Good Puppy.

Argus makes a great pillow for Mariah.

As I lay awake in bed, waiting for Mariah to start screaming, I started to worry about her.  Why wasn't she screeching like she had the previous three mornings?  Was she awake?  Was she dead?  I finally went down to check on her and found her sound asleep, so I woke her up and took her outside.  Crate was dry, everything was just fine.

Mariah is now an only puppy, as Ike went home with Marcia yesterday afternoon.  Marcia recently lost her older Dal and was very ready for a new puppy.  She wanted another female and was waiting for a pup from Tess's litter, or she would have taken Mariah had I decided to place her.  Because Tess had no girls, when Ike became available Marcia decided to go with a boy this time.  Ike is a doll and we hope he fits in well and brings her much joy.  Ike was sold with "strings" meaning that we have the right to show him if he turns out well.

Mariah moved from a plastic crate to one of the regular large wire crates in the kitchen.  I put a blanket in the back and newspapers in the front since she had done a bit of crate peeing.  Crate peeing is a bad habit for a pup to get into and is usually caused by confining a pup to a crate for too long.  Although they naturally try to keep their "beds" clean, there is a obviously a limit to how long a young pup can wait.  I suggested to Marcia that she use a small pen with newspapers and leave Ike's crate door open when she is away from home.  I'll do the same with Mariah when we go over to mom's for Thanksgiving today.  It's a hard habit to break if you let it go, so we will deal with this immediately and not leave Mariah in a situation where she is tempted to pee in her crate.  With a 4 day weekend to work on serious house training, we can probably get it resolved. 

Mariah also had a diet change yesterday when she switched to raw.  I sent the rest of the kibble home with Marcia & Ike, as I prefer to switch a dog over to raw "cold turkey" and cold turkey was what she's eaten for the last two meals - although chicken works just fine too.  For dinner Mariah had the thick meaty end of a small turkey neck.  I waited while Mariah ate, in case she was tempted to gulp it down whole, but she did a great job of chewing her chunk of turkey up completely before swallowing it.  This morning she got another turkey neck chunk, but got additional ground turkey and a raw egg yolk.  We'll use turkey as our basic food and gradually add other items such as the ground veggie mix (in very small amounts at first), salmon oil, a vitamin mixture, and other kinds of meat.  We won't use any grains, as she has been eating kibble up until now and has had more than enough grain.  Dogs have no nutritional requirement for grain, and they don't digest it as well as they do meat.  One of the nice things about feeding raw is the small, dry, nearly odor free stools.  If a young pup has an accident, it's far less offensive!