Bright Green Tunnel O' Fun
I think it’s important that puppies get exposed to lots of stuff – as much stuff as possible, in fact. I pop them in the playpen before I vaccuum. I keep them out when I have guests, so that they meet people. I give them crate time. I put little collars on them, and let them drag around a leash. I do as much I can to acclimate them to ‘real world’ situations, other than start their table training (because I’m a slacker, and I suck at training Frenchies to stand for the table).
For this litter, I really lucked out with an item I picked up from the discount section of Pet Edge. It’s a cat tunnel – a simple tube of velour, meant for cats to climb in and out of of. It has a hole in the middle, and the ends of the tube are filled with stiff, crinkly fabric that makes interesting noises.
I popped the tunnel down on the floor, and unleashed the puppies.
Initial response? Trepidation.
Followed by curiosity.
On the heels of which comes the discovery that – hey! It makes noises!
And you can climb on it!
Followed by the discovery that, for the brave, you can climb in it.
Finally, the puppies discovered that, with a team effort, you can roll it across the floor, lumberjack and log style. This proved very popular, especially when it was rolled with Thor inside.
The whole photo set is over on Flickr. Oh, and a bonus set – sleepy puppies.
Oh, and if you check on Blip? There just might a new movie.
Poor Pixie, Color Controversy & Economics 101
Poor Pixie. As I mentioned yesterday, Princess P doesn’t like her delicate toesies touching the bare floor. Put her on a bare floor and she flattens down, drops her ears and makes herself as teeny tiny as possible. We now put down a towel for her to start out on, and from there she seems to be willing to make forays out into bare floor land. It’s all about knowing she has a safe, no slip base to return to if she feels nervous. When we can’t take the unbearable sadness that is Pixie on the floor, one of us ends up picking her up and putting her on the couch for snuggle time. And so a Princess is born and raised…
Ms. Heart and Rumble, on the other hand, have taken to floor time like champs. It gives them a chance to bark-bark-bark in Tessa’s face, steal Dexter’s soccer ball, and run behind the couch. In other words, typical hellion puppy behaviour.
A full photo set is at the end of the post, or over on Flickr.
Color Controversy, Redux
A storm is brewing in French Bulldog show ring circles south of the border, and it’s all to do with ‘bad’ colors. A certain pioneering Blue French Bulldog breeder found herself summarily dumped from the FBDCA, and it’s served to reignite the controversy over Blue.
Is Blue mouse? Is mouse even a color? What color of mouse are we talking about here, exactly, and what kind? Field mouse? House mouse? Coffee mouse? It’s all terribly exciting, but I can’t help thinking it’s all a bit wrong headed, and that the timing for this is bad, bad, bad.
The UK pure bred dog fancy is in the middle of a world altering crisis. Standards are being forcibly re written, on brachycephalics in particular, and with no apparent logic or reason other than to pander to the general public. Little attention has been paid to real, workable schemes to correct health issues. If and when the BBC special that set off all of this brouhaha makes it onto American television, we have to wonder – will the same thing occur here? Will there be the same outcry? Will we all face a witch hunt in which we’re vilified as being the bastard children of Joseph Mengele (and that’s no exageration – there was a lot of references to pure bred dog breeds being an ‘experiment in eugenics’, with a clear inference that dog breeding=nazi experimentation)?
With all of this hanging over our heads, I can’t help thinking that we need to get our ducks in a row when it comes to cleaning up real, concrete, life threatening conditions — in other words, is this really the time to make the isssue of color one into some kind of sturm und drang, ‘oh, we’re all doomed’ soap opera? I kind of feel that it’s this kind of nit picking, fiddling while rome burns stuff that makes the general public feel we’re more concerned with the cosmetics than we are with the concrete.
If someone can show me a single, solitary, scientific study showing a link between ‘bad’ colors and bad genetics, I’ll be the first to jump into the fray. Until then, this is all just smoke and mirrors, and comes at a very bad time indeed.
Economic Crisis Solved!
And now, Natalie Portman and Rashid Jones present their solution to the Global Economic crisis, after which we do our own bit for world peace and financial stability.
Our own contribution:
Floor Time
The pups are now old enough to spend some time out on the floor, interacting with the ‘big dogs’ and getting into trouble. Pixie is un thrilled about the concept of a bare floor — we discovered that we have to put a towel down for her, or she’ll just sit in one spot, frozen. Even with the towel, she’ll only venture one foot off the edge – anything else is uncharted territory for her.
Here’s some footage of the kids spending some quality time on the floor. Look for the footage of Pixie pre and post towel placement.