#SAGApupVolt Is Nineteen Weeks Old Today

Wow! He's nearly five months old! Time has flown by so fast!

I just love how he sleeps on his back when he gets hot

He's getting harder to weigh on my scale at home 'coz I can't pick him up very easily anymore, so I'm going to try and pop in at my nearest vet's office every Monday morning to weigh him on their animal scale.
This morning he weighed 18.9kg, which is a gain of only 300g in the last week. Thats his smallest weight gain in ages! Our SAGA PDS guestimated he will weigh 30kg as an adult, so he's rapidly approaching that weight!
Our weekly puppy classes are over, but our home visits will be starting soon, around the beginning of April or so. SAGA's guide-dog pups are very closely monitored to make sure their training, temperament and health stays right on track. Our SAGA PDS will come and see us to see how Volt greets guests who come to the house, see that he stays off the furniture, and how he behaves in general in his "home" setting. The home visits will take place every couple of months.
And in between home visits Volt will do his kennel stays of 7 days at a time.
The kennel stays serve several purposes. The pup gets used to staying at kennels (for when he grows up and does his formal training), and it serves to let SAGA observe the pup's behaviour and temperament in a setting other than their home. Occasionally they pick up an issue with a pup that their puppy-raiser family is unaware of, or a behavioural quirk shows up in kennels that can then be addressed before it becomes a problem.

lying on the floor for some "handling" makes his lip hang down like he's snarling

Yesterday we went to a Tweetup at Manna Cafe in Fourways. It was a Tweetup slash blogger meet for moms and kidlets, so it was a great opportunity for Volt to practise interacting with children again. And Manna Cafe said they didn't mind Volt visiting their premises so that was very cool indeed. Volt still gets very excited when he sees children and really wants to play and bounce, so learning to sit nice and still and not chew on little fingers is very important for him. All the kidlets at Manna was great practice for us.

The following three pictures were taken by the always fantastic Jeanette Verster who was also at the Manna Cafe Tweetup with her kidlets (I like to think of her as my family's official photographer since she photographed our wedding, our couple shoot before our wedding, a couple of TTD shoots, and several family shoots). Aren't they the most beautiful photos of my gawjiss Volt!

And today we were at my parents' house with the rest of the family to celebrate my brother's birthday. I got horribly sunburnt, but Volt had fun. He and my mom's fox terrier cross were having a wonderful time after Toppy settled down. My mom's dogs are not socialised as much as Volt is but Topolino is slowly but surely relaxing when Volt is around. He doesn't like to wrestle, which Volt loves, but he does love to play a strange game of tag where he has a toy and then tries to get Volt to chase him and take it from him. Volt can't manoeuvre like Toppy does, so he gets left in Toppy's dust a lot, but they do have fun.

click on the puppy to make a donation to SAGA

Don't forget to check out the Twitter hash-tag #SAGApupVolt to see regular updates on my puppy raising adventure!