Lyra - Week 1 Day 2
Sleep deprivation is a terrible thing.
It can make a hardened trainer do things they will later regret, like placing a puppy in their bed at 1am in the morning. Then again, with the three blissful hours of sleep that followed, maybe it was a good idea after all.
She is back in her crate now. Screaming.
Admittedly, I never asked for a quiet puppy. And it has been many years, so maybe this is...normal. But holy toledo....this girl has some lungs.
She has been introduced to both Cisu and Raika. Neither seems to "see" her. If they are walking in a straight line and she is in the way, they go right through her. She's learned to move. She did make the mistake of eyeing Raika's toy, and a few teeth flashed in her direction quickly changed her mind. Her dog sense is better than any puppy I've ever owned. After that incident with Raika's teeth, I saw Cisu walk over to her and snuffle her head with a quick tail wag - I took that to mean "you're ok".
She met Juno a few hours ago. Everyone was careful but I can see Juno wants to play. She tried to get Lyra to run with her, but Lyra is a little concerned about Juno's speed and intensity. I can see already that Juno is trying to be more calm. I'd put money on it that those two will be buddies in no time.
Now that I can have everyone together, life is going to be a lot easier.
She's been to Home Depot and the post office; carried by my husband who is clearly enjoying his status as proud papa. She had a fine time.
Today she was supposed to stay home but she gets so upset being crated that I had my husband take her on his errands. So she went for a nice walk in some woods, and cruised about a local city.
She's getting nervous around my visitors. I think she is so sleep deprived that she cant' function very well. So...she's going to stay home and take it easy for a bit.
For work, we practiced heeling for food (she already has a clue about that), retrieving weird objects (she brings them back much better than real toys), and a bit of tugging on a softer toy. And of course we'll play.
But for the rest of today and maybe tomorrow, I think she needs to rest more than anything. If she'd just sleep!
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In August I brought home my new Standard Poodle puppy. This girl was carefully bred, carefully raised and carefully chosen, just for me. I stayed with the breeder on two occasions and got to know my little girl. We went on outings together, just the two of us. She was one of the quietest in the litter. This was an interesting breeding of a North American line that are very birdy and a Russian import line that nobody knows much about. The second she got to my house, my quiet little cupcake began shrieking and would only stop if I had her out doing something or I was sitting no more than a foot away from her in her ex-pen. Oddly, she never cried at night in the crate, which was next to my bed. Nobody believed the volume or pitch or sheer endurance of this little vocalist, until I would hold the phone out or they would come over and hear it for themselves. It occurred to me that one of the unforeseen consequences of the breeder’s diligent efforts at exposing the litter to every imaginable surface, retrievable objects, people, animals and safe dogs is that they never learned the concept of “nothing”. Nothing going on, relax, chill, be quiet, hang out..I’ve become a believer in teaching puppies to stay alone in a crate at the breeder’s house, and alone meaning not within eyesight of the rest of the litter. Of course I haven’t been able to convince the breeders that they ought to do that. Nobody wants to hear the screaming. But i think in the long run it is better for the puppies.
I ended up giving my sweet girl back to the breeder. I could handle her hollering, but I had not counted on my dear old SPoo becoming slowly unglued by the normal but high energy level of this puppy or the not-so-typical level of crying. However, I did discover he is not completely deaf, as I had thought. Puppy needed more than what I could provide with my old guy here. Perhaps if we ((the breeder and I) had thought to separate the puppies we would have caught that before I uprooted her.
Our latest newfie Loki cried non stop for the first three nights he was home. I don’t know my husband and I tolerated it let alone ignored it. By the fourth night, he did quiet down. It took him over a year to get used to being in the crate, especially when we weren’t home and/or took my older newf anywhere without him. We don’t know how Loki did it but he would pee while standing in the crate and hit the carpet outside the crate. This went on for months. We patiently (very patiently) waited for him to outgrow it and he did. Loki will be 2 in January and for what it’s worth, he is by far the best working newfoundland that I have ever owned.
I find it varies dramatically by dog but she is the worst. Talking to owners of her older half siblings, a few said their puppies were awful about being confined – went on screaming for over a month. Lyra’s litter mates are being angelic – figures I get the feisty one. I do think we are turning a corner; she has been staying in her ex-pen today (with close supervision) and the last two times I crated her she only cried a little and then fell asleep. I’ve also noticed the whining is way down the last few hours, so i think she is starting to feel safe and getting settled in. Now that my dogs can be with her, it’s a lot easier to have her out with everyone, which I think also contributes to her being happy. Something tells me tonight is going to be much better. We’ll see!
It’s funny – of the dozens of pups I’ve raised or started for myself and others the only one I’ve had that would not tolerate crating was a malinois. I persisted and she eventually (after about a month) would be quiet in a crate but she alwasy hated it and shortly after going to her real home (I had her just for basic housetraining and some manners) she talked her people into leaving her out. In your experience with Belgians has this been common? I started probably a dozen tervs and never had an issue.
Yes, videos of tantrums are needed:-) but I agree with the other girls. Crate next to you in the bedroom might get everybody some sleep. Let us know how it goes.