House Training etc.

I'm absolutely blown away by how weird purebred baby airedales look. Amy is our first airedale and I had no idea that these funny canine babies invariably look so strange. Here she is with daddy and mommy. She loved to crawl up on us and perch behind our necks for a snooze whenever possible. I grabbed these aweful pics with my camera phone, but you get the idea how small she was at seven weeks and how funny she looked!!! Our little bear cub.

At this age our airedale puppy slept pretty much all the time - and anywhere that the urge overtook her! I started outdoor house training immediately. I don't believe in newspaper training or other forms of indoor house training since you'll have to transition to the great outdoors at some point anyhow, so why not get the ball rolling early?

Every 15 minutes if this baby girl was awake, I ran her out the door for a pee. Eventually as her tiny bladder got bigger the pee breaks extended to 20 minutes then 25 minutes apart etc. By the time Amy was 12 weeks old she was totally house trained. But it took a great deal of effort on my part. Caring for such a young dog is a full time job, and fortunately I have a home office so I could devote tons of time to working with this puppy.

Here's our daughter Kate with Amy at around 9 weeks. I found it to be fact that airedale puppies love to chew. This puppy was extremely tactile and absolutely everything went in her mouth. Electrical cords can be a true source of danger for these puppies. This airedale is very curious and pokes her head into everything. Today, Amy is a year old and as she is now getting very tall, we're still Amy proofing the house.