Biscochito at 2 months

Finally, here are the promised puppy pictures!

Some of you have noticed that I haven’t posted any blog posts for awhile. My intention, as soon as I finished posting the wonderful pictures Laura sent from Spain, was to post puppy pictures. I have lots of adorable, happy, funny puppy pictures and videos for your entertainment! All I needed to do was to get them uploaded.

Then life happened. It’s been an extremely challenging last few weeks, and I’ll tell you about that soon. But meanwhile, let’s reel the story back to early September, before life got a bit more difficult.

We have a pool in Tucson, and we decided to introduce Biska to the water right away. Part of her puppy training is to make sure she knows how to swim and get herself out of the water on her own.

Turns out she doesn’t like water! Well, baby steps. We got her a little pool too.

Trying again:

Ok, enough getting used to the water. He she is, 3 weeks later. Time to go swimming! In this video I’m teaching Biska to head toward the steps to get out.

Here’s some cute pictures:

Playing in the backyard:

Here she is, learning to ring bells at the door to be let outside to go potty. Typically (when not videoing), I would come running and open the door each time she played with the bells. Biska quickly learned that ringing the bells would make me come running. Oh, the power of the bells!

Every time she rang the bells, I’d come and take her outside. Then if she pottied, she’d get a treat. She had the system figured out in no time! And boy did she milk that for all it was worth. When she first figured it out, it seemed like I was letting her out to potty every 5 minutes!

For several exhausting days Biska rang those bells every time I left the room. She was going through a brief period of separation anxiety. Luckily I was able to work with her with that, and she’s ok being left alone now. Separation anxiety can be quite serious if it persists in older dogs, but for her it was a brief stage that we were able to get past.

She will still whine a bit when I leave her, but she won’t panic.

Biska’s a smart dog and it’s a challenge to keep her from getting bored. I bought some fun puppy puzzles. She has to move levers or flip things open to get to the food hidden inside.

Like most puppies, she is full of energy. When I first got her she seemed unusually calm, but I think she was just very young. The rescue group put Biska’s birthdate as July 12, but I think they got her mixed up with her mom’s sister’s litter. They rescued two pregnant poodles who had their pups a week apart. I know Biska is from the second litter, and I’m pretty sure she was actually born July 19. So she was fairly young when I first got her.

I don’t think I ever posted her advertisement picture. Here it is – now you can see why I couldn’t resist! I’m not sure when this picture was taken – I’m guessing approximate age of 6 weeks.

Here she is on September 25 acting like you would expect from a puppy 😉

Occasionally she comes to a screeching halt – naptime!

Sitting for pictures! Biska’s doing a great job at learning “sit”, although she still thinks the best way to get someone’s attention is to jump on them first and then sit. Before I can even open my mouth to say “down”, she’s already sitting. How do I train her out of that?

During September Biska was still officially being “fostered” by us, because they wouldn’t let us adopt her until she was old enough to be spayed. It’s best to spay a dog at several months old, but the rescue places push it as early as possible in order to get the pups spayed before releasing them for adoption. I would have been willing to foster her longer in order to delay the spay until she was a bit bigger, but the rescue group was not flexible. Her spay appointment was scheduled for October 4, supposedly at age 12 weeks, but likely only 11 weeks.

Although I was reluctant to have her spayed so young, we’ve been really looking forward to getting the adoption process over with!

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