Airedale Puppies and Chew, Chew, Chewing!

Chewing mommy's stuff up is Amy's raison d'etre. Puppy toys and wholesome chew treats are a necessity with our Airedale, who seems bored out of her skull most of the time when left on her own. Her energy level is off the map. I've never owned a dog with this soaring level of energy. I joke that all three of our male giant schnauzers put together don't have Amy's energy level. I'm still trying to find a 'day job' for this little working dog. She needs a full time job.

Left to her own devices, Amy paces through the house looking for items to play with. This means an unusual preoccupation with anything mommy touches and especially the irresistible desire to chew up the beautiful things mommy creates. So far, Amy has only destroyed a few of my precious gemstone creations, so I've somehow managed to keep the majority of my artistic mess out of her reach.


At the vet Amy and I met a lady who said Amy was "full of beans and bologna" read baloney like phony baloney. This puppy LOVES the whole world. She simply adores every living being and true to the terrier monaker our Amy is a holy terror, just a hellion.

This means that your new airedale terrier puppy may seem a bit airheaded at times. She'll hear your commands and totally understand them, but whether she complies is another matter entirely. At times, this breed requires a good deal of patience on the part of the handler.

An optimal environment for my airedale puppy is a busy, active household. A household with lots going on - lots of visitors, lots of chatter, lots of opportunities for play, good long walks outside, and of course plenty of catch, fetch and tugging games! Our airedale is a star retriever!!! Just wait until we introduce a frisbee....

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.