Speckles: 3 Months Later

Many that followed our doggie adventures have asked how our puppy has been. Speckles is now a little more than five months old and is doing wonderfully! She’s such a good puppy and feels like a full-fledged member of the family. My daughter even includes Speckles in all her drawings which used to only feature the three of us (her, my husband, and me). It’s a lot of work but we have truly become some of those ‘dog people’.

The potty training has been going very well, as are other aspects of training. She knows several commands such as ‘sit’, ‘down’, ‘come’, ‘out’, and ‘off’ but the hard part is getting her to listen to them when there are distractions during walks or in the dog park. Since she loves people so much, she would go wild when on leash. We tried various collars and harnesses but we finally found one that helped, thanks to a neighbor. Speckles is still a lovey girl but she’s doing better at least when we take her on a walk.

Early on she learned to sleep through the night. That in itself is so wonderful! Crate training really works well for us and even during the day she’ll go in her crate as a comfortable place to rest. She used to shred her toys in a heartbeat but was not destructive to other things in the house except for a couple teeth marks on a chair or table leg here or there. At about four months she started losing her razor-sharp baby teeth. I had no idea they did this. Most of them were lost and replaced without us noticing but we were  able to save about four of them.

With her mix were were not sure what to expect but she has come to have the personality of a lab, the coat of a shepherd, and shorter legs from the cattle dog in her. When we first got Speckles, she was only 9 lbs. Since then she has gained some 30 lbs. and is still as sweet as ever. She does not bite, rarely barks, and has so much personality.