Pupdate

I’m having a blast with Rampage. We just came back from a 4 day AKC trial where the 5 of us stayed in my tiny RV. That was a learning experience! I know for a fact that unless I upgrade my RV to a bigger rig, I’m never ever ever going to want FIVE dogs! Of course I’m sure that some of it is due to the fact that he is a puppy and my dogs don’t quite know what to make of him just yet

He has been consistently waking up at 4am to potty now, but not wanting to go back to sleep. Because I’ve been in an RV with VERY close neighbors his beautiful 4am singing (read: screaming) has resulted in me bringing him into the bed with me and the rest of the dogs after about 10 minutes, where he sleeps quite contentedly. I asked all my neighbors if they heard him and they said no, so last night I decided to let him scream. And scream he did from 4:50 until I got up at 7:20. He’s one persistent dude. And this morning, my neighbors said they DID hear him. Oops! Sorry!

However, when he was in the arena at the trial (being held only – I didn’t let him on the ground since I was leery of the livestock bugs) he was EXCEEDINGLY cute and either attentively yet calmly watched what was going on around him, or fell asleep. I had some friends over to the rv for dinner last night and while we played with him before dinner, he slept quite contentedly while we all ate!

I’m not used to seeing 7.5 week old puppies get the zoomies. Icon was too serious for zoomies and Apollo too uncoordinated. Well puppy zoomies in a 24’ rv is like watching a game of Pinball. He bounced off dinettes, fake wood paneling and dogs in quick succession. It took all of my pinball skills to make sure he didn't take a tumble into the stairwell. Now that we’re home and he has more room for the zoomies, he’s way cuter. He reminds me of a jackrabbit trying to escape a dog chasing him. He’ll be standing utterly still with his ears twitching (ok, I’m probably imagining the ears twitching – but seriously, they look like they will prick on their own!) and then suddenly take off. Just as you think he’s heading for the patio furniture he starts zigzagging all over the yard. Me and the other dogs stand there with our mouths hanging open. Next thing we know he’s yapping at Apollo and Apollo has no clue what to do! You can see Apollo's thought forming, "wasn't he by the patio furniture a second ago?". I need to get this on video. Puppy zoomies are so cute!

I feed raw and Rampage is taking to it better than any of my other dogs ever did. They at least had some runny poops after their first raw meal, but Rampage has shown none of that and I’ve given him such variety for just starting! So far he’s had chicken wings, pork necks (that was more recreational for him – his teeth are too small to really eat it), ground beef, eggs, ground turkey, trout, and chicken liver. He loves it all!

Icon has corrected Rampage twice now (both very appropriately, IMHO). Rampage is a PEST to the other dogs. If he was like this to his littermates, I think he owes Riff, Ex and Etch an apology. Neither of Icon’s corrections phased him at all. He just continued right on being a pest. This is quite new for me because when Icon was a puppy, he didn’t care about my other dogs and just wanted to interact with me. With Rampage, I have to find a way to make myself more interesting that the other dogs so he’ll interact with me instead of them (or put them away, which makes me feel bad for them since they didn’t do anything wrong!).

Rampage is really fun to play with and train. He didn’t show much interest in tugging the first few days I had him, but he’s starting to get into it now. I like to get rough with my dogs during tugging, but I quickly learned that Rampage isn’t ready for that quite yet! A tiny tap on his side while we were tugging made him give up the game.

I also introduced the clicker and was surprised that he automatically gives a sit. Maybe someone worked with them on that before we brought puppies home? Another thing I noticed him offering was a head bob, which I didn’t reward. I started him hand targeting and he picked that up really quick. The last thing I worked with him on, was walking over a small box (I actually used the levelers for my RV. He walked over it, but I’m not sure he associated the c+t with walking on the box. Well, he’s young yet.