Welcome to the last of my weekly puppy diaries series. Herbie joined our family at 8 weeks old and I can’t quite believe that he’s already 16 weeks old. The time has flown by and he is so well settled in now, with lots of the behaviours I’d hoped to see already trained in. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s lots still to learn and we have that tricky adolescence period coming up, but I think going forward I will just pop a Herbie update up here and there. In the meantime, you can continue to follow his progress on my Instagram Stories.
You can check out last week’s update here, or pop to here for all puppy posts.
Herbie the Miniature Dachshund at 16 Weeks Old
Training and Behaviours
This week, with the children at home, I have really noticed how much Herbie has learned since he came home with us. He understands our routines and quirks of the household and he understands his role within all of it. When it’s just us around, he’s fairly chilled, though when there are visitors he gets quite excited. He still eats far more of my garden than I’d like, but I continue to hold out hope that this is a puppy thing that he’ll grow out of it.
The early morning wake ups continue, I do feel that I have seen 4am far more times than I’d like to! But, he does settle back down afterwards and even slept until 8am one morning after he’d breakfasted just before 5am. I suspect that the kids are waking him up more often than not and he may well lie in until 10am if given the chance!
We have started walking Herbie on a collar this week, rather than a harness, and he seems to prefer it. I suspect he has more freedom of movement and I feel like he pulls a bit less on it. We are continuing to work on walking on a loose lead.
Herbie’s lost two teeth now and is clearly still suffering with his teething. But he is being so good and gnawing on his toys and frozen carrots, rather than anything that he shouldn’t have, including us.
Out and About
Herbie has visited the Husband’s work this week as some of his colleagues had been asking to meet him. The kids went with him and they tell me that he was a very popular visitor. Herbie, of course, loved it, he does like meeting people.
Over the weekend we went over to Charlecote Park where Herbie had a good run about and explore. Charlecote Park is home to a herd of deer and it turns out that Herbie really likes the taste of deer poo – who knew?! Yuck.
We popped to the town centre again with him, he’s pretty used to it there now. He always attracts attention and is very happy to do so.
Herbie has been to my mum’s house again, for a longer visit without any of us this time, and he was absolutely fine. Utterly exhausted when he came home, he does love to run around in Nanny’s garden!
Fun and Favourites
The big news this week is that Herbie has a new cousin! Yes, my sister-in-law and family brought home a gorgeous 9 week old Miniature Schnauzer on Monday so Herbie has a playmate. They will be meeting this weekend for the first time, but we’ve already visited so Herbie had a good sniff of our clothes when we returned so I feel they have been introduced!
Herbie has had a new toy, as he’s been doing a great job of destroying so many of his other toys. It’s a Kong elephant, and so far it has survived…so far…
The kids bought a bubble machine over the weekend and Herbie loves chasing the bubbles around the garden.
Herbie likes to lurk the stairgate when people are going up or down on the off chance that he can make a break for it and go up and run around the children’s rooms. He is very nippy up those stairs and then quite challenging to grab hold of, being so fast and low to the ground. Of course, it’s all a great game to Herbie!
You can pop over to my Amazon Best Buys for Puppies store for recommendations of products that have worked for us or that Herbie has loved.
What do you think of Herbie’s week?
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