puppies - search results

It's simply astonishing how fast puppies grow. Three weeks ago I wrote a post about the then-four-week-old puppies I'm fostering. Three weeks ago, they were just starting to show little bits of grown-up dog behavior: adorable little growls and barks, playing with each other, and running toward me when I call them for a meal or to go outside (or come inside). Today, the seven Treeing Walker Coonhound puppies are seven weeks old and just the most amazing, perfectly formed little dogs. They (unfortunately) remember things they learned days ago - like how exactly they got through the barriers I erected in the kitchen to keep them out of the recycling bin, where there are crushed aluminum cans and plastic bottles just waiting to be strewn about the kitchen (so, for a while, the recycling bin will have to be relocated to a table top). Fortunately, they also remember good things, like how they can get attention and petting if they sit in front of me, rather than jumping up or biting my bare ankles (ouch!).

As I approached the front of the supermarket, I saw about six or seven people standing in a circle. Uh oh, I thought, and sure enough: There was a couple there with three pit-mix puppies. The pups looked like they were about 8 weeks old; they had the pudgy, unformed bodies and the stoic/exhausted expressions of very young pups.

Everyone who knows me well knows my running gag about puppies. When I see an adorable roly poly irresistible puppy, I say scathingly, “Oh, a puppy. I hate puppies. Who likes puppies? Nobody.” Of course, by the time my final line is delivered, I’m mauling the puppy affectionately. I actually love puppies. Who wouldn’t? The breath, the paws, the widdle noses? But neither do I want one. Maybe ever. And a recent puppy-sitting stint, for all of two or three hours, stiffened my resolve.

The first time I saw Buddy he was a tiny tan morsel nestled in his owner's arms, a perfect pudge of a yellow Labrador retriever puppy – eight weeks old, fat, round and chunky with a shiny black button nose, warm brown eyes and milk-sweet puppy breath. His owner, Tena, had carried him into my training class to hand him over to me for three weeks of in-home boarding and training.

Yes, puppies again. My local shelter called yesterday to ask if I could foster a litter of 10 pit/German Shepherd/who-knows-what-mix puppies. Well, sure, of course; I will always say yes if I am not on my way out of town or something. But this group is seriously challenging. Why? They are too young to be separated from their mom.

Last summer I fostered a really disparate-looking litter of puppies for my local shelter. Most of the time, whether they are brought in as purportedly "found" puppies or their owners admit that they were accidental and unwanted, the litters of puppies that come to the shelter are fairly uniform, like the litter of 11 Great Dane pups I fostered immediately after the dissimilar group (there were 10 black and white pups, and one fawn-colored one, who nevertheless was the exact same shape and size as his siblings). But this one litter looked like they were from three different families!As a side note, I should mention a fact that surprised many of my friends and family members, but isn't news to experienced dog owners: puppies from the same litter can have different fathers. Each of the mother's egg cells need to be fertilized by individual sperm cells, and if the mother has been bred by a number of males, the eggs can be fertilized by sperm of different males. When the owners of intact females fail to keep them safely separated or sequestered, and they escape and run loose, or loose, intact males are drawn from all over the neighborhood to them, anything can happen!

The stars backstage at my local shelter are the six Basset puppies (and their doting mama) that the staff saved from coccidiosis (an illness caused by a nasty single-celled parasite). A guy brought the two-week-old litter to the shelter, signing over the whole lot, saying “they were just pooping too much.” Well, they were pooping so much because they had diarrhea; one puppy died within minutes of arrival. But our brilliant vet tech whipped into action and saved those dang puppies – mama, poop, and all. And they have just gotten cuter and cuter and cuter.

I have the privilege (and responsibility) of dog-sitting two of the pups from my most recent foster litter – for a whole week! –...

I imagine that everyone who works or volunteers in animal rescue, or human social services, gets overwhelmed at times with what seems to be a relentless tide of innocents in need of help. Intellectually, I know that there are FAR fewer unwanted pets being brought to animal shelters and fewer animals being in euthanized in shelters than when I was a young person, and yet at times the sheer volume of dogs I'm aware of who are in need of rescue, fostering, transportation, and medical help is just crushing.

I'm fostering a mama dog and her nine puppies. They were surrendered to my local shelter when the pups were about a week old.

between three and six months of age. While the baby teeth are shedding and the adult teeth are erupting

Two of the most frustrating but common parasites your puppy might be hosting are Giardia and Coccidia. These are not worms, but two species of protozoa -- single-celled organisms that reproduce in the intestines of infected animals and shed their spores into the environment through the infected animals' feces. These spores can survive in watery environments and soil, long enough to be incidentally consumed by other animals, either by drinking contaminated water, eating contaminated grass, or just walking through (or sitting or lying on) contaminated soil and then grooming themselves.

Naturally, we regard shock collars as absolutely unnecessary and inappropriate in any training program, but particularly so in training puppies and young dogs. Given the potential for an exceptionally strong fear response during the early fear period – as well as during the secondary fear period – it pains us greatly to see trainers who market their shock collar training even for very young puppies. Of course they mask the aversive nature of shock collars by calling them “electronic” or “e” collars and “electronic fences.”