Baby Halos’ Puppy Party

Our hostess, Katherine, with Bosley.

We have the absolute BEST friends!  For their 7 week birthday, we needed to do a little evaluation which Puppy Culture calls, the Puppy Party.  We were so lucky to have our friends Katherine & Dale host the puppy party and our friend Ginger supplied the puppy equipment.  Around this age, the puppies also need to start going on car rides so they aren’t terrible car passengers in the future.  Katherine hosting offered us the opportunity to get their first car ride in along with the party!

Headed out for their first car ride.  We love our Variocage crate!

At the party, the puppies are exposed to 3 new (to them) pieces of equipment.  You need a lot of experienced dog friends around to evaluate, keep puppies safe, and ensure no puppy shows signs of fear since this is very close to a “fear period.”  The equipment we used was a baby dog walk, a wobble board, and a chute.  The dog walk had two different heights so that if any of the puppies weren’t confident in Round 1, they could repeat at that height instead of moving up to the taller legs.

Farrah and Kate taking on the dog walk.

The wobble board had two different objectives.  In Round 1, we wanted the puppies to at least get on it, and then in Round 2 to get all four feet on and balance a bit.

Bosley and Kate loved the wobble board!  Farrah wasn’t convinced it was as cool as they thought it was…

Round 1 of the chute would hold it open, and then Round 2 we would see if the puppies would zoom through a closed chute.  All 3 did it and it was the favorite!  If any of them broke free from their handlers, they ran straight over to the chute!

Farrah going through the open chute and then showing just how tough she is after the closed one!

All the escapees heading for the chute!!

The puppies rocked Round 1.  They all had confident engagement in Round one, except for Farrah, who wasn’t too excited about getting all 4 feet on the wobble board.  But, she engaged with humans and did attempt to engage a bit.  She made up for it on the chute as she did the full chute in Round 1!  Kate was thoughtful but very confident once she figured out the task and loved engaging with people.  Bosley was very motivated and absolutely loved the wobble board.  After Round 1, we popped the puppies in a crate and they napped while we had appetizers and all got to know each other better.  We had all kinds of friends — Dick & Mary who are Gordon Setter show/hunt friends; Judy, Heather, and Haley — Vizsla friends; Amy & Debbie – agility friends; Byron, Catherine, and Bo who are potential homes, and then Ginger, Katherine, and Dale!  It was quite a crew!

Puppies sacked out before the humans are even finished going through the food line!

After the puppies had a nice 30 minute nap and we had our fill of garlic olives and bruschetta, we headed out for Round 2.  Again, everyone had confident engagement except for Farrah and that wobble board.  In hindsight, Farrah did the wobble board last both times, really wish we would have started her on it, instead of making her do it after her favorite chute exercise!  She also loves tugging, so next time we do a puppy party, we will be sure to have tugs for pups that aren’t as food motivated to have a better form of motivation.  This time she went through the chute so hard she tore the cover off and went rolling, got up and came back for more.  Kate was calm and confident on all the equipment and Bosley figured out that he could slide down the dog walk.  He thought that was super fun!

After gathering puppies, we headed inside to enjoy the lunch Katherine made.  She made a super yummy chicken pasta with a huge salad and rolls.  It was delicious! This was also great for the puppies as they learned to sleep during a big party!  They were total champs today and we couldn’t be more proud of them.  Everyone commented about what a lovely litter they are; very bold puppies that love people 🙂

Bo, one of our potential homes, with Bosley.