Puppy and newborn

[Laurashakey]

Has anyone brought up a puppy and newborn at the same time?
The breed is shar pei.

It would be like having two newborns with very different needs. I really wouldn't recommend - plus having a boisterous teenage dog with a crawling/just walking baby will be very difficult to manage.

My puppy (now 10 months) was really hard work - I barely slept for the first month, toilet trips at least every hour during the day (are you going to be able stand outside waiting for the puppy to wee every hour, with a newborn?), the teething was not fun (puppies bite, a lot).

Raising a puppy, toilet training and laying all the training groundwork for a good family dog is time consuming. It would be very, very challenging to do this with a newborn.

Have you had shar peis before? They can be lovely dogs, but they are not an easy breed. They need consistent training and early socialisation. They are pretty stubborn and strong-willed, & can be wary of strangers (they were bred as guard dogs, & later for fighting). They also have an increased incidence of skin conditions (I worked as a vet receptionist and a shar pei with sore skin / an ear infection can be a pretty grumpy character, to put it mildly).

My advice would be to not do this. Personally I’m not of the belief that puppies are the hardest work ever and are basically like another baby but they certainly are time consuming and you need to lay decent groundwork while they’re young to help prevent problems later in life… which you’re not going to be able to do very well with a newborn.

You posted about this last week.

Did you not like the responses you got on your previous thread, which was overwhelmingly that it was a bad idea as your dog is currently very poorly trained?

I had a puppy and a 3 month old. Frankly it was hard work! But I had a demanding breed. It wasn’t so hard work that we gave up though and we had that pup until she was 14.5. I probably wouldn’t do it again though.

It’s very misleading to describe the dog as a ‘puppy’
I’ve read your other thread and the dog in question will be 10 months old when baby arrives.
Virtually adult sized and right in the midst of adolescence.

I personally think the excessive licking and hyper activity was probably your dog telling you she is anxious about the newborn that visited.

I think you need to follow some of the advice in the other thread with regards to training and boundary games.
Training her to settle in her bed would be the first thing I’d teach.