Darcy Yellow Labrador Retriever Mix Male 4 Months Old ID#3017

Meet Darcy!  He is an adorable almost 4 month old yellow lab mix puppy that was found in Mississippi and was luckily placed in a temporary foster home there.  Darcy has now made his way North and is safe in a Brookline foster home.  Please read his blog from the bottom up.

June 21, 2022

Darcy continues to do well here, so well that instead of bouncing back to his first foster home, he’ll be made available very soon.  He’s really a great dog who is eager to please and is making great progress, and some family will be lucky to adopt him.  We haven’t had a single accident since the first day, and he is now going in the crate when asked a couple of times a day for an hour or so.  As long as we don’t overdo it, he now seems willing!  In fact this morning I put the bone in before him, and he just went in and sniffed it and then lay down and napped after I closed the door behind him.

Darcy is pleased that he has finally gotten foster Angie to start playing with him. It’s so good for both of them. Mostly she runs around in wide speedy circles and he tries to catch her.  He would love it if she would chase him too, but she doesn’t seem interested in reciprocating at this point.   When he grabs at her ankles too much to try and get her to engage though, she will correct him, and he listens!

Walks are still going pretty well, although he does have his stubborn moments where he’d rather go a different direction than you’re going. That’s a puppy for you.  He absolutely loves it in the woods where there seem to be a lot of moths now as he loves to try to chase them.  Because he’s on leash though they usually escape when they leave the trail.   The other day there was a dragonfly tormenting him  in our back yard, and he must have chased it for 10 minutes.  I wish I had had my camera.  He took a good nap after that.

I took Darcy to our local feed store yesterday and everyone fussed over him and said how handsome he was.  He also went up to everyone he saw to meet them, but pretty much sat and waited for them to pet him. Good boy Darcy!  I took him in as they have a good scale there.  Darcy now weighs 31 pounds and has a lot more growing to do.  Note that he weighed 18 pounds 5 weeks ago.

This afternoon we’ll be taking him downtown and onto the PSU campus to see how he does there since it’s pretty quiet where we live.  I expect he will get lots of attention.  Stay tuned.

June 19, 2022

Friday afternoon Darcy went to a new home for foster sitting since his foster and family had a planned vacation, and all is going well.  Introductions went well with the three resident dogs and foster dog Angie, and we’re settling into a nice routine.  Foster mom 1 (FM1) had the hard part of getting him decompressed and used to being in a home, and he came here happy and social.  Napping is no longer his favorite activity!

Mr Darcy’s 4 month old birthday is tomorrow June 20th, and he’s still got all those sharp puppy teeth.  But so far he hasn’t been too mouthy and I think he’s already picking up the command “no bite”.  He isn’t quite house trained (we’ve had two accidents) so I just have to remember to take him out often enough. Mostly I have to remember that after he plays or walks, he drinks a lot, and I therefore need to take him out within 30 minutes. Who’s training who?!  In terms of chewing appropriate things, you do have to keep a good eye on him.  But he loves nylabones and they are really helping with his teething.

Darcy is walking well on a Freedom harness; he’d probably be fine with a flat collar too, but I want him to get used to the harness for when he is bigger.  Of course he’s a puppy and what he does first when I leash him is to grab at the leash and try to engage me in a game of tug.  I’ve found that keeping moving and ignoring him makes him forget his game soon enough.

As FM1 indicated, Darcy is not a fan of the crate, so one trick I use is to feed him his meals in his crate (since he is growing like a weed and very food motivated).  Interestingly enough he will not go in – not even a little bit- when I put his bowl in there.  So I’ve had to resort to picking him and putting him in.  One squeak or two in protest and he turns his attention to the food of which he makes quick work.  We’ve done 4 meals this way and he’s not catching on and going in.  So after this morning’s walk I put a smoked knee cap (gross) in and he did venture most the way in, so I just had to give him a gentle push and he started working on the bone.  15 minutes later he was sound asleep.  Baby steps.

I was really interested to see how young foster Angie would interact with Darcy.  I knew my older resident labs would not be particularly fond of sharp puppy teeth, but they are super tolerant and occasionally playful, but I expected young foster dog Angie might engage with Darcy.  Well I was wrong- at least for now.  Angie isn’t quite sure what to make of Darcy when he tries to engage and play nip, but she has corrected him a few times.  Luckily he corrects easily and seems to have mostly caught on, only occasionally being mouthy with her.  Interestingly enough, he hasn’t tried his antics once with the resident dogs.  He seems to know they are his elders, and I think he’s a smart boy.  I’m still hopeful that Angie will come around and want to play, but it is too soon to say.

Darcy is a pro on the stairs – thanks FM 1!   He thinks nothing of hopping up on the couch, but we’re only allowing him on the sofa for snuggle time. And he’s a WONDERFUL snuggler.  He’s really so very sweet.

I’ve had a few pups and on the scale of easy to hard, I think he’s on the easier end for a pup. Some family will be very lucky to adopt him.

June 14, 2022

Today was Darcy’s third day with us.  We decided to take a little car ride and a walk to the park to do some socializing.  Darcy just LOVES people!  We took a walk down to the park and there were several baseball games going on.  He did very well with the commotion and walked well without pulling.  Darcy was a hit.  He enjoyed going up to children and adults for love.  He will walk over and sit and wait for love.  Surprisingly, there weren’t any dogs today so we didn’t get to interact at the park.We then took a ride to the store to see how he does with other dogs. He did very well with the smaller dogs but was a little timid at first with the bigger dogs.  It only took him a few minutes to warm up to them and did their introductions. He is kind of a mellow puppy.  All the other dogs were going nuts.  He sat quietly and watched.  I believe he even took a nap during the whole thing.  He isn’t much of a player. At least not yet.  He does like to chase birds, balls and chew on a toy.  He seems very satisfied sitting on the couch and getting pet and taking a nap.  It’s only been a few days so we will see if napping is his favorite past time thing to do.  Little guy has been through a lot these few days with new home, siblings, caretaker, long van ride from MS, a grad party and more.  I believe I would need to sleep after all that too!

June 13, 2022

Darcy is starting to settle in.  He’s really sweet and just loves attention.  We took our first walk today. It was a little rough at first, but he got the hang of it pretty quickly.  Within a few minutes he was walking like a champ.  Walked right next to me.He seems to really want to play with the resident dogs but they still aren’t having it.  I think with this weather the best thing to do is sleep. Darcy has found other things to do until they come around. He has shown some interest in toys and will even play fetch for a few minutes until he gets detracted.

We are working on the house training which hasn’t been much effort on my part since he is really good at telling me, by crying, that he needs to go out.  He has had maybe two accidents since he has been here and I would say that was from me not really paying attention.He needs a little work on crate training.  I don’t believe he has ever been in a crate until today. He doesn’t really chew on bones so I’m trying to find something to comfort him while he is in the crate.

June 12, 2022

Darcy arrived yesterday afternoon.  He was a little timid at first which was understandable since we were having a graduation party.  He got lots of love and attention from the guest.  He seemed exhausted from his long journey from MS. Today we recuperated from yesterday’s long day.  We pretty much slept all day. He has definitely opened up a little more today and has been playing during the few hours we have been up.  He really loves people and affection.  He hasn’t interacted yet with the resident dogs yet.  Not from his doing.  He has tried but my dogs seem to want to rest today as well.  Hopefully tomorrow will we be little more perky.