Welcome Hugo

We have a new addition to our family.  This is Hugo.  After Iris' tragic and untimely death to Parvo, we had to wait at least 7 months before bringing another puppy into our home because the virus can live for 5 months.  I bleached the house and we cleaned up the yard as best we could.

Kaetlyn cuddling Hugo when we went to check him out

Then I was cruising puppy ads and found this guy in Penticton.  He was behind his much more outgoing sisters and you could hardly see him because he is black.  But his eyes pierced me and I knew he was our puppy.  He was born in Penticton so we drove out to check him out and we gave him his first parvo vaccination.  I know, I know... I don't generally believe in vaccinations.  However, given the stress of leaving his mother and grandmother and coming to a new home where there was a better than average chance of encountering the virus, we decided to go the vaccination route.  After we gave him his shot, we had to leave him for another 10 days.  Eryn, Kaetlyn and Rhiannon all came with me and it was unanimous.  We would take him.

Rhiannon made him this bed - recycled from a long dead but favourite cat, Sheeba

As much as he looks like Iris, he is not much like her.  We've had him for just over a week now.  Much better at house training but much more aggressive to other dogs.  Iris was a scaredy cat and would jump into our arms.  Hugo is up for taking them all on.

 He is a border collie/Australian Shepherd X blue heeler (Australian Cattle Dog) but when he is like this we call him the little black fox.

We are feeding him strictly on the Natural Rearing Method developed by veterinarian and herbalist, Juliette de Bairicli-Levy who pioneered the raw food diet for dogs.  Right now he eats 4 times a day.  He gets non-homogonized milk with honey at 8am, multigrain rolled grains with butter milk, seaweed powder, a tsp  of oil and nettle at noon, 2 oz of meat at 4pm and 4 - 8 oz of meat with bones at 8pm.  So far he is looking very healthy and he's everyone's darling.

For training, we are using Cesar Millan's methods which are so incredible.  Puppies learn so fast when you know how to speak to them in dog language.  We think he will turn out to be a very good dog!  And who knows, maybe this means that this summer we won't have to pretend to be sheep dogs when we round up the sheep.

And no, he's not named after the movie - we haven't seen it.  It just seemed to be his name.  Don't you agree?