For anyone who's ever had a puppy - can you please explain how you're supposed to get your food shopping in?

[2sugars]

So, we collect our puppy this weekend, and presumably she will have had her first jab at 8 weeks (she'll be 9 when we get her). Given that our vet said wait 2 weeks after the first jab before the second, then another week after that before taking her out, how the effing hell are you supposed to do anything?

I will take her out, of course, holding her, but I can't see Marks and Sparks allowing me to pad round their food hall with a puppy tucked under my arm.

What on earth did you do? TIA

Leave the dog at home when you need to go out. They have little sense of time, so won't really be aware that you have been gone for more than 5 minutes.

Bloody hell UR, is there a black market in stolen puppies then? Or do they just keep them? Just find it bizarre really, that there are real-life Cruella De Vils out there . No one wants our arthritic 14yo Springer, that's for sure!

ST, it's more, I think, the bladder/bowel thing, which every book I've read says has to be emptied hourly at this age.

Oh, it will get emptied - no trouble there

2sugars, if the dog is chipped, the robber will hold it to ransom after getting the owner's details - they also sometimes torture the dogs (we've had one locally who chopped toes off) and demand LOTS of money or a nasty death of the animal

Very sad - even "mongrels" are being stolen round here now...never leave her alone, tied up anywhere - slightly annoying but safer for all concerned

If you contain her in a kitchen or something, just put newspaper on the floor to absorb any accidents - am sure you know that though!

My dog suffers seperation anxiety or something and I was told that I need to treat her like a dog and lay down some bounderies, so I bought a stair gate, put it on the kitcheen doorway and locked her away for half hour a day whilst I was just watching telly and when I went out. She broke thru 3 gates.
If i could go back, I'd do it so differently.
I got a dog after I m/c for the first time and I took her everywhere, we were never apart but now, she won't be apart if you know what I mean. The best thing you can do for the dog is to treat it like a dog, no carrying, no going everywhere with you and no run of the house either. Get a crate or cage, dogs live in the now and don't remember how they were treated yesterday.
Also when you go out, just leave, try to ignore dog for about half hour first and just go, no goodbyes, no fuss. And when you get in, ignore her, no fuss. When she calm call her over to say hello but if she jumps up she telling you when it's ok to play.
I'm sorry for going on but I've had nightmare time so sharing all I've learnt, and it all works. Goodluck

LF, that is horrific. It never (perhaps it should have) occured to me that people could be so evil. Where abouts in the country are you, where this is going on?

LBB, thanks for your post. I found it incredibly useful, since what you did would be the things we would most likely have done.

Good luck with it 2sugars. It's lovely to have a dog.
My vet tells me that my dog know's she's a dog and would be much happier if I stopped treating her like a human!
Because I said she must love me coz she jumps up at me when I come home, vet really laughed. Love is a human emotion that dogs are not capable of. What she is doing is displaying assertive behaviour.
You'll be fine. It'll be hard at first and expect 1 or 2 toilet accidents, but will be fine

We took on a rescue dog last year - she was just 6wks old when dumped by her cruel owners after they 'bodged' her docked tail, which was obviously illegal at this point.

She ended up in rescue kennels until muggins, ie me, came along and was told about a lovely little dog in desperate need of a loving family home.

I was taken to a back kennel, out of the public eye, and shown this scruffy tiny little thing looking very sorry for herself, surrounded by large noisy dogs in kennels either side, with a bloody messy stump for a tail recovering from its bodged attempt at being docked.

I immediately decided to reserve her having looked into those big brown eyes looking up at me.

At ten weeks we brought her home. She'd had one lot of jabs and was due to have her second lot in two weeks, and a week after that she could explore the big outside world.

During that time we bought a crate for her. She took to it straight away. We filled it with some toys, her bed from the kennels, her chews, water etc etc. We covered it with a blanket (to keep her warm) and here we are a year later and she still goes to her crate when she's had enough of being chased around the garden by the kids or simply wants to have a kip.

Having the crate also helped us with toilet training because rarely does a dog mess in its 'space'.

At night the door is kept shut on her crate because we have cats and she'd spend the entire night chasing them around the kitchen. During the day the door is left open and she can please herself.

Springer Spaniels are lovely dogs 2sugars but they have been known to be quite destructive so definitely a good idea to get a crate.

Do not let your puppy out on a lead for a walk, other than in your garden, until a good week after the second lot of jabs. They are not fully covered until then.

As regards you going out - there is no hard and fast rule as to how long you can leave your dog in its crate for. Whatever the dog is happy with as each dog is individual. Re grocery shopping? Just do it on the internet if you're that worried!

Dogs get stolen all over the place. It's really sad because often they will demand huge ransoms which the families will fork out, then a couple of weeks later they get stolen AGAIN! The people can't afford to pay a second ransom, and then the dog gets sold for £20 down the pub.

Make sure you get her microchipped ASAP, too.

And on the tag DO NOT PUT THE DOG'S NAME!!!

Put your house number, post code, phone number and on the other side put "Chipped, Please Scan" if she's chipped

Anyone finding her will have enough detail to contact you. If the name's on there, less than nice people will use it to their advantage of getting the dog to respond to them

I don't think it matters too much about their name, if a dog is going to come to its name it'll come when its called in the right tone of voice, but they are usually stolen from being tied up or gardens or cars. A friend of mine had their 7mth springer puppy stolen from their garden (this is Somerset) they searched for weeks following all the normal routes, and eventually gave up and got another dog. 10mths later they got a call, the police had raided a travellers site near London and she'd been found, they'd used her for breeding, selling the pups on. She was in pretty poor condition and had been with the travellers longer than her owners, but she's settled in again now. They would never have got her back if she hadn't been chipped.
I think stealing to breed is fairly common.