ZZ Litter, 55 Days, Playtime at Denise’s
8/10/23

I took the pups to Denise’s at 9:30 a.m.  She has 2 shelties and a cockapoo.  We introduced the pups to all three dogs, then she put the cockapoo and her older sheltie in the house.  Her year-old Sheltie, Emma, is VERY active and needed a play session, and the older dogs needed a break from Emma.  The pups had been intimidated at first but before I unloaded the last ones, Mr. Red and Emma were playing.  The others quickly joined in.  Everyone had an absolutely fantastic time.  They played and played and played.

Emma was a little intimidated when all 7 gave chase, mouths open to try to grab some of that enticing flowing hair, but after a while, as pups collapsed to rest, Emma managed to cut out managed a couple at a time to play with.  It’s always fascinating to see how these herding dogs decide to play.  Emma weighs just over 12#, and the pups weigh between 12 – 15 pounds, so we watched closely to make sure Emma didn’t get hurt.  She’s VERY fast so they hardly ever caught her. 

Emma loves to play ring-around-the-tree or bush or anything, and the pups soon got into the game.  They soon figured out to change directions so as to intercept Emma when she came around the object.  Denise and I laughed a lot. 

Denise had a long agility tunnel against her yard fence.  After Mr. Red, Mr. Blue and Miss Pink raced through it, she moved it out into the yard to see if any more pups would go through and perhaps teach Emma how to do it.  Denise knelt at the far end and put pups in the entrance while I called them and tried to get photos.  My pups have a big tunnel under their puppy obstacle course, and it looked like they’ve played in it because soon all of mine were going through it, and several would reverse and go back.  And they got Emma running through it as well – after Denise crawled through the tunnel to encourage her.

We stayed about an hour, until I finally said we had to get home.