As my lovely wife posted, we have added a 3rd member to our family, or in this instance I suppose it’s our “pack”. We purchased an 8 week old blue Weimaraner who we named Enzo.
In the 5 days we’ve had him there has been much to write about. Follow along in our adventures!
After doing much research and reading we decided we were ready to bring home a pup. I have read through Cesar Millan’s book How to Raise the Perfect Dog and we were ready to start following the guidelines set forth.
Day 1: Introducing Enzo to his new digs.
Sunday was an icy/snowy mess of a day but our breeder delivered Enzo at about 2:30pm. Veronica took the reigns on showing puppy his new bathroom spot and then introduced him to his crate using the “Nose, eyes, ears” method suggested by Cesar. While she was taking care of this I was going over the paper work with the breeder and brimming with excitement as we finally had our own puppy. We finally had a dog to raise our way over the next 12-15 years and have him become a calm, submissive, great member of the pack. The rest of Sunday was spent playing with our puppy and trying to figure out how to establish the best routine for him. Needless to say it’s still in the works, but we’re getting there.
The first night was rough. Real rough. The whining, crying and 2 or 3 potty breaks took a bit of a toll. I decided that I would work a half day monday and go in during the afternoon so that Enzo had some leadership for at least about 24 hours.
Day 2: Holy crap! what don’t we know
Monday brought new drama to the Enzo novel. The morning went fairly well. We woke up, pottied on time, ate on time, played and all of those things. Then it came time to go to work. My thought was to go in for a few hours and come home let him out and head back to work. Well that didn’t go at all as planned. When I arrived home only after 2.5 hours of being alone Enzo had had a panic attack for the ages. He did not manage to escape his crate, but he had apparently been so anxious that he threw up his lunch, and apparently he ate it again. I know that is disgusting to us humans but he was just trying to keep his kennel clean after he messed it. This episode had me re-evaluating our strategy to break him of this separation and adapt him to his new home..
The evening of Monday was much better. Enzo slept to his 2 scheduled potty breaks in the evening. One at 1am and one at 4am.
Day 3: Veronica stays home to puppy-sit.
I had to go to work all day Tuesday, but my wonderful wife stayed home with Enzo to help his acclimation. She did wonderful things and noticed behaviours that we could try and curb. Mainly his energy when staying in his crate. Veronica read Cesar’s book and was able to practice his technique of disagreeing with Enzo’s anxiety in his crate to a point where we can be in the kitchen and he’s across the room, yet he will lay down and be calm. THIS HAS BEEN HUGE!!!! She also took him for a short walk this day and this appeared to really wear him out. We may have discovered the formula needed to help us.
Tuesday evening was no big deal. Enzo more than slept to his potty breaks, however to help him not have any accidents we took him out at his scheduled times.
Day 4: Sean stays home and we make progress
I am lucky enough to have a company willing to work with my schedule (read: boss willing to work with me). I arranged to take the days off an work the evenings to help get Enzo over his separation anxiety issues. I managed to take Enzo for a few longer walks which helped even more this day. I also managed to leave for 15 minutes and come home to no sort of destructive actions or even a whining puppy. We were making it. Another great thing, that shows how quickly our pup will learn things. Since we had consistently taken him to the back door for potty breaks he has learned where to go to notify us of him needing to go. Yesterday while Enzo had some free time from his crate under my 100% supervision he walked to the back door, pawed at it, sat down and just stared at me. I jumped up, got my shoes, golves, hat and coat on and took him out. He pottied, just like we wanted! He learned. He knew how to alert us to take him out! This was 4 days in our house! What more will he learn? For starters he almost sits on command already and he’s pretty good about walking on a leash. YES!
Evening 4 was a little longer, only because this was my first night working in the evening. I must say however I got a lot of work done and had I not been so tired, I could have accomplished more. Enzo did great with his evening potty times and I think this evening we will be testing if he can make it 4 hours before potty times. If he can, we can make it down to 1 potty break a night! Progress!
Here are some obligitory pictures of the pupster!
