Cooper (Burney 14-272)

Profile

In addition to LOVE this dog has the following requirements:
Entered Foster Care Fence Kid Friendly Another Dog Cat Friendly
 10/5/2014 Physical fence preferred but not required Not tested but probably good, esp. older kids Preferred but not required Yes
This is the most recent information available; however, it may change as we learn more about the dog.

Welcome to 5-month-old, 27-lb. Burney 14-272, also known as Super Puppy! What are his super powers, you ask? Let me tell you!

  1. He can spread his wing-like ears and leap large countries in a single bound! OK, it was several bounds, but he did manage to travel all the way from AL to Minnesota.
  2. He can accumulate 20 dog toys on a single dog bed in the time it takes a human to go to the bathroom!
  3. He can manage to run in a straight line despite his gangly legs flying in 4 different directions at the same time!
  4. He can be incredibly cute and make people laugh even as he is doing something rather naughty.

Some of his less super but still really good traits include:

  1. Housebroken: no accidents so far at my house, but he is closely supervised and I am diligent about frequent trips to the yard after meals, naps, play sessions, etc. Despite the fact that he is intact at this time, he has not ever attempted to mark.
  2. Crate trained; whines a little at first (especially if you are home and it means he can't be with you), but settles well and is not destructive. Has kept the crate clean for 4-5 hours at a time during the day and for 7-8 hours at night.
  3. He likes dogs, and for an untrained puppy, he is pretty good at reading signals (my resident girl is quickly teaching him some more manners in that regard). He would LOVE to have a playful big sister or brother to shadow and learn from in his forever home.
    Cats have not been tested, but he did meet a cat in a carrier at the vets and was curious, but not obsessed or aggressive.
  4. He is very gentle, especially for a puppy. Everyone he has met has called him sweet. He has never mouthed me, even when nervous or scared. He gets upset if I raise my voice with my resident dogs. With his humans, he prefers snuggling to rough-and-tumble play. He does jump up when excited, but he is so small and he does it so slowly and carefully that you can barely feel him touching you (we are still working on correcting this). For this reason, I think that he would be fine around children, although little ones could get still get knocked over when he gets the excited puppy zoomies and he may be distressed by the noisy and rowdy play of younger children. As you can see from the picture, he enjoyed meeting one of the teenage neighbor kids.
  5. He likes to chew and to accumulate items, but has no resource guarding and has thus far focused his attention mostly on the dog toys (give or take a shoe or two with particularly interesting laces and a stray napkin). Although at the moment I cannot locate my TV remote. :) He does show great counter cruiser potential. For these reasons, he is not ready for free roam yet and will need to be confined when alone, at least until he matures a bit.

Burney will be neutered this week and then will be ready for his forever home. Things that he will need to become the great dog he can be will include:

  1. Plenty of encouragement and training; he is still a little scared from his tumultuous start in life and will need help to learn manners and to continue to gain confidence. He is cautiously trusting of humans and likes to please them, which will help make training easier and fun. He has virtually no training at this time, so his manners are rough and he doesn't have great recall, but he has very few bad habits and is learning fast.
  2. Plenty of exercise and play time; a tired puppy is a good puppy. While he is crated for the work day with one break here and does OK, it would be great if his forever home had someone home more during this puppy period where bonding, training and socialization are vital.
  3. A fenced yard would be great as he enjoys exploring and chasing other dogs around, although he may be OK with frequent walks, play dates and a tie-out.
  4. A family that wants to include him as much as possible - he loves to be with his people and thrives on being a part of whatever you do.

A reminder that puppies are a lot of work. Burney has a great start in a lot of areas, but the first year especially with any dog requires a lot of effort, consistency, patience, financial investment, and mostly time. Burney is willing to return whatever you can offer him in triplicate!

Contact your placement advisor if you think your house could benefit from the powers of Super Puppy!

At a Glance #14-272

Mixed Breed Born: May 2014
Male 35 lbs

Status: Adopted

Profile

In addition to LOVE this dog has the following requirements:
Entered Foster Care Fence Kid Friendly Another Dog Cat Friendly
 10/5/2014 Physical fence preferred but not required Not tested but probably good, esp. older kids Preferred but not required Yes
This is the most recent information available; however, it may change as we learn more about the dog.

Welcome to 5-month-old, 27-lb. Burney 14-272, also known as Super Puppy! What are his super powers, you ask? Let me tell you!

  1. He can spread his wing-like ears and leap large countries in a single bound! OK, it was several bounds, but he did manage to travel all the way from AL to Minnesota.
  2. He can accumulate 20 dog toys on a single dog bed in the time it takes a human to go to the bathroom!
  3. He can manage to run in a straight line despite his gangly legs flying in 4 different directions at the same time!
  4. He can be incredibly cute and make people laugh even as he is doing something rather naughty.

Some of his less super but still really good traits include:

  1. Housebroken: no accidents so far at my house, but he is closely supervised and I am diligent about frequent trips to the yard after meals, naps, play sessions, etc. Despite the fact that he is intact at this time, he has not ever attempted to mark.
  2. Crate trained; whines a little at first (especially if you are home and it means he can't be with you), but settles well and is not destructive. Has kept the crate clean for 4-5 hours at a time during the day and for 7-8 hours at night.
  3. He likes dogs, and for an untrained puppy, he is pretty good at reading signals (my resident girl is quickly teaching him some more manners in that regard). He would LOVE to have a playful big sister or brother to shadow and learn from in his forever home.
    Cats have not been tested, but he did meet a cat in a carrier at the vets and was curious, but not obsessed or aggressive.
  4. He is very gentle, especially for a puppy. Everyone he has met has called him sweet. He has never mouthed me, even when nervous or scared. He gets upset if I raise my voice with my resident dogs. With his humans, he prefers snuggling to rough-and-tumble play. He does jump up when excited, but he is so small and he does it so slowly and carefully that you can barely feel him touching you (we are still working on correcting this). For this reason, I think that he would be fine around children, although little ones could get still get knocked over when he gets the excited puppy zoomies and he may be distressed by the noisy and rowdy play of younger children. As you can see from the picture, he enjoyed meeting one of the teenage neighbor kids.
  5. He likes to chew and to accumulate items, but has no resource guarding and has thus far focused his attention mostly on the dog toys (give or take a shoe or two with particularly interesting laces and a stray napkin). Although at the moment I cannot locate my TV remote. :) He does show great counter cruiser potential. For these reasons, he is not ready for free roam yet and will need to be confined when alone, at least until he matures a bit.

Burney will be neutered this week and then will be ready for his forever home. Things that he will need to become the great dog he can be will include:

  1. Plenty of encouragement and training; he is still a little scared from his tumultuous start in life and will need help to learn manners and to continue to gain confidence. He is cautiously trusting of humans and likes to please them, which will help make training easier and fun. He has virtually no training at this time, so his manners are rough and he doesn't have great recall, but he has very few bad habits and is learning fast.
  2. Plenty of exercise and play time; a tired puppy is a good puppy. While he is crated for the work day with one break here and does OK, it would be great if his forever home had someone home more during this puppy period where bonding, training and socialization are vital.
  3. A fenced yard would be great as he enjoys exploring and chasing other dogs around, although he may be OK with frequent walks, play dates and a tie-out.
  4. A family that wants to include him as much as possible - he loves to be with his people and thrives on being a part of whatever you do.

A reminder that puppies are a lot of work. Burney has a great start in a lot of areas, but the first year especially with any dog requires a lot of effort, consistency, patience, financial investment, and mostly time. Burney is willing to return whatever you can offer him in triplicate!

Contact your placement advisor if you think your house could benefit from the powers of Super Puppy!

Updates

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Hey, everyone, look who found me! It is my boy! We are going to have the best times together playing and going to obedience class and hanging out on the sofa. And he says that at the end of the day, I can have some space on the bed with him too. It will be the best! He even gave me a special name; I am now known as Super Puppy Cooper! That is much cooler than Burney.

Another great thing is that my boy comes with a family (including a girl dog), and I get to hang out with them too. How lucky can a puppy get?

Thanks so much to everyone at RAGOM for helping me find a great life. The journey hasn't been easy, but now I can't wait to travel the rest of the path.

Your Friend,

SP Cooper

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Super Puppy Burney 14-272 here. So this week, I asked FM why she thinks I haven't found my forever family yet. After all, I am sweet and smart and cute and have been working hard on my Super Puppy Powers in order to be the best puppy I can be! But still, I have no family. FM said not to worry, that my family is out there. She said it is just that lots of people come to the RAGOM web page looking for purebred Golden Retrievers, and I am not one of those. I thought about this and decided that if being more like a Golden Retriever would help me find my family, I would do what I could to be more Golden Retriever-ish. So I asked FM to tell me about Golden Retrievers. She told me most Goldens are large, fuzzy dogs that like people of all ages, are playful, like other dogs, and like swimming. She also said that a true Golden Retriever would NEVER chew on anything that didn't belong to him or her.

So this week, I focused my puppy powers on showing how I am like a Golden Retriever:

To be a large, fuzzy dog, I eat all of my kibble and have now gained 8 lbs. and several inches in height. With my long legs, FM predicts I will get even bigger, to end up a nice medium size. I am also doing my best to grow some nice blonde feathering on my cute bum. I will be fluffy in no time! The picture of me with some of my buddies shows how my coloring matches my Golden Retriever friends, and also shows those new feathers!

To show that I like people of all ages, I threw a big party, also known as Halloween. I invited kids of all ages from the neighborhood and helped FM stand out on the porch and greet them. If they were nice and gave me pets and scratches, we gave them some "good human" reward treats. I had an absolutely grand time and was fine with everyone, no matter how silly they looked.

As far as liking other dogs and liking to play, I had a playdate at the beach this weekend. I went with a 5-dog group and we ran into 2 other dogs there and I liked them all. I've also liked all of the canines that I've met at the vets and out and about on the town. I will admit that I am particularly enamored of my foster sister, Splash, and play with her all the time and would like to grow up to be just like her. I have not met any kitties yet, but FM hopes to have me something called "cat tested" soon.

As for the swimming thing.... well, I had seen Splash do it a few times, and my new beach friends were doing it, and even my old foster brother, Nic, took a dip (and he never wants to do any fun things). So I decided to try it. In true Puppy Power fashion, I geared up, waited for FM to throw a stick, and then I pounced! I've included a picture of this amazing feat as well. Nobody warned me that water doesn't hold you up, but fortunately my puppy prowess allowed me to make it back to shore. In a gesture of chivalry, I decided to let Splash have the stick (that is my story and I'm sticking to it).

The whole bit about Goldens never chewing on things that don't belong to them is, I have a feeling, a fib that FM told. I've read the RAGOM pages of my fellow fosterites and I know that there are other puppies (and some grown-up dogs!) out there that occasionally fail to recognize the difference between a tug toy and a shoe. I think FM was just trying to make a point with that comment.

So there you see that while I may not be a purebred Golden Retriever, I am becoming more "Golden" every day. If you would like to meet me and see for yourself, come on out to the Meet-and-Greet at Petco in Duluth this Sunday, Nov. 9, between 12:00 and 2:00, where I will be continuing to work on showing how much I love dogs and people!

I hope to see you there.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Super Puppy Burney here with an update on my accumulation of Super Puppy Powers! Let me tell you what powers I've acquired this week:

  1. I have pretty much mastered the magic of "Sit." It seems like such a simple word, but I have found that "sit" is indeed very powerful; it can get you attention and petting, it can get you treats, it can get you let out of your crate, and can even get you let in or out of a door. At it's best, "sit" will get you a whole bowl of yummy dog food.
  2. I have made progress on the advanced Puppy Power called "Wait." This one is even harder than "sit," because it requires me to override my natural puppy energy and stay in one place. It is hard, but I am on my way to mastering this skill.
  3. Invisibility: This is an extremely handy skill because it means I can share space with another being - like being where Foster Mom's feet are, or where another dog is lying on the dog bed. Cool, huh?
    Foster Mom's note: Super Puppy thinks he has this skill, but for those of us without super powers, this puppy skill just means that he is likely to get underfoot when someone is walking or invade the personal space of the other dogs in the house. This is one power that should fade as Super Puppy matures, but it means he would not live well right now with a dog who resource guards their space or their possessions, and that humans need to monitor him closely.
  4. Chew Power. This one is easy for me. It enables me to chew on things for hours and hours on end. Foster Mom says that the good thing is that I apply this super power almost always to the large collection of dog toys around the house. I have very little interest in chewing on any human things unless they are related to food, at which point I am very interested.

In addition to my super powers, I have some other skills that will make me be invaluable as your personal Super Puppy! I am house-trained, crate-trained, get along with all people, and can always make you laugh with my silly antics. I hardly shed at all and have a virtually maintenance-free short coat. I sleep quietly through the night and wake excited about the new day. I like riding in the car, although I may whine a little bit if I think the driver isn't doing their job according to Super Puppy standards and they won't let me help. I had some surgery this week that means I can't ever have puppies, which is probably a good thing so I can concentrate on using my Puppy Powers to be the best family member that I can be. I like walks, although at the moment I am a little scared of places with lots of traffic and noise and prefer walking in places like the woods or a quiet neighborhood. I love following my doggy foster siblings around and trying to get them to play with me, and I am learning a lot from them about how I can grow into a Super Dog some day.

I have enjoyed learning about Super Powers here at Fosterville, but I believe that I am very much ready to use my Super Puppy Powers to fill the place of loyal and courageous defender of my very own family. Please let your placement advisor know if I can put my powers to work for you.