I should have got round to this before, but having a litter of  puppies means that things are fairly hectic and after they go to their new homes, it takes time to get back to some semblance of normality.  Anyway, I would like to introduce you to our new puppy – Anya.

Anya is now three months old.  It is my intention to follow her in this blog as she grows up and eventually gets introduced to the garden.  As you can guess, it is pretty hard to get a young puppy to keep still for a photo, but she managed it for a second.

At the moment her outdoor excursions in the garden are restricted to the puppy playpen.  There is no way that I would leave her loose in the garden.  There are far too many places where she could hide and maybe cause mischief.

The main lessons that she is currently focusing on can be divided into two very broad categories, socialisation and training.  These lessons will be subjects for future blogs.

Socialisation is a very important one.  In these early days, puppies get the foundation ideas about how they see the world, so it is important to introduce them to a wide variety of experiences without “over-facing” them.

Vaccination programmes these days meant that Anya was able to go out into the outside world at 10 weeks.  This meant that there was less time than in the past to keep her occupied with new experiences at home and her education could start earlier.