Brooks Update: Four Months Old!

We sure hit the jackpot with this puppy. He is *such* a great dog and a really lovely puppy. Everywhere we go, people’s comments are how fluffy he is and how surprisingly calm he is for a pup.

Brooks is about four and a half months old now and is growing rapidly! I’m really not sure how much he weighs. Probably close to 45 or 50 pounds, and we expect he’ll top out around 80.

At this point, we’ve settled into a really nice routine with Brooks. He sleeps until 6 or 6:30 and hangs out with us upstairs until we go down for the day, which is a much appreciated change from the initial early wakeups with him.

Brooks spends the day outside, off-leash, snoozing on the front steps. He gets quite a lot of exercise from being able to roam our yard during the day, on top of frequent walks. Alex takes him for a 20ish-minute walk in the mornings, then we take Brooks to drop Ben off at school, and sometimes he comes with on the pickup walk to get Ben, too.

Fetch is something we’re working on with Brooks. Alex is great at getting Brooks into it, but I have less finesse here. Basic training is going really well! He has good recall {coming when called} and knows some basic commands. He’s been really receptive to training.

Currently our biggest challenges with Brooks involve him jumping up either on people or putting his paws up on the counter {grrrrr!} trying to get food. It’s definitely getting better with training, but those are quite frustrating. He also goes after the kids stuffed animals, especially if the kids are holding them.

Brooks seems to really have an old soul – he’s like an old dog trapped in a puppy’s body! He reminds us so much of Jackson, which is really special for us to have those frequent memories of our beloved dog.

Don’t be mistaken, though, this has been far from easy to juggle young kiddos and a puppy. It was really prohibitive having a pup for the first 8-10 weeks or so. We could hardly bring him anywhere since he wasn’t fully vaccinated {against Parvo virus}, but we couldn’t leave him home for very long, and it was summer so we couldn’t leave him in the car either.

The middle of the night wake ups, plus the early mornings were really exhausting, especially since it coincided with a huge sleep regression with Hannah. It felt like once we finally got the kids to bed, we’d have to turn our attention to Brooks and get him worn out so he’d sleep well. That was no fun. Thankfully we’re past that now!

We’re so, so very excited to have Brooks in our lives. He is such a fantastic dog, and well worth the initial challenges. We’re really looking forward to more hiking with him, playing in the snow and having his companionship. Dogs are such incredible creatures!