Eva’s 8 1/2 week old puppies are all doing incredibly well with their training. Videos will be posted before they are 10 weeks.
See pictures below. The coloring of both the puppies and the background is a bit off for two reasons. First of all, we’ve had a lot of rain here and they all need bathing. Secondly, it was late in the day and we were running out of light. There are three pictures of each puppy. We tried to capture a mixture of pictures with them looking toward the camera and of them focusing on me off to the side. Scroll below the pictures to see developmental information.
Mr. Orange
Mr. Brown
Mr. Maroon
Mr. Blue
Mr. Yellow
Miss Purple
Developmental Information
By 8 1/2 weeks, those puppies staying with us until 10 weeks have training well underway.
Meal time manners has moved from puppies merely eating in their crates to puppies learning to give eye contact and wait for a release command before eating. At this age, we are working heavily on training them to like and willingly give eye contact. This is a very important foundation for our training. We spend a whole lot of time on the basics so that the more advanced work comes easier, quicker, and more solid.
The first behavior we’ve taught by 8 1/2 weeks is to sit for attention. We start this work by requiring a little more from them every day. At 7 1/2 weeks, we pet only the puppies that are keeping all four feet on the ground. Gradually, we begin to choose to give attention to those puppies who are calmest and eventually to those with bottoms on the ground. We do not teach a sit command at this age, but puppies learn very quickly that we expect a sit for everything. Our philosophy of dog training is to postpone naming behaviors until after they are solid. For the sit, this is usually at about 9 to 9 1/2 weeks.
By 8 1/2 weeks, we’ve been working on the down for almost a week and have also started puppies on leash work.
You can read about how we raise our younger puppies on our Raising Puppies page .
We’ll continue keeping you posted on how Eva’s 8 1/2 week old puppies are growing on a weekly basis. See our Available Puppies page to get to pages of Eva’s 8 1/2 week old puppies at other ages.