To get rid of puppy?

[chubbychipmonk]

Posting this on behalf on friend who doesn't know what to do.

She has a 4 yr old DD & 8 year old DS, is also in a relationship with DP who has 8 year old DD who stays at the house regularly.

She bought a Dalmatian puppy at Xmas who up until now has been playful & boisterous. She has been taking him to puppy classes & he seems to be training well. Last night however she was in the kitchen, heard a scream & found the dog had jumped up on DD & bitten her behind the ear whilst trying to retrieve a toy. Resulted in a hospital visit, tetanus jag & stitches.

Her DP (as well as his ex) now understandably don't want the dog round their daughter. My opinion is also that she should get rid of the dog as its too big a risk. However she has spoken to otherswho advise that the dog is merely being playful & she should persevere. Basically she just wants to see what the common consensus is, it's already causing arguments between her & DP. My opinion is she's being unreasonable to keep the puppy but what do others think?

How old was the puppy when she bought it?

Ignoring all the inconsistencies, which could lead a more suspicious person to believe that the puppy was indeed bought from a puppy mill for a present....

If your friend is still reading and still wants to keep the puppy, she's going to need to make a lot of changes to make this work.

A few walks a day is not enough for this breed, as an adult it will need at least 2 x 60 minutes, with a fair portion of that off lead. We bred these dogs for stamina and did a jolly good job at it, unfortunately this means they are not suited to laid back, family life. Exercise should be built up over a period of time in large breeds, to avoid injury to the growing joints. 5 minutes per month of life and no running on hard surfaces/jumping/excessive stair climbing until it's fully grown. This means she will have a high energy demanding puppy who is going to need someone to give it a lot of attention and things to do while it is growing to keep it busy. Clicker training and mind games will suffice for this Kikopup is excellent for tips on clicker training. Training at least once per day is a must for a young dog, although shorter, frequent sessions would be better.

Leaving a puppy alone that long is cruel and will lead to behavioral issues. Your friend needs to replace the dog walker with doggy day care, one who will assist with training would be best, but that does not mean your friend gets to not train on doggy daycare days.

She needs to stick at the puppy classes and also find some one on one help to help her teach bite inhibition.

The puppy should have a crate where it can go to chill out/be safe from the children.

It must never, ever, ever, be left with the children without close, adult supervision again. Not even for five seconds. The phone rings, puppy comes with mum or dad or goes in it's crate before she answers it. No excuses.

This is the minimum your friend needs to do to keep this pup safe and happy, if she can't commit to that, she does need to rehome and as said plenty of times before never get another pet.

We are looking to get a new puppy since we lost out GSD last year. We live on a farm with no young children.
We are in the south east if she is interested in rehoming.

goodness me this is another world, why have they all got daft names?

Yikes.

This could have been much worse, I'm glad to see that it wasn't.

Puppies tend to bite - they are puppies and don't know any better yet.

This event makes me think that this person didn't know or understand that a dog of any age should never be left alone with a child - Including "In the same room but not in sight". - I hope that they realise this now.

In the short term, again ? puppies bite.

In the short AND long term - No matter how well trained or well behaved the dog has been in the past, people, including children, can inadvertently make the dog feel threatened one way or another. (There are always clues, subtle or otherwise.)

With no adult to step in and stop the child doing whatever it is doing... a dog is an animal, and when all else fails in dealing with a situation, it will revert to instinct.
Especially a risk if (and this is a slightly crude explanation) the dog perceives the "pack hierarchy" in such a way that considers itself to be above the child.

In this instance, it is possible it is just the puppy being a puppy - hard to say given the naturally limited information (very hard to get a feel for a dog?s behaviour from a few lines of text!)

I am a little uneasy with the idea of getting rid of the puppy, but it does sound like this person does not entirely know how to handle this dog (again, with the limited information from original post, ect ect.. I've not had the chance to read the entire thread...)
Whenever obtaining a dog, it is always a good idea to have first researched usual characteristics of the breed(s) being considered before obtaining a puppy, because if they do not have the time to correctly train and stimulate the dog, it will NOT behave and WILL be a risk to have around.

If they are sure they can handle this animal, train it, and raise their child to respect and command it as well (if not better) as they can, keep it!

But the most important thing to remember is that this dog is an animal, and must be treated like one - with kindness and love, but NOT as a son or daughter, as I have seen so many people make the mistake of in the past.

Please google pack theory.

Its a very outdated theory.

Dogs don't live in packs, that is wolves. Wolves have a pack hierarchy similar to ours, parents and elder siblings lead through experience and knowledge. There's no squabbling to get to top of the pack. That only happens when most dangerous animal of all gets involved and pulls them out the family unit to stick in Zoos for our viewing pleasure.

Also dogs are not wolves and before anyone says "Oh, but they are descended from wolves, they are the same" I am descended from an Ape, but I don't go throwing shit at people who annoy me or eating lice off of my children.

Sorry but I'm still wondering where on earth that poor dog is, all day, whilst the owner is at work.
Because aside from the fact it's a stupid idea to leave a little puppy alone alone, apart from a walk in the afternoon, I can only imagine its crated all day otherwise it would be chewing everything.

BigDog was crated all flipping day and night by his previous "owners"

It's horrible. He was a very unhappy, scared, mess when we rescued him.

For the public s safety please report the doctor immediately. There is absoloutely no way you would say you can't decide if its a claw or a bite, they are comletely different mechanisms and even the juniourest junior of housemen would be able to differentiate. I am seriously beginning to doubt thgis thread, it is full of holes. Weird dog weird owners weird hospital

I used to live by a place that had wolves. The hand reared wolves would attack you (apparently) but the ones in the enclosure wouldn't and I saw staff walking around in there

by the ones in the enclosure, I meant the ones that were not hand reared by humans!

Wolves have a different 'crucial development' stages to dogs. Wolves period of critical socialisation starts much earlier than with dogs, when they are still blind and deaf, and is shorter too, so it's much harder to socialise them safely with humans.

The wolves in the enclosure will not have seen humans during this critical period and so would be afraid of them, which normally leads to avoidance, unless forced into a confrontation, in which case they would attack out of self defense.

Which sanctuary was this OwlLady? I wouldn't mind Googling it to see if they've published any research, I'm study Canine Evolution at the moment and as part of that we have to learn about wolves and the differences between the two. It's fascinating stuff.

I have a 10 week old Pitbull foster in my kitchen, he keeps getting beaten up by the cats. I don't think he would be physically strong enough to tear skin and he has a big old set f jaws on him. His owners excuse for dumping him was that the child is allergic. Its funny how 99.999% of the shallow people I encounter have allergic children and the nice jolly dog lovers kids survive hair and slobber and the odd shared bonio

My dog was a nippy as hell when he was a pup.
he grew out of it it though and is lovely now.

I dunno, Theo, I effectively had my ear pierced by a four month old GSD pup as a young teen. T'was my own fault for getting her over excited and play wrestling, but it bloody hurt, she was only playing but her tooth went right through my earlobe. I still have the scar. It a tooth has caught in the wrong place, it could have ripped the skin. Those puppy teeth are deadly

Ah, I see I have some misunderstandings, quite understandable - I'm short on time guys, so just quickly, and at the risk of further misunderstanding on what I'm saying (text is such a limiting medium at times!), as I said originaly:

"when all else fails in dealing with a situation, it will revert to instinct."
and
"...this is a slightly crude explanation... (pack stuff)"

We revert to instinct too at times (Flight or fight), so anyone that says dogs never, ever use "the pack" as a way of dealing with a situation is cutting themselves off from a potentially useful way of understanding them.

(Also, mentioning this as a personal bugbear... we aren't descended from apes; we're both descended from a common ancestor!)

Thanks guys

as I said before my dog was nippy when we got him he was given up because of nipping don't people know that puppies bite and jump and nip do they expect them to be perfectly behaved and stay that 'awwy' puppy forever ?

If this pup is now three months old and it was bought on Dec 10th.....then it must literally have been about 6 WEEKS OLD when bought. This is far, far too young. Bloody hell. Do people know nothing?

Fight, flight, freeze or 'flirt' is an instinct all mammals have, cutting pack theory out of the question does not 'cut off a potentially useful way of understanding them' on contrary. Dogs do not, nor have they ever lived in packs with rigid hierarchies. They are also perfectly aware that we are people and they are dogs. They do not, nor have they ever tried to dominate us or become 'top dog', using pack theory to explain problematic behavior, is lazy and and and as much as use as comparing the dogs behavior to that of a goldfish.

Dooin "I don't go round throwing shit at people who annoy me"

Well when I came in asking for House Special, Meat House Special, that certainly wasn't chilli sauce you threw at me

@70.

I had another one of those today, although he asked for a 'Cantonese special' so I only had to narrow it down from around 15 different meals

Countrykitten, my math says five and a half weeks

Can I asks question? When I was in Botswana, there were wild dogs which were native to the area. The guide told us they lived in a pack and one dog was always dominant. This certainly looked the case?

Hen, do you mean actual african wild dogs? Sort of giant fox sort of looking?