The fun has begun! Look at this precious face!

Big stuff has been happening in the last week. First off, Noel is walking! With that, comes the potty training. Our goal is to teach Noel to use a designated “potty area” and to discourage her from pottying in her bed. Here is evidence of one of her first successes. She even did this one all by herself. She woke up, tottered out to the newspaper, pottied, and went back to her bed. Good job, Noel!

She certainly isn’t perfect. Most of the time, she doesn’t potty on her bed, but she doesn’t always hit the desired “potty area.” However, for 3 weeks old, I am impressed!

Along with potty training comes food. I’m very slowly beginning the weaning process. Right now, I am just giving her a little bit of warm goat’s milk to get her interested in eating from a bowl. As you can see, we haven’t had a lot of success yet.

How does that saying go? It’s no use crying over spilled milk?

Nothing mama can’t clean up.

Here are some other fun pictures from the week. Since Noel doesn’t have litter mates, it’s especially important for her to become familiar with other puppies and children. We had our first play date this week. (A huge thank you to BJ’s Farm for allowing us to use their Boxer puppies as Noel’s “foster siblings”!)

With the puppies being so young, the play date was pretty uneventful. It was more of a sleepover, but it was good. It’s better to get her accustomed to it now before she is old enough to have much of a reaction. Then, in a few weeks, she should be very happy and comfortable playing with these little guys. They won’t seem so new and scary if she has been visiting since she was three weeks old. I decided if she was relaxed enough to sleep, then the visit was a success!

She has also had some visits from my nephews and from a family in my neighborhood. The same theology goes for children. The younger the puppies are exposed to children, the better. If they are used to being handled by children at a young age, they tolerate them much better as they get older. Noel didn’t seem at all perturbed by the rough little hands and shrill little voices.

She was even giving some kisses! (It’s possible that she was just very hungry, but we’ll call it showing affection.)

Overall, this past week was busy but very good! There has been a lot of growing and changes, and we are now entering the fun puppy stage! Have a good weekend, and enjoy that extra hour of sleep!