Hopeful at 17 Weeks

These photos are from the second week of the three-week quiet period that Hopeful had to have after she fell off the bed and managed to hit her toe against something and break it.  Since it is the outside toe and isn’t weight-bearing, we lucked out and she doesn’t have to be in a splint, but I had to keep her as quiet as possible for three weeks. I took photos of her every week during that quiet time.   

Keeping a seventeen-week-old puppy quiet is REALLY hard, especially since the toe doesn’t bother her unless she hits it on something.  I had my work cut out for me, let me tell you!  The toe must not have been hurting because she sure wanted to bounce around.

Since I couldn’t throw her ball for her, I worked on teaching her to sit and catch it when I tossed it from a short distance. That is always fun.  The puppy’s eyes get big and she tries to follow the ball – but forgets to open her mouth as it comes close; or else she opens her mouth but closes her eyes and just grabs anywhere.  We started with two balls.  One was smooth and blue.  The other, Hopeful’s favorite, was a Cuz ball (“Cuz I’m a little devil, you know).  It is bright red, has two tiny horns on top, and on the bottom has two “feet.”  The reason it’ was her favorite is because it has a squeaker in it so it makes noise.  If she caught it, she had twice the fun because just grabbing it made it squeak.  The two tiny “feet” stick out just enough that sometimes she caught the ball by them, and then she had to figure out how to get the squeaky part, instead of the feet, in her mouth so she could make noise. 

At first, when she actually caught it, she was so surprised that she would drop it, but she gradually got that figured out.  In this week’s photos she just needs a lot of practice so she learns just how to follow the trajectory of the ball – and to sit still so I can lob it towards her where it is easy to catch.  She wants to bounce up and grab it from my hand rather than give me a second to toss the ball.  But concentrating and using the mind wears a puppy out faster than physical activity, so we just kept practicing both the “sit stay” and the catch.

She was so funny – and uncoordinated – as she was trying to learn to catch the ball that I took a bunch of photos.  Sometimes she’d totally forget to open her mouth to try to catch it, so it would bop her on the nose. 

She began wanting to play the game with stuffed toys, too.  That is a little more complicated as they are larger in diameter and sometimes pretty long.  I tried to get her to understand she needed to sit farther away from me so that I could throw them in an arc that she could follow with her eyes, and her mouth.  Meanwhile, I got some more hilarious photos of her attempts to catch the toys. One toy in these photos is a spotted black and white “cow” that makes a kind of mooing noise when she catches or carries it.  Another is a fluorescent “fish.”   

to more 17-week play photos
to Hopeful HEARTing at 17 weeks
to Hopeful’s page
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