We have 2 8 yr old boys, one who is with us regularly and the other visits over the summer.  We’ll need to discuss with them proper puppy etiquette like:

Keep your toys put away and the door to your room closed .  Puppies have sharp teeth so don’t interrupt    feeding time. Puppies are fragile, be careful not to drop or play rough with them.

Another family member impacted by the new puppy will be Lilli.  She has been the center of all our attention and now will need to adjust to a new sibling.  I’m curious to see how Lilli communicates her place in the pack with Leilani. We’ll have Leilani meet Lilli outside the house, let Lilli sniff and say hi, then walk in together.  I suspect Lilli will pretty much ignore Leilani until she realizes she is staying.

Feedings will be 15 mins in duration, about 4 times a day.  We’ll have to adjust to feeding 2 dogs now.  Lilli has a fussy system and doesn’t keep a lot of her food down. We’ll socialize leilani right away having her attend agility and obedience classes with people and dogs even if just as a spectator for the first few weeks.  Socializing is really important especially in high energy working breeds like aussies.

We’ll keep leilani in a soft crate to initiate crate training with a lot of praise, also helps with potty training. A new puppy means messes and probably a few whiny nights, we’ll see how it goes with leilani.  One thing about training that sticks with me is waiting out the negative behaviour to reward the good behaviour.  I have seen this be very effective with many different breeds of dogs.  i am looking forward to rewarding leilani.

And as often happens to Andrea, my amazing wife, she did all the work training Lilli and I got to reap all the rewards of having an amazing frisbee dog.   It was probably 6 months when i first started training with Lilli, after Andrea had already covered all the basics and weaned me into training. Andrea is fearless, I love that about her!  She dove into getting me a dog, training a puppy, taking on agility and freestyle, all new for her.

So Saturday we expect to get Leilani, and I feelmore excited and less scared.  This is my red merle Aussie puppy.  I have all the same fears, and this time fear doesn’t get to make my choices for me.  I choose to love, train and enjoy Leilani, for all that she is, all that she isn’t and all that my training is or isn’t. 

I am confident she will be wonderful agility and disc dog and even more I am confident she will get my love and attention.  She will likely demand a lot of it too. And I should acknowledge that Andrea will be supporting me and I her as we continue to train Lilli and Leilani.