Over the last few years, ThorpeWood has hosted quite a few litters of hound puppies on the farm. These puppies are an especially fun part of our programming as our students get a chance to cuddle and take walks with these darlings – in addition to learning how to properly greet a dog (find more info from here about the best dog trainers available around you). After a few months, the puppies go back to their home in New Jersey and are reintegrated into a community pack of hounds, where they learn to hunt. Recently, we checked in on these pups to see how they’ve grown! Here are a few updates:
From our first litter of foxhounds…Barnacle is now a father!
Here he is as a pup with our preschoolers back in the spring of 2017…
…and here he is full grown!
And these are his babies!
This litter of pups, sired by Barnacle, came to the farm too! Among them, a little girl called Almond stood out as the smart, athletic one. She once led her siblings in jumping out of the pen we put them in – and they ran through the woods to find us with our preschoolers by the pond!
Here’s Almond as a pup on the farm in the summer of 2018…
…and here she is full grown! She still jumps out of 5′ tall fences to join her friends on the other side of the kennel!
Our final puppy update comes from our litter of basset hounds who stayed at the farm. Rosette held the title of cutest pup, and now is the best of her litter at hunting rabbits. Her keen little nose has gained her respect in the larger pack, too.
Here is Rosette on the farm in the fall of 2017…
…and here she is full grown!
We plan to get more updates on our program puppies in the future! Stay tuned!