Not long after writing my post about puppies we suddenly found ourselves with one! We had one dog (Ava) and were planning on getting a puppy in a couple of months when our house renovations have finished. I am a planner and I had worked out that would be the best time and I was going to do some work with Ava to get her more used to not having free access to me all the time….well those plans went out the window when we found a dumped puppy in the field near our house. No chip and no one claimed him. So we welcome Cactus.

Time now to put my money where my mouth is and follow my own advice! It feels a lot easier this time round, knowing a lot more, and I am enjoying juggling a multi dog household – especially as we have dogs boarding with us at the moment as well!
We did have a puppy pen which has been very useful but not much else for a puppy, quick trip to the pet shop and we are now equipped. We started him on the same raw food Ava has and he loves it. Eats so well and loves working for his food. It was probably about 2 hours after getting him I started playing games with him. At this age they generally stick to you like glue anyway so now is the time to reinforce that so the proximity stays as he gets older. I spread his food out during the day, some to play games with and some put on licky mats and to stuff in bones. He is quite the biter so I do small little frozen balls of food so he can chomp on something.

He seems a confident puppy and optimistic, but it would only take one or two bad experiences for that to change so I will work on those concepts with him.
He loves toys as well which is great, so we don’t always have to use food as a reward. Ava is not so keen that he has chewed and slobbered over all her toys!

A couple of things we are not in a rush to do:
- Teaching a “sit” – This often becomes a punishing behaviour as it is the thing we ask our dogs to do in order to stop doing something else! There are plenty of other things I would like him to learn first.
- Getting Ava and Cactus to play together and be friends. I hope this will come over time, but Ava has had over 2 years being an only dog so we are taking our time and letting her get used to it slowly. We only let them out together for a few short sessions a day at the most.
- Socialisation in the traditional way. I am not in a rush to get him out meeting lots of dogs and people and children. I would rather take it slow, let him start experiencing different sights, smells and even textures. We will work on dealing with novelty so that when he does start to meet more dogs and animals he will be equipped to deal with the situation.
I will keep my Facebook and Instagram up to date with how we are getting on so please give them a follow!
Would love to hear any comments from people on what they think about this, or if you have any puppy advice for me 🙂

Oh and in case you are wondering, we named him Cactus as that is where we found him (also it starts with a C and I want to have dog names following the alphabet to go with my company name!!).