If your device does not support Pictobrowser, you may see the pictures at Flickr: "Sophie week 3" in the "Sophie" collection.

Lorna, Sophie’s Sunshine Foster Mom, was wonderful in sharing her insights and information about Sophie’s personality and quirks.  Because of this communication, we weren’t blindsided by any serious issues.  Having had puppies in the past, as well as a “spirited” golden, we did feel that we had some personal insight into some of the challenges that might arise… 

Also having adopted several rescues in the past, we knew that there’s a wild card element of “a history”—sometimes you just don’t know how a dog will act in your environment until they get there—there might be a trigger in one home that was not present in a foster’s home. Our experience is that these dogs often require more time, training and understanding than other dogs...  

When we found out that Sophie was to be placed into our home, we starting preparing for a baby, knowing full well, that a new puppy does indeed require a similar amount of commitment, both in time and energy as a new child…  

Weeks 1 & 2 

Adjusting to each other & getting to know each other.

Sophie likes to chew and nip, like any puppy.  We’ll work through that…

She needs very frequent walks—I took her out hourly during the day and she cried to go out every 2 hours at night.  If I didn’t get to her in time, she would soil her bedding. 

We tried changing her crate to a big one, partitioning it so that she has a “room” for her bed and a “room” for some pee pads. (I know, unconventional...)  She would still need to go frequently, but if we didn’t get to her in time, she’d use the pee pads... but then shred them…  (hmmm)

She eats her poop & drinks her pee.  Gross habit but our vet assures us that it won't hurt her. He also feels that she’s young enough where we have a shot at working her through it… (This is our first experience with this issue, but I’m told that once the habit is ingrained, that it’s very difficult to break…)  We started her on Forbid, (provided by our vet), and it didn’t seem to work at first, but towards the end of the week, she started not being so adamant about gulping down her droppings.  We still had to be meticulous about immediately pulling her away from her droppings and picking it up as soon as possible.

A few accidents in the house during the day, but retrospectively, it was because we missed her cues—when she had to go, she had to go right then!  The housetraining issue seemed easier than it was with our other puppies, (probably because I’m home all day with her and she follows me everywhere—I didn’t have that luxury 20 years ago when we were training our first two pups…)  but I’m not sure how to manage the night-time peeing. Our vet insists that she should be old enough to hold her bladder through the night...

Lorna warned us that Sophie would find, raid and then remember where every garbage can was in our house!  Indeed, there was no exaggeration here—by the end of the third day, we’d decided that it was just easier to remove all the “unnecessary” garbage cans.  Our first golden was like that too, so it was like going back to old times… 

Sophie is very active and loving.  A true cuddle bug, in the evenings especially, when she just melts in our lap…  She loves to play, run and eat—very goldenesque!  She’s sassy, sweet and smart, makes us laugh with her little fuzz-butt swagger and joyful attitude.  We’re just tickled to have her.

Socks!  There’s a picture with a little note about the socks in the 15 Week slide set…  That note & picture, with her expression, sums up her little sock fetish quite well…

Oh, and food!  There’s another picture in the 15 Week slide set highlighting some issues with food.   Having two dogs now and certainly not wanting to set either of them up for fighting over food, this issue became my first priority. 

Lorna, (I think) taught Sophie to sit, because Sophie seemed to have a good grasp of that command shortly after she settled… Working off of that skill, we added doggie eating etiquette and manners while I was preparing her food.  She reminded me of Marley in the recent movie/book “Marley and Me,” with diving towards the bowl, knocking food all over the floor and basically attacking anything edible with reckless abandon--something that we needed to fix. She was a star pupil and caught on by the end of the second week what was expected of her.  In fact, by the end of the third week, she had better feeding time manners than Josie!

Week 3

At this week’s vet appointment, my main concern was the night-time peeing… One of the things we tried was to make a bed for Sophie upstairs next to our bed, thinking that perhaps the peeing was a separation issue.  Instead of sleeping contentedly, she woke me up about every 1½ hours crying to go out.  And indeed, she did relieve herself each of those times…  (Our vet was very impressed that at her age, Sophie was able to wake us and ask to go out…)

Our vet took a urine sample and sure enough, she had a bladder infection!  After two days on the antibiotics she was sleeping through the night, (in her crate), and waking up in the morning with dry bedding.  I even noticed that she seemed calmer during the day—(though still very rambunctious in that clumsy, charming puppy way), but we began to see a subtle change in her personality too—more composed and relaxed—(when she wasn’t in “pay attention to me now mode!”) This could be because she'd had some time to adjust, but I'm sure that dealing with that UTI is part of it...

I also asked for another round of Forbid, as the poop eating was still a problem.  Since she’d gained some weight (she’s growing like a weed!) we were able to increase her dose a bit.  Honestly, it didn’t help that much either…  I woke up with (what I thought was a brilliant idea…), bought a bulk bottle of ground red pepper and heavily sprinkled her droppings with it as soon as she relieved herself, let her take a few bites, but watching her reaction.  It did cause her to take pause… enough for me to distract her by calling her and offering her a treat…. She bounded towards me, leaving the rest of the droppings uneaten and I didn’t even have to pull her away from them!  I snuck out later and picked up, but am anxious to see if this strategy can interrupt her impulse to eat her stools enough to break her habit…

This week she outgrew her puppy collar!