Four Months and Counting!

by Brother Luke

            My two pups, Fintas and Iris, are heading towards their 5th month. It has been quite a ride. They are cute. They are lively. They are underfoot. They are all puppy! Kahn, now nine and a half years old, will play with them outside, but he wants nothing to do with them in my room! Although he is a bit more patient now that they are growing up, he lets them know the limits. The fact that Fintas is his son has no bearing on how they interact.

            The two pups are three weeks apart in age, born June 7th and 29th, Fintas being the elder of the two, but they play as equals. Fintas outweighs Iris, but she is not intimidated by him at all. They are both cautious around Kahn in my room, but they constantly test the limits. Iris might go up to Kahn and begin to paw at his paws, wagging her tail all the time. She inches closer and begins to lick his lips, and he will raise his lips and bare his teeth. If that doesn’t get through to her, and it seldom does, then he will growl. If that also doesn’t work he will do a sudden bark. That will usually get her to back off. But if not, then he will follow the bark by doing the full-mouth soft bite over her head. That always does the trick. Well, for a few minutes; but she may come back again.  Fintas plays the same game with Kahn, and it leads to the same result. If deterred, the pups return to playing with each other, oblivious of Kahn’s presence. In their tumbling around, they might roll right over on Kahn, but only because he is in the way. Usually, in that case, he gets up and finds a new resting spot in my room. Soon they will once again try to entice him into the game, but he’s not buying!  If the play never settles down, which is usually the case, then one pup goes into the crate. If the other pup still does not settle down, then that pup gets tethered to my bed, and we finally have a semblance of peace. Recently, Iris has been the one sent into the crate, and Fintas has remained loose in my room. Even if I have to tether him to my bed, I now undo the tether when I go to bed, and he has made it through the night without incident, either with Kahn or relieving himself on my floor. This is progress!  I will try this with Iris soon and see if we can finally get them to be quiet at night. The proof will be when the brothers nearby can also sleep through the night without hearing from my pups!

            We have a lot of stairs between the levels of our residence, and the bedroom area is upstairs.  At first, I took the trio around to the back of the residence to enter without going up the stairs. In the morning we would race down the hallway to the door that leads directly out onto the lawn, again avoiding the stairs. Now it is getting darker earlier and is still dark when we rise, so I have started taking them up the stairs at night, but we still go out the door to the lawn in the morning, me with flashlight in hand! Once outside, Kahn is on his own avoiding the little pests!  He’s been through this many times, and he knows the routine. Of course, they all roll around in the grass getting thoroughly wet before we get back into the dog run area, where they stay for a few minutes while I fix their morning meal. Once inside they eat in their crates, and I head off to do other morning chores before matins.

            One afternoon, recently, I was helping Br Marc clean our pool. I had brought the two pups out, and they were busy with their usual play on the lawn outside the fence that surrounds the pool. So, I left them to their antics and went back to the cleaning. Soon after that I heard a splash and saw Fintas swimming toward the deep end of the pool! He made it down there but could not figure out how to get out. Br Marc managed to get hold of him at the edge of the pool and pull him out. But by that time Iris had decided she wasn’t going to be left out of the fun, and she also jumped into the pool and swam around. She stayed in the shallow end but also could not get out, so we pulled her out too. So, my two little water moccasins let me know that swimming isn’t just reserved for the water bucket in their exercise pen! They want the real thing!

            When the occasion presents itself, I take one of them with me on errands, usually to the bank. The first time I took Iris, she was small enough to go right up on the counter. The tellers always love to see them. We are fortunate that the bank is dog-friendly. Iris decided she wanted to become the teller and take over the job, so she went back down to the floor.

            We also take our daily walks down the road. The distance at first was based on the age of the pups. Now it is determined more on the time available. They roll around on the grass, on the road, in the woods, and they are thoroughly drenched and dirty by the time they are in their exercise pens. They now play together out there in the morning. At mid-day mealtime, they have to be separated, since Fintas, taking after his dad, eats his food in seconds, whereas Iris eats a little and plays and may not finish until much later in the afternoon. So, she is not a food hound! But she gets her share. And of course, dog biscuits disappear in a flash with both of them. I suspect others have experienced this phenomenon too.

            Yes, my three musketeers are an adventure. Fintas and Iris will soon be so big it will be hard to remember what they were like as puppies. There are the videos and the photos, but the daily experience will be completely different. That’s why I love raising puppies. I get a chance to see them develop through all the stages of their early lives. They keep me on my toes, which is a good thing!

To view videos of Kahn, Fintas, and Iris playing visit our Facebook page.
 https://www.facebook.com/NewSketeSpirituality/