Caught Being Good

This is a good puppy. She is laying there calmly and chewing on a dog toy.

You know what she is not doing? Barking. Pestering Brisbane. Chewing on my slippers. I've been telling her what a good puppy she is, without being exciting enough to interrupt her chewing session. She is getting positive attention for doing what should really be a mundane, everyday activity.

Why am I heaping praise on her for doing something unremarkable? It's because I want her to learn that chewing on her toys is more fun than chewing on my slippers. She already knows that grabbing a shoe or a slipper is a way to get my attention immediately. If grabbing an appropriate toy gets her ignored, but grabbing a forbidden object gets her some interaction, she could learn to grab my slippers whenever she wants some attention.

When she does grab a slipper, shoe, or other random object, I don't make a big deal out of it. I simply remove whatever she's got and then present her with a toy. As soon as she touches the toy I tell her what a marvelous dog she is. If we have to go get the toy from another room, I like to bring it back to wherever she had settled down with her forbidden prize. After all, that was obviously a good spot to settle down and have a good gnaw.

Management is also important for teaching a dog what is and is not appropriate to chew. Darla is not a terribly destructive dog, she can play with a shoe for quite a while without damaging it. If she had a history of destroying things, I would be much more careful where I left my slippers. Since she's pretty benign, I can leave my shoes on the floor and we can work on learning the difference between puppy toys and everything else. I'm hoping this will help Darla if she gets adopted by a family with kids, because we all know that kids tend to leave stuff all over the place.

Product Review: Puppy Kong Classic

Puppy Kongs are durable rubber stuffable chew toys made from extra-soft rubber. The Kong Company makes a variety of toys out of their puppy rubber, we have two large and one medium Puppy Kong Classics.

Photo by Erin Koski

Kong makes their durable chew toys from five different color-coded natural rubber materials. Pastel pink and blue puppy rubber is the softest, followed by purple senior rubber. Next is classic red, followed by dark blue, and finally Black Extreme.

Puppy rubber is intended only for dogs that still have their needle-sharp baby teeth. Puppy Kongs are extra-squishy and inviting, and I have used them to help teach reluctant chewers that Kongs are more than just vessels for food.

Naturally, the Puppy Kongs can be used the same way as any other Classic Kong. I like to stuff them with peanut butter and freeze them.

Photo by Erin Koski

When I had the foster girls here, they had just been spayed and needed to stay quiet in their crates for ten days. I would fill their Kongs with dry kibble after each potty break so they could roll the toys around rather than eating out of a bowl.

Pros: A safe, durable chew toy that can be stuffed with tasty treats and frozen for teething puppies. Comes in cute pastel "baby" colors. Bounces unpredictably for ridiculous puppy action.

Photo by Erin Koski

Cons: Puppy Kong is only for puppies with baby teeth, as soon as they grow some permanent teeth this toy should be tossed. I'm not crazy about stuff having a limited lifespan like that. Puppy Kong also only comes in Extra Small, Small, Medium, and Large, so giant breed puppies may outgrow their toys before they finish teething.

Bottom Line: I own Puppy Kongs because  am eccentric enough to want to collect Kongs of every size/shape/color.

The Foster Puppies

I had a pair of sweet, adorable foster puppies for a few weeks. They were being fostered in the greaer Los Angeles area, and I brought them up here to meet some potential adopters and soak up the puppy love.

Photo by Erin Koski

The girls were found running around outside the South Central LA shelter when they were a few weeks old. Hellin is blue ticked like an Autralian cattledog, so they ended up in cattledog rescue. They're really not cattledogs, though.

Darla, the white puppy, has the color dilution gene. She has a blue nose, so the shelter decided that the girls must be pitbull mixes. We don't know what either of their parents looked like, though.

Given their wire coats, the best guess is is that they have some german wirehaired pointer in the mix. This seems unlikely for our area, but Hellin is definitely a very bird-focused dog. She is normally a somewhat reserved and cautious pup, but when we went to the beach she didn't even notice the sand or the ocean because there were so many birds to watch. Darla is significantly less interested in birds, and much more outgoing.


Darla and Hellin are about six months old now, and still looking for their forever homes. They and their sisters Syd and Xena can be found on RescueMe.org, they are the only German Wirehaired Pointer mixes available in California right now.