Saturday, May 31, 2008

It's A Boy! We Gotta Get Our Heads Into Puppies.

Kobi is our new Golden Retriever, he is 16 weeks old and has a very mellow personality, so far. We have been looking for another dog for about three months and Kobi comes to us via the breeder located at Loon Lake. As we explained previously, we visited the Loon Lake area about three weeks ago. There was a litter of pups that we looked at and from that litter, we had two picked out. Kobi was not one of them. In fact we did not even look at him when we were up there. The breeder raises and trains assist dogs and Kobi was set aside to become an assist dog. I am not real clear why the breeder decided not to train him, but when Linda talked to her last week, she said she had another pup available and that she would be in our area with the two pups. Our original choice had been sold so she brought us Kobi and the pup I had chose from the litter when we were up there. Now Kobi was 16 weeks old and the other one was 9 weeks old and we were able to make a comparison and hear what the breeder had observed about each dogs personality. From that we chose Kobi.

From what the breeder had observed, she said Kobi was not the alfa male between the two dogs. The pup was much more aggressive in its play and Kobi usually let the pup have its way. Now she also said the Kobi was not a sissy, but just had a bit mellower personality. We watched the two for quite some time and noticed that Kobi was a very smart and playful pup, but did not roam as much as the other. In fact Kobi would check back all the time. We like that trait.

Kobi had been home now for about 24 hours. Here is what has occurred. When we crated him up last night for bed, he yipped and barked for 10 minutes and the quieted down for the rest of the night. We fenced him into the kitchen when we went to the store today and he got into the rest of the house. Guess we need to figure out a better method for corralling him when we leave. When Kobi gets tired he will go into the crate and sleep. Did you know puppies sleep about 18 hours a day? We are so new at this puppy thing that we have book marked a web site that tells us about taking care of puppies. We worried about him sleeping all the time and the fact that he hadn't pooped since we got him. That worry is over. This afternoon he pooped, and he pooped big time! He must have been holding it for about 24 hours. Oh the worries of the new parents. I have been a bit surprised how much I had forgotten about being a parent to a puppie. My mind is still thinking big dog and this is certainly not a big dog!

2 comments:

The Edwards Family said...

Congrats! I can't wait to meet him! Maybe he and Wheeler can have a play date...

Anonymous said...

We can't wait to meet Kobi either.

We went out looking at greyhounds this weekend and may travel to Portland to an adoption event there this weekend. Kobi may have an older cousin pretty soon if the right dog wags its tail.

TheBeanTeam