tulpe, and other very recently acquired puppy owners

[Slubberdegullion]

I pick up my puppy on thursday. Am everso slightly over excited about it.

Can you tell me what stuff has been excellent and well worth buying, and what has not. I'm off to PAH tomorrow for the final bits and bobs.

So far I have:
crate
1 bit of vet bed stuff from Ikea (I'm going to buy some more tomorrow, how much will I need?)
2 bowls
ginormous sack of puppy food
a huge pile of puppy books
a clicker

so what else?

toys?
a kong? is she too young for one yet, she'll be 8 weeks on Thursday
a collar (iirc there was a thread about collars, what did you get in the end?)
a lead of some sort

tia

Lots of toys, lots and lots and lots of them so you can rotate them regularly to stave off as much chewing of furniture/shoes/dds' toys/remote controls, etc as possible.

We bought a matching collar and lead , but little puppy teeth do chew through fabric leads.

What are you getting?

hello Olihan, long time no cake talk

Black lab bitch, photo on profile. I visited her today and had to restrain myself from making a dash to the car and bringing her home.

So do I just buy up the puppy toy section at PAH then?

oh yes, I have a stair gate and have erected it today.

Snap, but ours is 2 in August. She is the most fantastic dog, it's a good choice .

Yep, just go and hand over your life savings to PAH. No point in being half hearted about it.

You still going to EP?

Bugger, just made the mistake of looking at your profile, am restraining myself from lurking in your village to follow you and tie you up in the boot so I can have her instead. They are SOOOOO yummy at that age. I think Mabel's on my profile, after all the cakes.

Does she have a name yet?

do PAH do a loyalty card? I'll always kick myself for never getting the mothercare one.

yup still going to EP, although the numbers dwindled massively and I think there may be a further cull at the start of this term (must enrol). You missed the JOY that was royal icing flooding work (for collars) . i have considerably more grey hairs than I did in dec.

Elsie.

aww Mabel is gorgeous too. Which is better your cakes or your lovely dog ?

I saw several labs on the beach this week flinging themselves in and out of the sea to fetch varius articles lobbed in for them. I noted I will need to purchase a serious frisbee for when she is a bit bigger.

Ergh, that's a royal iced step too far. I'm hoping dh's job won't take him away so much so I can come back. The odd/sadistic side of me misses the weekly stress of trying to make the too runny/too stiff icing do what it should do.

kitchen roll
floor cleaner

My 'puppy' is one year old today . It doesn't seem possible. Good luck and enjoy!

Elsie is a PERFECT lab name. They definitely suit old lady names .

Nah, you don't need anything more than a few pebbles on the beach. Mabel quite happily dives down to the seabed to fetch the exact one we threw in - we get a few funny looks when she's been down there for a minute or so without coming up for air .

I have never used the crate, but I know that is because I am incredibly soft and wimped out of shutting her away. And she was not a chewer so I did not really need to.

Will use it to acclimatise her to a crate on our holiday in the summer though so it won't be a complete loss.

Don^t be tempted by cheap toys in the supermarkets, even our non-chewer destroyed them in minutes, leaving a trail of plastic around the house.

Daphne currently has 3 collars and 4 leads cause I have to have her matching my outfit. We tried out the harnesses but she did not like them.

Btw, the cakes on your profiles are incredible. I am very jealous.

have floor cleaner and roll mrs fred

Olihan, do they really do that, swim down the the bottom? hahahaha
They are daft

LOL @ Mme's lead and collar overload.

I'm planning to kip on the sofa bed in the kitchen for a bit when we first get her. I'm lying to myself that this is for housetraining purposes when really I know deep down I will be unable to leave her alone in the crate if she cries
[wimp]

Mabel does but she is not all there . She stands with her head completely submerged while she ferrets about on the seabed.

Must go, she's spitting her tennis ball at me in a very meaningful way.

LOL

hope to see you back with Sheila at some point in the future

HOLY COW

can you buy shares in PAH?

£75, yes seventy five whole english pounds later we emerge with a carrier bag of stuff and a bag of vet bed.

Just HOW much more expensive is the real vet bed stuff compared with the Ikea stuff for a start??
There better be some extreme difference in sleeping quality on the posh stuff or she's getting ikea all the way.

I got 2 puppy kongs and a kong filler aerosol jobby to fill them with. I think this might be the last time I buy that too.

I let the dds choose the collar and lead. I could shoot myself for my stupidity for allowing them to do that. Pink, glittery with daisies on [eyeroll fantasia].
Next collar I am choosing.

Ha ha ha ha ha @ the glittery daisies. You'll be hounded out of the village for that, won't you. I've heard it's posh where you are .

We managed to compromise on a purple collar and lead with bones on for her first set. Luckily the dses vetoed the really naff pink ones.

75 squid is going some, isn't it? We just bought a mattress cum cushiony thing to fit the crate for about £11. What's so special about vet bed, then?

(Has anyone told you to make sure all the crate floor is covered with bedding, to discourage her seeing any part of it as a toilet? Apparently if you put newspaper in part of it then they see that as an little ensuite and it's a bugger of a habit to break).

We gave Mabel an old teddy of the dcs to snuggle up with when she first arrived, so she wouldn't be lonely . That and a radio on low in the kitchen seemed to keep her happy at night. She still has it but it's now nicknamed Humpy Bear and lives in the garden because she's too unsociable with it - it's not just boy dog who get a bit over familiar with inanimate objects, it seems .

£75 is just the beginning ! have you got a thick old blanket you can stick over the crate? Our dog came used to that and it is helpful in maintaining her routine when she stays at her trainer and I think acts as a blackout blind for summer mornings (ignore the time I am posting, she's in season and waking desperate for the loo, at least I hope that's why she's wakng up at 5am something)

It is expensive but Simple Solutions (Pets at Home) is great for accidents on carpet and does last a long time. I'd think about a whistle in the not too distant future, useful for recall, start as you mean to go on with that one or you will be prancing round in bushes for ever more.

She looks utterly gorgeous and am looking forward to updates on how she is getting on, the Elsie diaries please !

oh cuteness!!!

WE have had our puppy a few weeks now, but toys are a big hit here, our last dog never played with them, so this is all new! PAH had 3 for 2 on toys at the moment. Puppy kong is great for when he is shut in his crate and the rest are a combination of rubber things, teethers, those knotted raggy things and old tiny teddies. He loves them ALL and has already learnt to fetch!

Enjoy

Wynken - crate is already covered with thick fleecy blanket and is all set up like a interiors magazine for the dog with the (luxury) vet bed on (all) of the bottom and cuddly toys resting in each corner.

I'm full aware that this scene of calm with last about 2 mins when she arrives.

Olihan, I have managed to procure a few soft toys (no hard eyes) from the dds. The ones that haven't been played with FOR YEARS but all of a sudden now they are going to be given to the dog are their most beloved and cherished toys

Swanky, I got two different types of the puppy kongs, plus the weird looking and smelling filler stuff. Am quite keen to see how she does with them.

I will update Wynken

Personally I'd not give your pup teddy type toys, as how will they know the difference between the ones they are allowed and ones that really are precious to your girls? My dd has a huge number of soft toys, so our pup has nothing even vaguely like them. But perhaps this is a non issue and I have deprived him unnecessarily?

The only thing I regret buying for our puppy were Puppypads, and I suspect that this might be a common thing, as we were given a whole bundle of them by friends too. The things that made life most bearable was a large selection of chew toys, supplemented as soon as possible by puppy chews, and then bones (and now he is on normal rawhide chews). Finding things that he would really lie and concentrate on made a big difference to our lives in those first mad weeks.

Nooka, our dog goes on soft toy raids in the DC's rooms when the door is open so I think you did the right thing !

Yes! Chew toys - and freeze a filled kong every now and then; a frozen one seems to specially help with teething.

Lab puppies love chewing a lot. They also love toys which are a bit of a puzzle - the same principle as a stuffing a kong - anything which makes them use their brains on how to get food (normally out of their daily allowance) out of something really helps calm them down and wear them out. Especially when you're sticking to the 10 minute walking rule! For a dog, concentrating, puzzling and thinking is as exhausting as racing about IME.

I didn't worry about the soft toy thing - my labs know which are theirs and which aren't. It takes a little bit of learning for them but they know things are theirs and which aren't.

I did lose a lot of loo rolls to one of my girls though - think Andrex puppy and you'll get the picture

well she took the soft toy out of the crate, rolled it around the garden and then left it under the hedge (much to dd1's consternation) we've had some success with one of the kongs (with the squeezy kong filler stuff) and the rope toy thing.

The biggest hits have been the end of the hose, my crocs and my slippers [eye roll]

I'm going to stick some of her food in the other kong thing to play with after she wakes up.

You've got her! How did she get on last night - did she settle okay or did she cry all night? Guess it's time to clear the floors and lock everything chewable away! Any new pics?

empty boxes, try her on empty cardboard boxes, my dogs still love tearing up an empty box and it keeps them occupied when we go out without them.
Much cheaper then crocs and slippers too!