Zoey

Zoey has been such an amazing puppy. She has responded quickly to training and listens fairly well to commands. We are now working on getting her to listen to the commands on the first time with distractions instead of investigating the distraction and then listening. Zoey also loves swimming, playing fetch, and just being around people and other dogs. She is a very social dog which I am very happy with. We often take her to the park and let her off her leash and she does an amazing job. Even with distractions, squirrels, people, and other dogs, she will always stay close to us while still running around and playing.


Zoey has been doing pretty well at night too. We shut the bedroom door and she will sleep next to the bed or in her kennel with the door open all night. There are two issues that we are currently working on with Zoey. She tends to jump a lot when she gets excited (like most puppies do) but as a 50-55lb dog she brings a lot of power behind her jumping. Over the last few weeks she has definitely improved with the jumping however. The second issue is that she tends to pee or piddle every time I get home from work or she gets overly excited. It often happens after I take her out to pee to ensure she doesn't have a full bladder. It's very confusing and frustrating for me since she hasn't had an actual accident over two months. I've been told it will go away over time as she gets older and her bladder grows, but I feel like at 55lbs her bladder should be large enough to control the piddling. These two issues aren't huge problems, but I would definitely like to see them go away in the near future.


Next week we are taking her to the vet to get spade. Unfortunately her hernia never closed up but luckily it didn't continue to grow. The vet said they would be able close it up while she is under for the surgery. We were hoping to wait a little longer to get her spade but didn't want to push our luck with the hernia.


Overall, Zoey has been such an amazing puppy. She has a great personality and loves everyone and every dog she meets. The two pictures I attached were taken within the last 2-3 weeks. She just got done swimming in the second picture as you can see with her extremely curly hair :).


Thanks again for everything!

Yes, she sure seems to have a touseled coat - it'll change as she matures and her adult coat comes in. Have you been taking her to training classes? You should not have her jumping on you at this age...have her 'sit' as a greeting behavior and that should help both the submissive urinating and the jumping.

I don't recommend spaying at this age; we generally wait until Bouviers are around 14 months old and their growth plates have closed before spaying them. The hernia shouldn't be an issue regardless but of course you need to do what you are comfortable with and your vet recommends.

I"m delighted to hear that she is a social dog, that is one of the things we have been breeding toward with our performance lines.

Take care and thanks for the note - let me know if you need more help with the jumping.