Zara turned 15 weeks as of yesterday. It’s hard to believe we’ve had her for 6+ weeks! She has grown a lot lately and now weighs about 25 lbs. Even though it wasn’t that long ago, it’s hard to remember her as being much smaller, but she was only 12 lbs. when we brought her home.
Overall, I think she has been somewhat better behaved lately. I think she is listening more or I am becoming more attuned to her or both. I knew getting a puppy (especially a high-energy vizsla) was gonna be a lot of work, but some of the first couple days were overwhelming and she was making me want to tear my hair out. She is still like that sometimes but maybe we just know how to deal with it better.
Thankfully house training was practically a non-issue for us. I’d heard that vizslas were pretty quick to learn but I didn’t expect it to be so easy. I think the fact that I didn’t work the first couple weeks helped a lot because I was able to take her out so often. I still wouldn’t trust her alone in the house outside of the crate for several hours but she hasn’t had an accident since Christmas Day, and that was a month ago. It’s nice not having to watch her every second. She does do the “submissive urinination” thing when Chris comes home but that is a separate issue and I’ve read up to on how decrease it.
Zara lost her first teeth this past week! She lost her two front teeth when we were playing fetch on Monday. She brought me her black and white stuffed goose and when I looked at the white part, there was blood on it. It was a bit freaky. Then I opened her mouth and saw that there were two hole where her front teeth used to be! I never found the teeth so maybe she swallowed them or they are embedded in the carpet somewhere. She didn’t seem to miss them and the new ones have already started to grow back. She has also lost 3 of the bottom teeth in the front.
She is also getting more used to being in the crate during the day, thank goodness. After the first couple days, she was fine at night, but she would cry as soon as we left her in the crate during the day. Chris went to the office on Thursday and the dog walker came to visit in the morning. He said that Zara was sleeping when he arrived and after they came back inside, she ran right back to her crate and laid down! Apparently his departure after the afternoon visit didn’t go so well, but it’s a start!
We also went to puppy kindergarten and puppy party this week at Woofs. At the training class, they talked about mouthing and how to have control over a game of tug. During the playtime portion, Zara stole a sock toy that another dog’s owner had brought. The training facility is basically a big open space with plastic chairs lining all four walls. Zara was running around the perimeter with the toy in her mouth and all the other puppies were chasing after her. She is by far the fastest of the bunch, so none of them could keep up. To make it more difficult, she was running underneath and even behind the chairs to throw them off! It was quite amusing. She was still tired the next morning. :)
The weather has been quite frigid here and combined with the snow, are not ideal for exercising a puppy. I thought about taking her hiking this weekend but it’s just too cold. Maybe next weekend.
