Every Day is a new day to a puppy

Making the morning rounds near the onions in O'Sensei's garden

Over the past week, we have been concentrating on trainng these two puppies. Really though, I think they have taught us just about as much as we taught them. Here are a few of our lessons learned over the past week.

1. Every day is a new day to a puppy. Yesterday, you may have been put in time out for peeing on the floor or nipping at toes, but that was yesterday. Today is a completely different day. "Time out? What time out? I don't know anything about any time out."

Bright eyed and ready to rumble

More Jedi puppy mind tricks. "You want to give me more treats."

Walking around near some of the Martial Arts training equipment in the back yard

Bonnie starting to get buff from all of the good food and playtime

If people looked at life this way, I think we would be a lot happier.

2. Naps are priceless. The first couple of days, Bonnie and Clyde stayed awake almost all day and were really active. After that, they started taking naps throughout the day. We were a little worried at first and took to the internet to see if it was normal. We had kind of resigned ourselves to having wild puppies flying around the house for the next few months. We think that they were just that active the first few days because they didn't want to get dumped again and wanted to make sure that we were still there. 
They are starting to settle in to the normal routine now. They eat, play for a while, nap, play, nap, play, nap, eat, play, nap, etc. When they nap, we take advantage of the time to clean and do things around the house or take a nap ourselves (on the weekends). Today we napped for over an hour while they were sleeping and that was probably the best idea we had had all day.

3. Puppies use the same tactics as human kids. They test you to see what they can get away with and if one can get away with things that the other one can't. We were sitting outside with the puppies while they were playing, and Bonnie came up and tried to very gently carry April's flip-flop away to chew on it. She got fussed at and had the shoe taken away. Clyde was laying in the grass watching all of this. A few seconds later, he came up and tried to very gently take the same shoe. He got the same rebuke. 
They test you. They try to see if you will let them get away with things that you wouldn't let them do yesterday. 

Overall, we are very glad that we brought them home. They have brought a huge amount of excitement so far.  (Either that or Clyde's Jedi puppy mind tricks are working).