Puppy goes wild (almost every day)

 

There are times (like in class Monday night with much more experienced puppy raisers) when I feel like Steve and I are still newbies. Then there are other times when I feel like we’ve been at this for too long.

I hit the Too Long category this morning, when I tried to look up “puppy wilding” in my CCI Puppy Raiser Manual. I was given the manual back in 2004 when we got Tucker (our first puppy). We studied it religiously back then. We consulted it from time to time in the course of raising Yuli (#2) and Brando (#3), as I recall. But just as parents of multiple children tend to get looser about raising their younger offspring, we haven’t cracked open the Manual for a while. So although I think I read about puppy wilding in the manual at one time, I could find no trace of it this morning.

Did we make it up?  Wherever we got it, in my mind it refers to those periods when very young dogs go a little berserk — suddenly tearing around the yard at breakneck speed or running in loops throughout the house, as if chased by some demon. It happens pretty regularly, and it’s usually comical.

Although Kyndall is a sleepier and calmer girl than all her predecessors in our house, even she succumbs to the call of the wild from time to time. First thing in the morning and late afternoons is when it’s most likely to happen. The clip above is a glimpse of one recent such display.