Welcome Zeus!

January 02, 2011, Zeus, our standard poodle puppy, came home with us. He was the result of a most unusual combination of nature and nurture. Our breeder, Bev, of Calisun Starndard Poodles, mated her dam Sunny with Aris sire London to produce a litter of 11 puppies. All black, all beautiful, and way too much for one dam to produce milk for. Bev's younger dam, Lilly, was mated at nearly the same time and had her litter the same weekend as Sunny, but had only four surviving puppies. Two of the puppies from Sunny's litter were transfered to Lilly for rearing. Our Zeus, known as "Big Green Boy" at the time, was one of the Sunny/London puppies raised by Lilly.

Bev has been a loving, dedicated, professional, (if possibly over cautious) breeder and I believe our puppy could not have been welped and reared by a better one. She worked hard to match the temperament of the puppy to our lifestyle.

We are determined to do our best to raise the perfect, balanced dog. As such, we have prepared his space near our bedroom, made sure the cats have their spaces preserved, and have plenty of time available to us for the next few weeks to make it through these beginning days of puppy needs.

Thus far we have learned that he does try to tell us he needs to go out... and if we don't listen we get a piddle. We only understand his warnings half the time. Still, for a 9 week old poodle puppy to already be working to tell us "I need potty now" is quite amazing to me.

In the past 24 hours he's had 4 accidents which we could have prevented had we paid attention. His first night was fairly successful... we tired him out with walks and play before going to bed, and took up his water about 2 hours before bed. This allowed him to make it through the night for 7 hours before needing to go potty.

His primary challenge is the stairs. Our staircase is very steep and long. I took him several trips partially carried up the stairs before he was confident enough to climb them himself. He is willing to go down short flights of stairs, but the full staircase is too intimidating at present.

All in all, he's been a calm, attentive, curious puppy with no inclination to chase the cats. This bodes well!