Today’s Pluses

• Kaiju is at ease in our home. We have only introduced him to the kitchen (and porch for 10 minutes) so far. And he seems pretty confident when he is there during his free time/play time. He plays with his toy(s), and sometimes gets so excited that we need to walk away to the next room, to calm him down.
• We figured out that he is not very food motivated. He is very praise motivated, though, so we will use that in our training.
• He has started chasing after a tennis ball, and then bringing it back closer to us, although he doesn’t release it for us. It’s pretty fun.
• He goes #2 very regularly. Healthy looking. He eats very little, but we trust that he is eating as much as he needs to.
• Although he cries every time we close the crate door, after a few minutes, he stops and calms down and goes to sleep. And the crying fit is getting shorter.
• He met a friendly neighborhood lab outside, and although the encounter was very short, he was ok when the lab sniffed his little butt.
• We saw Alex and Nicole today. We talked for a bit, and exchanged some similar stories about our puppies. We feel relieved to know that they are going through very similar joy and concerns.

Concerns

• Kaiju is unable to focus on food if we go away from him. He cries and cries and forgets about food. We have been trying to go away to the next room, and monitor him via a Web camera from there. He cries for a while and then eats a little bit, and then cries some more. We hope he is going to be able to eat on his own without crying, soon.
• Kaiju had peeing accidents three times so far in his crate. The last one was this morning when we went away for 2 hours (and he peed right before that), so we are a bit concerned. We have been trying to figure out an ideal time-table for his peeing and feeding, and got ourselves thoroughly confused and exhausted.
• Kaiju has stopped wanting to go for a walk. We’ll keep trying. He was able to walk for a long time two days ago, but last night, he stopped. He just sits down and won’t move. We lured him with treats and praises this evening, and he managed to go around one block… Towards the end, he was trotting, so we hope this was just a weird phase and will go away. But for now, he does not even like to go outside so much.
• We had guests over today, and he was kinda skittish. He would not leave Paul’s side. He stays behind or on Paul’s lap. He did not take treats from some of the adult guests, although he took it (although carefully) when a toddler gave one to him. It may have been that her little hand was less scary than adult-sized hands.