but I am hoping she will in the next couple weeks.

* The other thing I am trying is have Callie ring the bell to go outside. Last week we were ringing it our self and telling her "lets go potty". This week we are starting to take her paw and have her ring the bell herself and tell her "lets go potty". When she is outside we are telling her to "go potty". I am trying to put "go potty" on command so when I need her to go fast she will. I trained my last puggle to do that and it worked well. She hasn't caught on to the bells yet but stay tuned!

A couple things we are doing about the chewing

* She has a basket full of different types of chew toys and she can go into and get what she wants to chew.

* When she is chewing on an object she shouldn't be chewing on we stomp our feet or make a loud noise to stop her then redirect with a toy.

* We play fetch and tug a lot to keep her entertained. My other dog Riley is doing a good job at that too. They are just started to play and Callie loves it.

* Also, a kids room is the worst place for a puppy to be. There are to many things the can chew up. When Callie is upstairs we are watching her consistently and we bring some toys up too.

The new thing we are doing this week is charging the clicker. All my clients know what this is. So with a clicker, dogs need to learn that when they hear the sound of the clicker it means a good thing so it needs to be conditioned to their minds. What the clicker means to a dog is that when they hear a click, it takes a picture in their mind that the behavior they are doing at that moment is a good and to continue that behavior. To charge the clicker, we have about 5-10 treats in our hand and the clicker in the other hand. All you do is click and give the treat right after. You want to make sure that the click and the intake of the food is right after each other, if not click again. The dog needs to make the connection. We started charging the clicker on Saturday so we will be doing that for one week. Next week we will start doing Sit, Down, and Touch. I am going to go slow with her training for two reasons. One I want to make sure it sticks in her head and two she is very young and you don't want to throw too much at a young puppy at once. Their little brains can only take so much.

Lastly, we do have another dog in the house who is 12 years old. When we first brought Callie home he wanted nothing to do with her. He would growl and snap at her. When he would do that we would just redirect him. When he sniffed her and didn't show any type of aggression we would praise him. We did not want to correct him for growling at her because we didn't want him to associate Callie as a negative. On Saturday, they finally started to play. He will still growl sometimes but it has gotten a lot better. He will chase her and she slides under things and rolls over to show her belly. She shows her belly to tell him, I am no threat and I understand you are above me. Her play manners are very good and that comes from being with her litter mates until 8 weeks. She does try to play with the cats in the house too but that isn't going very well. The cats just run away.

There will be weekly updates on her training as well as videos when I start to do more formal training. The blogs will be posted on my website and Facebook page so check those places for a new blog. I hope you enjoyed reading about Callie's first week at home! If anyone has any questions about how I am training Callie, feel free to email me.