Hey everyone,

I have had Kaia for 6 days now and so far (knock on wood) I am very happy with her behavior. She is energetic, eating her food, drinking H2O sleeping for a good portion of the night (I tire her out a lot before bed time), only a few accidents so far in the house (peeing) and has been pooping regularly 1-2 times a day. I switched her Wed 9-5-12 to a raw diet of cut of chicken breast. As of today, she is being offered 3 meals breakfast and dinner 8.0 oz a meal and 4 oz for lunch, spaced 6 hours apart (6am 12pm 6pm), so she is offered give or take 1.25 lbs of food per day depending on her appetite and she has a grass fed raw hide that I let her chew on at her leisure. I tired giving her chicken necks holding it for her but she can't seem to chew down on them, so I have stuck with raw chicken breast which she loves. For the first two days of the raw diet her stools were diarrhea like but have since been hard. I notice however they are fairly small.

She has her first vet visit tomorrow.

She has been playing outside in a fenced in grass yard for 15-20 min at a clip. She mostly walks around sniffs and nibbles grass. Occasionally she will jog a bit.

What is the difference between a walk and yard play as far as the rule of 5 min per month of age. She is almost 9 weeks old so just over 2 months. Does her yard play walking around etc for 15-20 min too much for her? I don't want to cause undue stress on her joints.

Also when she settles down for bed time I am noticing she will sleep for about 3 hours then i take her out for potty. She comes back in with some energy. Should I be putting her right back to sleep in her crate and endure any whining or should I do some play with her for a bit. I dont want her to think that middle of night potty time is for play time but is this confusing her since after pottying during the day we play...? What is best?

Thanks

Scott and Kaia

p.s. I want to upload a saved image of her on my desktop but cant figure out how?

Yard playing is fine since the grass and dirt isn't too much stress on the joints. The five minute rule is for going on walks that are mostly sidewalk/concrete and hard surfaces. That's when you want to take it easy. She's fine running around in the back yard!

I experienced the bedtime thing too and I had success with putting her back to bed and dealing with a few minutes of whining. Eventually she'll hold it through the night so I wouldn't worry about confusing her. She'll know play time comes after potty but she won't need to have a midnight potty break in a few months.