Well, the puppies are taking shape. We now trust them enough to let them sleep with us instead of in their pen. They seem incredibly happy about this, especially at bedtime, and they’ve adapted to it very nicely. When I get up to use the restroom in the middle of the night they do too, running right to their pad (or outside if it’s warm enough) and do their business, then we all go back to bed at the same time and snuggle up again.

Our grandkids Haylie and Connor spent the weekend here recently, and the puppies tried sleeping with them, but they didn’t last long. Haylie said they were just too hot, so she made them leave the bed. She’s not kidding either. Those little buggers are like space heaters in bed. I almost always sleep on top of the covers because I get too hot under them, and now, with the puppies in bed, I still get too hot even on top of the covers.

They’re still struggling with pad training though. As far as urinating goes, they’re nearly perfect and only sometimes miss the pad, but only due to bad aim. Pooping is another matter. For some reason, about 1/2 the time they’ll drop it somewhere other than the pad and think nothing of it. We’re not sure if they’re trying to mark an area because there’s two dogs in the house, or just trying to get attention. We try to look past it and not scold, and simply discourage the bad habits by not treating them, but I don’t think we catch them pooping on the pad often enough to reward the good behavior. We’ll get there though. And right around that time the weather will get good consistently enough to where we’ll be totally retraining them to do their business completely outside without a pad at all, unless they’re penned for a few hours, or in case of emergencies, like Socks was trained to do.