Introducing Leo!
His fancy show dog name is Trillium’s Ice on Fire. But his real name is Leopold Stotch “Leo” which if you know our history and look that up it makes a bit of sense that I sort of named him Butters again 🙂.
First of all let’s talk about the selection process.
We started with temperament testing each of the puppies to get a sense of their personalities, how they handle novel situations and how they compare to each other on certain things like bringing toys back vs keeping them vs not having an interest in them.
Then a conformation grading was done, basically they “stack” the puppies like you see show dogs standing, and they looked at how the puppies bodies are put together.
Because Leo will lead a very active life and will experience a lot of new things I was looking for a confident, outgoing, stable puppy, a good problem solver with a sound well put together body.
As for pack dymanics Leo was the typical middle of the pack puppy, happy in the middle of things, not too pushy, not too soft. The thing I was drawn to the most with Leo was how he played. He had a certain level of focus with it that was different from the others. He focused completely on the game and tuned out everything else around him. His body also had the best structure.
Personality wise I really loved another one of the puppies more, but Leo is the puppy that ticks all the boxes for what we need. This is one of the wonderful things about working with a great breeder is how they match puppies to their best homes taking everything into consideration and not just those first moments of liking something.
Our first week home.
We had a 5 hour drive to get home, Leo was pretty upset for about 5-10 minutes being in the car and leaving his litter. But then he settled in and slept the rest of the way home. Again at bedtime he cried for another 5-10 minutes and then settled in and slept most of the night. I’ve been super pleased with how well he sleeps. He’s good about taking his naps all day long and great about settling in at night.
The first order of business is getting on potty training, he’s been a super star, we have (knock on wood) had no accidents in the house so far. He’s even starting to stand at the door sometimes when he needs to go out. Though sometimes he just wants to go out to grab pieces of bark to chew on 😂.
He has lovely focus and when we play training games for his kibbles he is all in. Like typical Goldens he likes his food so his motivation is easy. He is a great player, though like many puppies he also gets pretty chompy and wants to grab my hands or clothes more than the toy. We keep working on redirection. It is easy to tell by his energy level if he is ramping up and about to crash.
I’ve used his lunch meal to work on conditioning his name. I say “Leo” randomly during the day and give him bites when he responds. I also have been conditioning him to a clicker and taught him his first trick - wave & shake hands.
He and Emily are good friends, though she is not really playful since she is 11 so mostly he snuggles up to her when he wants a cozy nap spot. He and our male border collie Nick we are taking a longer slow introduction approach because he has shown a lot of discomfort and uncertainty around the puppy. This is not unusual for adult dogs, they don’t all love little puppies.
We went to the vet for his first check up. He was given a clean bill of health and he was a very good boy. He didn’t get any vaccines this appointment as I wanted him to have a happy easy positive visit to meet the staff and Vet.
Besides working on his name recognition and his tricks we also worked on introducing the leash. Working inside, using treats and making it fun to have a leash put on.
Most of the week has been spent playing, and directing his mouth off of things and onto toys instead.