Puppy Party………

Well, I have to say the anticipation far outweighed the event. Brandy & Brinkley were significantly unimpressed. I was looking forward to seeing how they got on with other dogs as they have only seen each other since they left their litter. I did have concerns as to whether they would be too rough for other puppies as they enjoy running around the house at great speed chasing each other, pouncing on each other, and playing tug-of-war with their toys, and I thought any puppy that is not used to such play could be frightened by them.

In reality, they just couldn’t be bothered.

There were 3 other pups there, an 11 weeks old Staffordshire Bull Terrier which is already twice the size of Brandy & Brinkley, a 13 weeks old Staffordshire Bull Terrier, which is about the size ours will be when full grown and a 10 week old Jack Russell.

Puppy Party is a meeting held at our vets by one of the receptionists and the senior practice nurse. The idea is to start to socialise pups with other dogs so that when you are out and about there is less chance of issues. They also use the meeting to talk through some basic puppy care issues, how to integrate them into their new world and to show us around the surgery so we can see where they are kept if they need to go in etc. which is useful as they wouldn’t have time to do that during a normal working day.

We all started with our pups on our laps watching how they reacted to each other. To start with they asked for the 2 staffies to be put on the floor. They very quickly went across to each other and within minutes were chasing around together and getting on quite well. Apparently, this is unusual, there is normally more wariness before the pups start to play together. Queue Brandy & Brinkley – we can do wary, big style!

After a while, the owners of the staffies were asked to call their dogs and then the Jack Russell (Alfie) and Brandy were put onto the floor to see how they would get on. Alfie was quite quick to go exploring the room and didn’t come over to Brandy, however Brandy wasn’t going anywhere. His brother wasn’t there and he stayed at the side of my foot, sitting down and watching. After a few minutes he decided he’d had enough and jumped up to be picked up. So we put Brinkley down to see if the 2 of them would go exploring together, but no, we now had 2 pups that were at the side of us, going no where. After a few minutes, when Brandy realised he wasn’t going to get picked up he went under Neil’s chair and sat down. Alfie started to come across and show an interest and for a moment it looked like Brinkley may be interested, then it passed and he came back and sat with his brother. And that was that!

We picked them both up and they showed no further interest in the other puppies, they both went to sleep. All my concerns at whether they would be too boisterous for the other small puppies were somewhat unnecessary, so it will be interesting to see how they are when we can finally go out for walks and they meet other dogs in a couple of weeks.

When we got them back home, they had their supper and immediately started racing around the house!