("Thor")
Puppies' Diary - Part 2.
This page was last updated: 2004-02-27
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May 2002
This page continues the story of living with all three puppies in the house.
5th of May, 2002 - Settling in....
12th of May, 2002 - Our Akita/GJD "Activity day"...
Oh, dear... I have been soooo busy... As you can probably imagine from the time that has passed since I last wrote on these pages...
I have been busy with the dogs and horses of course... Especially the three pups are quite "time-consuming".... But I have also spend some (a lot!) time on my new "extra-job" as an independent distributor of Aloe Vera products from Forever Living Products (se "what's new" for more information). And because of this, my priorities have been "animals first, then homepage and Internet...", which I am sure, you will understand.
Over the past month, we have established some sort of daily routine. In the mornings, I walk Ikiru and Tora, and the puppies are playing in the garden a couple of hours. In the afternoons or evenings, I then walk Ikiru and Tora again, sometimes joined by Kanzi - and then I walk the (other) puppies too...
Still our best trips are, when we "go out" somewhere - on the beach, or somewhere in the country side around in the neighbourhood, where they can run off leash and enjoy themselves... Watching them investigate and play is just so much fun! But for "socialisation" matters, we also walk in the village or city, trying out as many different surroundings as possible. Sometimes we walk out from home, and sometimes we go by car somewhere else....
Actually today we made a "test"... We went for a trip with all 5 dogs together in the car... And everything went just fine.. It was a test, because on Wednesday we are going to visit Dennis' parents, and as we are staying over night, we will have to bring the dogs with us. It will be quite an experience staying over night with all 5 dogs...
The purpose with our trip is that we are going to participate in our "Akita Activity Day" (actually, I have arranged the Get-together, so it is quite essential for me to be there). This day was planned before I knew we would be having 3 puppies in the house this spring, but we will consider it as an experience for the dogs too, part of their socialisation that is..
The program for the day is to "be active" with our dogs until noon (tracking, agility etc.), and then in the afternoon we will be visiting a "Wolfspark" (Skandinavisk Dyrepark) near by, where we will be given a lecture about the wolf pack in the park, and have opportunity to see all the animals.
I'm looking forward to the day....
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This just to tell you briefly about our trip to Dennis' parents, and the "Akita Day".
As you can imagine, we very quite excited about bringing all 5 dogs in the car together, and this time for a longer trip. Especially the ferryboat, where the car would be parked, so there would be nothing "happening", made us wonder, how the dogs would react.
At the harbour we took them out of the car for a little pee, but there were simply too many exciting things (peoples, cars, dogs etc.) to watch for them to concentrate on doing their business. Of course, they found it all to be very exciting and probably also a bit scary... But on the ferryboat every thing went just fine. We stayed in the car with the dogs, and all of us had a little nap till we landed again.
At my parents in law we put the dogs in their largest run-out for a couple of hours, while we were having a cup of coffee and chatting with my parent in law, and then I took them for a little walk at the ground of their house (about 2 acres with a fence, and an agility course, and some areas with trees, some areas with short grass and some areas with longer grass. They use it as a dog-training facility, so there are plenty of exciting smells to investigate), so that the dogs could have a little free run, before we went to bed.... All 5 dogs in our room, as they are also used to at home...
The next day, they had to spent most of the day in the run-out again, as I were busy "arranging" everything and greeting everybody. But, they were in the run-out right next to where we had our lunch, so they were in pretty close contact with us most of the time. And, we brought them with us too, as everybody went into "Mols Bjerge" to have a walk in the beautiful weather - sunny, and almost too warm for the dogs to really be able to do any work, but of course they did anyway.
The puppies, and also Ikiru and Tora clearly enjoyed the trip with all the other Akitas, and thought it to be very funny to walk in a "new" place.. Though, Ikiru and Tora would rather have been off leash, as they would have been, had we been on our own out there.
All in all the day was a success, everybody enjoyed working with their dogs, and the trip to the "Wolfs Park" was also very interesting... And, after everybody headed home, I took the dogs for another round on the "training facility", and this time it was of course even more interesting, because all their "friends" had just been there.
The evening we (and the dogs) spent chatting with my parents in law, and this time we had our dogs with us in the house, so that they could learn the experience of "visiting" other people...
The worst part of the day was the trip home... This time we drove all the way, and it took us almost 3½ hours in the car to get home.. Need I say, the dogs (and we) were VERY tired, when we finally got home? But, even so, there were no troubles among the dogs, even as we made a short stop and took them out to pee, and then back into the car again, there was not even the slightest tune of a quarrel among them.... Very impressing in my opinion - imagine, what it would have been like, had it been 5 kids we had with us.....
All in all it was a nice trip, and I was actually very impressed with the dogs that everything went so smoothly... And, it was of course a very "sound" experience for especially the youngsters, as this was their first longer car trip to visit someone, staying over night and meeting other people and other dogs....
("Thor")
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