By now I expected the average number of eggs per day to have evened out, but in fact, Saturday remains the lazy day for the hens. I’ll keep tracking this going forward. Real curious if this pattern continues.
It bothers me that the graph has Tuesday on the left rather than Sunday or Monday, but I don’t know how to change that.
As far as the pups go, things are going much smoother now.
To prevent Woody from pooping at night in his kennel, we altered mealtimes and amounts so that it is weighted more to morning & lunch, with a light "snack” mid-afternoon which is the last food of the day. No water after 6:30. Since that adjustment, we’ve had no accidents overnight. I do still let them out in the middle of the night (I’m always awake by like 1:30 for a while), and then again when they whine in the morning, usually around 5:15. Then I plop them back in kennels with a chew toy until I’m ready to actually get up for the day (6:15 or so).
And daytime house-training has also come along nicely. Early on, Stony would sometimes wander into an open kennel or playpen to pee, so we have made those unavailable during the day. They haven’t had any accidents, save one pee near the door, for several days! At transition times I often walk outside with them to encourage “business”. And if they are walking to the door, we let them outside. Sometimes we just leave the door ajar. I’ve removed the pee pads as it doesn’t seem like we need them.
The flowerbeds are fenced off, but pups sometimes find a way in. They also find any mud and dig there. Stuff puppies must do. They are learning the stuff we don’t like (we say “NO”) but of course when we are not watching them, they do it anyway. Or even when we are watching actually.
Stony is pretty consumed with the prospect of food. He regularly patrols the kitchen. He is quick to find any particle that falls (a couple of rice krispies fell and he was all over it). I realize that sounds like most dogs but he was kitchen-savvy like right away whereas Woody doesn’t have that drive. Woody in general is kind of the sidekick to Stony, who is the brains of the operation.
We had several trial and errors with how to feed them. They were used to sharing a bowl, but it was clearly a race. So then we started to separate them at mealtimes with one of them in the laundry room. But Stony, in particular, seemed to be traumatized by this whole thing. I even once put one pup in the playpen and the other outside it, but that was probably the worst idea. Anyway, what works like a charm is to feed them in the same room, but where they can’t see each other. We have a U-shaped kitchen island so they eat at either end simultaneously and it’s been a breeze since then.
Rob has done a little bit of training with them to learn “Look at me” and “Leave it” which were commands that the dog training book suggest we start with. Baby steps so far. We are quite a while from leash training and so that also is preventing us from introducing pups to backyard as we want them on leashes when we get them near the chickens at first to make sure no one gets attacked.
Fun fact: Rob observed that Stony has white whiskers on one side and black whiskers on the other side!
Question: why do puppies go crazy at corners? They scratch and scratch as if to tear open the corner. So weird.
Rob stained part of the deck recently even though it was quite hot outside which was great. Too bad we still have the entire deck around the pool as well as the railing still to go! We will attack in chunks. The high temperature on Tuesday this week is expected to be 104. So there’s that.
We haven’t attended any protests but are watching intently. We did donate to The Bail Project as a way to do our part.
Below are two videos and then a slideshow of 4 pics.
There are basically deer in our yard ALL DAY and these days it might be a couple of adults and 3 or 4 babies. I noticed that the dog next door completely ignores the deer in his own yard even when no fence separates them. It’s like deer paradise in this neighborhood.
