The Pupper comes first, and the 40 kg rover waits until after the systems-engineering week. That ordering isn’t an accident. It’s the whole philosophy in one decision.
Build small and stupid, then big and smart. A legged robot the size of a housecat teaches gaits, contact, and closed-loop control at a scale where a mistake costs a servo, not a limb. When the same control loop has to move forty kilos, the failure modes stop being funny, so you want every lesson already paid for on the small platform.
The systems-engineering week sits in between on purpose. Requirements, interfaces, and an FMEA before cutting metal on something heavy enough to hurt you. By the time the big rover’s frame exists, the hard thinking is done and the build is mostly execution.
Sequence the danger last. The rover isn’t harder to design than the Pupper. It’s harder to be wrong about.