4 Months

I need to take some updated pictures of Intuition. Inside shots just lack the luster. But, here are some from last week on his walk.

Inty’s ears are cropped. This is them out of their posts. That they are standing this well this early is a good sign that we won’t have much in the way of standing problems.

These are his ears posted. According to people who are against cropping this is cruelty. Often, I will hear people say how they love the floppy ears. Well, I don’t. Uncropped Doberman look like hounds and I love hounds. I don’t like Doberman that look like them I am not ashamed of the fact that I like the cropped look.

Ear posting is a fifteen minute process about twice a week. It is a two minute process for him. I use backer rod insulation foam. It is smooth and slender. I wrap the correct length of foam in duct tape to strengthen it. I then use breathable athletic tape to make it sticky and not irritate the ear. I slip it into his ear (the dogs ear channel is L shaped. I’m not damaging anything). I put tape at the base and at the tip. He has full movement of his ears and he can hear fine. You need him to be able to move his ears around to develop the muscles.

The cropping procedure is done by a vet when he was 8 weeks old. They take them under, the vet does the crop, stitches the ear, and the pup wakes up and that is that.

We need to weigh him. I suspect he is nearly 40 pounds. Picking him up became an impossibility pretty quickly so we had to teach him to go down the steps.

Training a dog is often about teaching them to think. What I did was walk him down the steps a few times. I moved his body as it needed to be moved and rewarded him at each step. Upon finding out he was someplace else and not dead he caught on after two trips. Now my biggest problem is getting him to not leak from the 2nd and 3rd to last step as we head downstairs and outside.

Here he is just after coming home. Note how he fits int he dog bed.

Same dog bed the other week. His growth is staggering. He is about 2/3 the size of Autumn now. His head is almost the same size. Autumn is a bit dainty and weighs in at 63 pounds.

Having a puppy is tough on the adults. Autumn and Sage have taken to banding together to hide from him. Inty has not figured out how to jump up yet. He mostly rears back and slams into the edge of the couch and falls back. His size is deceptive for his age. He is not agile at all but I can see it coming. They can as well.

We spend a lot of time keeping him separate from them. He has no off button which is common with puppies. Sage, the Afghan in the back is 11. Autumn is about to turn 7. They are at a mild truce with him as long as he doesn’t jump on them and bite.

What a face, huh? He is a very sweet puppy but he cannot help himself from biting. I spend a lot of time on /r/dogs and /r/puppy101 these days. The reason is because many people get puppies expecting them to be dogs that have not learned sit yet. It is much more than that. Puppies function on a bunch of automatic reactions and slowly their little minds catch up.

Inty bites a lot. He crawls into my lap and licks me and halfway through starts biting my chin and face. I’m not talking about attacking me. His jaws just start closing and nipping starts to happen. He actually can barely control this. It is an automatic function that comes along with teething.

Which he is doing! He is four month old this Friday and he has already lost most of his incisors as of this weekend. He has several big old adult incisors coming through and half of his upper incisors are gone leaving empty swaths of gum. I find it cute.

Teething is why puppies bite. That and we’ve bred it into them with many breeds. But the blind gnashing of the mouth with puppies is because of teething. It is interesting to watch them lose interest in things. Inty was obsessed with shoe laces the first few weeks. He would struggle with your shoes trying to unearth the laces for hours. But, in the last week as he has gotten bigger shoe laces do not give him the satisfaction he needs. He lost interest.

To assist him, I’ve been moving him through a series of more complex toys with different textures and circumferences. The goal is to make him work his mouth. That will help him releave the need and make him easier to live with.

Because lord, he exhausts me and he is a good puppy. He sleeps all night. I wake up around 0730-0830. He sometimes is asleep, sometimes he wakes me. If I get up to pee any time after 0700 the games over. He is awake and he starts crying. His crate is right under my bedroom.

I can’t ignore him. I have to appreciate that he sleeps as well as he does. But, I look forward to having my mornings back. I am not a morning person and by morning I mean before 1000. I worked day shift for 3 years and that meant getting up at 0500. I never adjusted. Ever. It was a nightmare every single work shift.

Puppies are a lot of work. I’ve had dogs for 30 years now. Inty makes my 6th direct personal dog. These are the dogs that I get to be my buddy and go everywhere with me. That doesn’t include dogs for my mother, dogs for my husband, other dogs I have had to train, those that have stayed, those that have gone.

It is an interesting legacy he has. My first dog was a Yorkshire Terrier that hated me. Between my mother, my brother, and I she tolerated me because I made her. She worshiped my mother.

Rakunna (Racoona) my first Great Pyrenees was my first heart dog. She was followed by Nox (German Shepherd) who shared with Daemion (Afghan). Then Nyx (Doberman) came along only to lose her two months before Intuition entered the scene.

In my 36 years I have been fortunate to have some amazing dogs. None of this was accidental. I like pure breed dogs and I pick selectively.

It has not been that long since I lost Nox, Daemion and Nyx. It made for a few hard years. Nox died in 2012. Daemion in 2013. Nyx in 2015. Nyx was the youngest at eight. Daemion and Nox died to age.

It has been 22 years since my mother and I brought Rakunna and Caesar (her brother and my mothers dog) home. What an amazing thing.

I took a lot of time to decide to get Intuition. Did I want to deal with this again? I am due for another wave of pet loss. Quinn kitty is 16 this month. Sabrina and Sebastian, my husbands cats, are 17 this month. Time catches up with us.

And now Intuition turns 4 months old in two days. Sometime in the future there will be great pain. But, until that time comes, I’m going to enjoy him.

He has a history of great dogs he will be following. But, when I saw this on January the 3rd, I knew it was the right choice to make.