I woke up at 4am to the sound of little paws padding across the floor liner and back again which when I woke up was for Merlin to relieve himself with perfect aim on his training pad... full marks for that considering it was pitch black! He then went back to sleep and didn't wake again until 8am... not bad for the first night.
After he had wolfed down his breakfast, he was given a cuddle and played with his squeaky wubba Kong toy, although his enthusiasm for this was somewhat short lived when Dan placed a peanut butter filled Kong in his pen... he attacked it with gusto, he is definitely ours as we lurve the peanut butter :-)
At around midday, he was awoken to find 4 new faces looking in at him. It didn't take him long to sniff out these new people (Ben and Jo with our nephews Alex and Nathan). Merlin hadn't met Children before and was very gentle in his approach and even though they were unsure at first, they were soon feeding him treats through the wire of his puppy pen.
When our visitors had gone home, Dan decided to start training Merlin to sit. He spent 10 minutes holding small turkey treats in his fingers and let Merlin sniff and paw his hand to get it. When Merlin sat down, Dan would reward him with the treat. Dan repeated this using the sit command but Merlin soon cottoned on to the fact that if he sat down, he got a treat, so he stayed sitting down... not really the required effect but definitely 10/10 for effort.
After having another snooze, we woke him up for his first car journey since he came to his new home and this was to take him to the vet for his first injection and health check. He was a little panicky when we first moved off but by the time we were on the main road he had settled down. Once inside the vets he was weighed... 2.3kg which is a near on perfect weight so we were told. He remained calm while we waited and was puzzled by the wheezing noises coming from a very overweight Labrador in the waiting room.
When it was our turn, I carried him into the Vet consultation room and put him on the table. The vet scanned his microchip and gave us advice about when to neuter him. He checked him over and confirmed that everything was fine, although the left hand side of his throat was a little swollen but it was not anything to be too concerned about and to keep an eye on it. He gave us a worming tablet and treated him with some more frontline flea treatment before giving him his first injection. Merlin was really good and didn't bat an eyelid.
We enrolled him onto Puppy Socialisation classes which are run by the Vet Centre on Wednesday evenings starting next week. The 3 week course gives us tips and advice on socialising, chewing, training, feeding etc and fingers crossed Merlin will make a few new friends which we can meet up with for walks in the park.
All in all, it's been a good first day, albeit a tiring one.
No comments:
Post a Comment