Since Storm has come into season, several of you have asked how we keep Thunder and Storm separate during this time. It would be nice if we had a nice big, heated kennel building to keep Thunder during these three weeks, but we don’t. 🙂 We could leave him outside in his kennel run (because it isn’t that cold yet), but he is a “people dog” and it isn’t fair to banish him. So this is what we do, not perfect, but it seems to work for us.
We air Storm on lead in the front yard well away from where we air Thunder, which is in the back yard. We keep them totally separate. Storm is in the computer room in the front of the house and upstairs in the bedroom. Thunder is in the family room/kitchen. Now here is something I probably could have included in yesterday’s post of 10 things that you don’t know about the 2 brown dawgs. From the time Thunder and Storm have been wee pups, we have always kept them from roaming around the house by using boards to block off the kitchen/family room from the rest of the house. We talked about getting baby gates, but could never find anything that we thought would work in our house. The boards are not high so the cat has a safe place by just jumping over them. Both dogs respect the boards, meaning that they could easily jump over them, but they don’t. We can segregate them by just moving the boards to block off a room and they respect that boundary. Of course when we are not in the area keeping an eye on them, they are crated. We trust they won’t go over the boards, but nature can sometimes trump obedience and we sure don’t want “oops” puppies. 🙂 We talked about getting rid of the boards because both dogs understand boundaries without them, but now there will be a puppy, so I guess they are here for a bit longer.
Of course Thunder still knows Storm is in season and there is a period of time that is very hard on him. For that time, we try to get him out of the house to do something fun. Today Thunder is going out for some grouse hunting, (weather permitting). Thunder saw the hunting stuff being readied and any thoughts of girls went right out of his head. The stuff is not going without him.
This is a picture of puppy Thunder and to this day he still camps out on the hunting stuff.
Storm is mostly stuck in the house, but we try to walk her and she might get out to run a bit in a fenced schoolyard nearby. Next week will be able to go back to Saturday training, (still keeping them separate, but they will be OK near each other crated in the car).
Now some new puppy pictures. Day 17-Thursday. Cindy reports: “eyes are open and they up on their feet, unsteady but up”. Pictures and captions courtesy of Cindy. 🙂
This last picture is the best. Poor Smokey looks overwhelmed. 😆
Thanks for the great pictures Cindy!
Thanks for explaining this. I had wondered. Luckily for us Sampson had been altered when Delilah was in season, the bigger issue was keeping her from making a mess of the house. We tried everything and she thwarted us on almost everything. It was a very trying 19 days!
What does it mean when you say, “we air Storm?”
And yes, Smokey has that “deer in the headlights” look. LOL
In this case we use it to mean taking her to go potty. Sounds a bit nicer. 🙂
It certainly does!
Very interesting! My friends with intact males and females normally board their males when their females are in heat … What amazes me is that even with “responsible” breeders in the dog sport world, there are always “accidental” litters. And what’s an even bigger kick is the fact that they can sell the puppies from these oops litters for $1500+ … Glad to see real responsible breeders like you!! And those pups are growing by the day — do you have one picked out yet? Or a name picked out yet? 🙂
I enjoyed the pictures, and good luck with grouse hunting. Yeah, keeping dogs apart when they go into heat can be a real challenge.
I was one of the ones wondering about how you did that. Thanks for letting us in on your world, which seems to work well! Great that Thunder gets to go on field trips to keep his mind off things. 🙂 Love the photo of him lying on the gun case!
Sounds like it’s a pretty good system. I love that they respect the boards though they could easily clear them. The photos are great, love the first one of Thunder.
Wow I can’t believe how big they are already, you would think I could but it almost seems like months ago instead of weeks mine were that size. Poor Smokey, it won’t be long now hang in there girl 🙂
I was wondering how you kept them apart!
I love that last photo of Smokey with her pups, it’s precious!
The puppies are very cute! They are so lucky that they inherited the whole color of their mother. Maybe the mother dog got strong and perfectly developed genes for her babies. They are very wonderful to loo at and a sample of a family pet picture if ever the father exist.
I’m glad your dogs respect the boards – Bongo won’t even respect the six foot back yard fence. Very interesting how you keep Thunder and Storm apart. I bet they miss each other. Those pups are getting cuter by the day.
Awwww, your dog’s are beautiful and so good too, I was so excited when we were waiting to bring little Ludo home, it’s always great to get a new member to the family, I hope I can train Ludo as well as you have trained your dogs, although his job in life will be somewhat different he’ll need the retrieving skills, that your dogs have in order to help me round the house. Good luck with the rest of your little girls season, and hope all goes well when your new pup comes home, love and hugs Joss
Nice that you try to make this time “fun” for Thunder by taking him on extra adventures. I used to use a baby gate for Chester but he figured out how to climb right over them 🙁 He gets to roam the house now when we are not home because we trust him but he spent many years in a crate (it was a big dog crate though with plenty of room).