Puppy's Feeding Schedule

This decision is by far the hardest one, and also the one most fraught with advice from all corners. Puppies from 8 - 12 weeks typically need 3 meals a day, progressing from 12 weeks to adulthood on 2 meals per day with bigger portions.

The most important consideration is that what goes in, must come out - and that said, would be preferred not to come out at the odd hours of the morning. What they don't tell you is that when your puppy eats, aside from the obvious, also determines your puppy's waking (playful) hours. In the first few weeks, I scheduled a 24 hours divided by 3 = once every 8 hour routine. Big, big mistake. Bailey ended up being bouncy and playful starting at 1am in the morning, resulting in a bedside siege every morning in the hours of 1am-3am by a 1.5kg white furball.

More research later, I decided on a 3 meal schedule as follows...

• 8am: Breakfast with the dogs, feed Bailey as Beanie got breakfast.
• 1pm: Lunch for Bailey while Beanie got a treat to avoid jealousy.
• 7pm: Dinner with the dogs, feed Bailey while Beanie got dinner.

The tip of removing water and treats 3-4 hours before bed time also worked wonders in ensuring that puppy didn't wake up in the middle of the night to do their jobs, hence allowing me to let the puppy sleep through the night without waking me up for a night time play time.

Puppy's First Night

I got Beanie, my first dog a lot older than Bailey, who was 7.5 weeks when I took her home, so I'd expected Bailey to adjust as well as Beanie could, not knowing better. I'd left Bailey on the first night downstairs with Beanie, in separate crates so Beanie didn't have to cuddle up next to some stranger.

Well, it was an hour in the car from Buckinghamshire in the middle of winter for Bailey, and must have felt like being abducted by well meaning aliens into outer space in a weird space ship, landing in what seemed like an eternity later on an alien home planet. Bailey slept all the way through, tired out by the experience, but the first night, realised the permanence of her alien abduction situation after seeing another fellow doggy in captivity from an earlier abduction, imagined the worst and whined and cried herself to sleep.

Points for making sure Beanie didn't get disturbed by a stranger: FAIL.Points for making sure Bailey had a good experience at home: FAIL.
Points for attempting not to create a clingy dog who clearly felt abandoned and didn't trust humans: FAIL.

Next night, upstairs next to my bed. The following week, I gradually increased the distance of her sleeping crate to my bed, and the following week, further away, until finally she was reassured that I was still going to be around the next morning and she'd get fed, same time, same channel. Some websites talk about ignoring your puppy when they whine and cry for attention, believing that if this attention was paid any mind, that this develops a clingy, attention seeking dog. Suspend that for the first few days I think now.

Contrary to paranoid behaviouralists, your puppy simply won't know enough about how you're going to behave in the first week to manipulate your behaviour by whining. As it is, you know little enough about your puppy to manipulate its behaviour, much less the other way around. After your puppy settles in (a week or two later, perhaps), continuing this treatment may give rise to attention seeking, which will quickly die down with ignorance.I'd thought to let my puppy learn that making a noise won't ever get me to turn up, by way of hoping that when the puppy is young without a developed bark, it is far preferable that the puppy never learnt to bark at all. Little did I know anyway that a puppy's bark, despite all best intentions, develop anyway, and sound very different from a whine and a cry!

Welcome Home Little Bailey

Brought Bailey home today. Less prepared than I should be.

Bringing a new puppy home is a bit like going to war. I don't mean this in an aggressive way (OK, maybe I do, a little) but in a nutshell, one can never be too prepared, it's all about the terrain (your home turf), and strategic planning is the essence of success.

I don't think I've ever seen any free doggy advice site say this, actually not even the paid ones, but having now come out, battle-weary and a survivor of not one but two puppies, I can honestly say this is true. I envy the domestic goddess puppy keepers that look like Nigella, have perfect puppies and are stay home mums. I'm not a stay home mum, I risk getting criticized for leaving my dogs at home alone with no one (what's each other then?) for company while I work full-time, and I still love dogs and love what they bring to my life when I'm home with them.

But yes, before you bring your puppy home, preparation is the mother of success. And no, you can never be too prepared.

Happy Birthday Bailey!

I have two dogs.  They are both West Highland White Terriers (Westies).  Beanie, my first and older dog was born on 21st November 2005 in Adelaide, Australia.  She's since semi-travelled the world, having lived in Australia for a short stint in puppyhood, Singapore, and is now living out the rest of her days as an English dog in the UK.  According to my neighbour, she still doesn't understand English too well, but does alright with Australian.

Today, Bailey, my second female Westie is born.  The first time I set my eyes on little Bailey was when she was 3 weeks old, a faceful of rice pudding in Buckinghamshire.  The runt of the litter and the quiet, small one of her pack of 3 girls and 3 boys, she was the last puppy left to be sold by her breeder.

You know how they say choose a name when you meet a dog so that it'll have a name when you bring it back home?  One couldn't very well call her "Pudding" though that was tempting.  Or "Polar" since she looked like a little polar bear.  So she was "it" and "the new puppy" and nameless for quite a long time.

It finally dawned on me to enlist the help of current dog Beanie who had a well chosen, aptly picked name.  Scribbled all suggestions from friends and family, including Facebook entries in a "name my dog" competition I'd called, and out of the tiny scraps of paper mouth-picked by Beanie was a well chewed scrap that had "Bailey" etched on it.  It was actually the most voted suggestion from colleagues and Facebook friends, in line with the tagline "let your taste decide"... was quite apt of the little one and her rice pudding adventures.

I don't want to end a post without a lesson learnt though, since this is all about everything I've trawled the internet in the past 4 years to find about doggy training and ended up learning differently anyway through trial and error.

One thing I found frequently on pet advice sites when searching for dog names was the advice not to name your puppy similarly to the name of the one you have now.  Now this advice I can't say I've heeded too well, since Beanie and Bailey sound like a pair, not surprisingly because alliteration and rhyme in the English language are pleasant to our ears.  Pleasant enough, I suppose to doggy ears too, but confusing also.  Typically when I give a command now, instead of one dog obeying what I've asked, I now get two.  When calling a name (any name) two pairs of eyes look in my direction, instead of one.  It cracks me up, and is absolutely hilarious, but not all that clear if you're going for clarity, distinction and ease of learning.

In hindsight, I should have named Bailey "Odie" as I'd intended, or "Inu" or "Pudding" or "Trouble".  Alas, Bailey's name stuck, so Bailey it is.