This post is part of our weekly series on raising our Vizsla puppy, Zooka.  You can use our posts as a guide to help raise your own puppy, regardless of breed. Keep in mind that different breeds might develop at different rates, so while you can do these things with any breed, your breed might need certain things at slightly different stages or ages.  Click here to see our list of all updates.

Notes from Week 20:

• Continue housetraining
• Continue training for meals
  • and short sessions between meal times
  • continue with everything we've been doing so far
  • continue building duration and raising expectations
  • continuing to watch for new behaviors and encourage previous behaviors we like during shaping/capturing sessions
• Traversing full flight of stairs on his own
  • first time we have started allowing him to traverse the full flight of stairs on his own
  • prior to this week we were carrying him
  • then working on a couple of steps at a time and building a step at a time
  • still supervise carefully to make sure he is confident and SAFE on the stairs!
• Continue with group training classes
• Nail trims and muzzle training, continued
• More walks on property trails
  • primarily using 20 foot line
• Field trips
  • local park
    • one we have not been to before
    • LOTS of people
    • Lots of kids on playground, soccer fields, scooters, etc.
  • met up with a friend for a walk on the Highline Canal Trail
    • worked on sitting for my friend to approach and greet
    • our first walk of this type
    • biggest difficulty was learning NOT to interact with the dogs passing by
      • our rule is that our dogs do NOT interact with unknown dogs when out on walks or hikes
      • more pulling here than our walks at home on our own trails with no other dogs or people around!
      • did very well for his first time in this type of environment
      • interested in the golfers on the golf course we walked past
• Play Dates
  • play time at the end of Puppy Class
  • Aussie puppy (from his Puppy Class)
    • we have not had a play date before
    • played well, they are well-matched in size and play style
    • they also both can get pretty wound up, so we took more breaks than we have with many of our other play dates
  • Collie and Border Collie/Aussie
    • we have played before with these two
    • BC/Aussie had very little interest in playing with the other dogs this time
    • BC/Aussie did some growling at him to tell him to back off
    • played well with the Collie
      • she prefers running/chasing
      • he prefers wrestling
      • they both did a good job of finding a happy combo of the two preferred play styles

• Diet
  • continue with the frozen snacks while he is still teething