the power of positive

Wyn is darling

Funny, active, clean and healthy (tho he gave us a scare last week with some three legged lameness luckily it turned out to be a passing thing!)

A saucy boy he could really use a litter to wrestle with and sleep on but we are filling the gaps as well as we can - Cotton plays with him, Sally is very tolerant of him and we humans do what we can to enrich his life

It is AMAZING to watch Sally with Wyn ... without being nasty or threatening she hardly has to whisper "enough" to Wyn for him to bite more gently or head off to find another adventure ..

Sally has the art of positive down to a fine art. Essentially if he is playing nicely he gets to play, if he gets rough the game ends - not with terror, often not even with a show of power, it just simply stops. Brody is a little more punitive in nature; Wyn often faces growls and ugly faces if he gets too close to Brody. Interestingly enough Wyn enjoys pushing Brody's buttons to almost the point of a big reaction but he simply lounges with Sally chewing gently on her ears or face.

Wyn had a couple of strong adversives this weekend while we were away. He was gently scruffed a couple of times, something he has always hated. He was told "No" - a  word with no meaning to him. He came home with this notation: "Wow, he sure can throw temper tantrums". Honestly I wasn't surprised on one hand, what baby doesn't have the capacity to express outrage? But we hadn't seen a full blown out tantrum though. Tthe vigour he used to demonstrate one that night was amazing. That temper tantrum was the last he's had (though I won't be shocked if there are others -positive is not permissive as the brat well knows)

He's five weeks old now -he will not potty in his playpen if he has any choice at all. He sits when he wants to come out of his pen, quietly talking to us so we know he's up. He plays and when he gets too rough we use Sally's example and deflect his attention elsewhere or get up and leave ourselves.

He's a good good puppy!