New puppy thread, where new puppy owners can come for help and advice and hopefully clever people like minimu, midori et al will check regularly (please) to help us...

[Happymm]

Exactly what it says on the tin really. Kings idea, that we have a thread where we can all come and ask for help, advice, support or just to vent and that the much more experienced people will come and help us out :)

Quickly googles Feliway lol

oooooooooooooooo I have dap spray, same sort of thing.

hope your nights are getting better tooearly, we have had another better night so defiantly getting there, got up at 1am for a wee (had pooed in crate) and then slept till 7am. off to vets for first injections and check over this morning. cant wait till I can take him out.

Alicia, you just have to keep plugging at it, be consitant and it will come in the end.

Cant believe we have had him nearly a week already, things are already claming down a lot.

Nights seem to be impoving a little Thank God! He slept last night, waking up at 5.30 this morning, the night before was the same but waking at 5.00. I've given up on putting him back in the crate at this point, I think he is just wide awake, so I am getting up and dozing on the sofa. His crate has been clean and dry though in the mornings, and he had no accidents at all yesterday
Dita, I hope you enjoy your first walks, only a few weeks now

Had two mornings now when the porch has been dry :) Think the darker mornings are helping as didn't go down till after 7am this morning and she was in her bed rather than waiting at the kitchen door for us (the door is frosted glass so we can see her sitting there waiting patiently normally).

Wish DS was a quick a learner....

DH gets to come to puppy class this evening with us as he has a few days off work before the kids go back to school on monday. Looking forward to having some peace and quiet during the day when they are in school so that I can concentrate on puppy training.

alicia forgive me as I can't remember how old your pup is but I was exactly where you are now a few weeks back. And wailing and moaning on here about it too.=, bigtime. Everyone else's puppy seemed to be good at it.
My Monty is 5 months this week, and has finally got it just about sussed, although there are still a few lapses. I confess that in the end I broke the rules and yelled at him when I caught him in the act, because whilst he liked all the praise he got for weeing outside, he didn't seem to twig that that meant he shouldn't go inside. He has also got into the habit of going when out on walks, which had escaped him before.
So many kind folks on here promised me that it would get better and I still despaired but they were right. It has.
My current concern is that he doesn't ask or indicate to go out. We have to pre-empt it still. Also, as it's still summer (haha, sort of) the doors are often open so he can wander in and out. Am wondering what will happen when it's cold and wet and he's shut in.

clam Monty is 11 weeks old tomorrow so still early days, but it's just so frustrating when you take him out to the toilet and two minutes after coming into the house he does a wee, BUT today has been much, much better, in fact only one accident in the house this morning and everything else has been outside. He even scratched at the door this evening to go out, so maybe we're getting somewhere.

What I've had to do is put him in his cage whenever I'm not going to be able to keep my eye completely on him and this is normally when I'm doing piano practice with the DC's and showering them and putting them to bed. He's also started putting himself in there when he's tired which is good.

He has had a lovely afternoon in the garden with me helping me dig my veg patch over, he dug lots of lovely holes which I think is cute today but I'll probably go mad about in a couple of days when he digs up my winter veg.

He also tried to bite me today. The DC's have a goal post in the garden and he's obsessed with the net, two weeks ago he was small enough to fit through the gaps in the net but he's growing quickly and today he just got his head in there. I'm very worried he's going to choke himself when I'm not looking. When I went to disconnect him tonight he tried to bite me because I was spoiling his fun, I'm afraid he got a tap on the nose and sharp "no". I can't have him thinking biting is OK. Most of the time he's a placid calm little thing but he was trying to assert his authority on this one - hopefully I won that argument but we'll have to wait and see. I'd prefer he got it out of his system now while his teeth are small and don't do any damage.

pup asked to go out into the garden for a wee earlier. Woo!

Oops sorry, just used my MN bookclub name there sorry - have changed back to normal.

Woohoo! Puppy stayed in bed until 5.50am before barking to come out
Clean dry crate, and no noise in the night.
We have had no wees or poos inside for 2 days

We did have our first nip yeserday. Pup was aiming for my daughter's (9) clothes, but as she was wearing jeggings caught her leg instead, leaving a bruise I'm blaming my husband being home, and playing more roughly with the pup for this, so he has been banned from this (husband not pup)

Are things improving for us all ladies?

I just found myself standing on the doorstep in my pyjamas, holding pup up so he could see the recycling van going past. I must have looked insane especially as I was saying "see it's not scary"

I think I've lost my mind

tooearly that's very funny. If it's any consolation my neighbours (who don't speak English) thought my pup was called Justhaveapoo, because I spend all my time in the garden with him begging him to "just have a poo".

Haha Alicia, I'm glad it's not just me! (it's GoPee in our house lol)

chnaged puppy to raw food yesterday so slight tummy adjustments going on, hoping it will be better in end though. couldnt bear another night of waking up to an iams sented poo all over the crate. he certainly likes the food. what time does everyone feed there pups last meal as we are pooing in the crate every night (well eric not me).

cant decide if my house actually stinks or not though and we are just getting used to it. going to mop the floor with bio washing powder later.

Dita, we do last feed at 8.30, and have had no nighttime poos since the 3rd night home

I noticed that my house seemed to stink of dog after a couple of days, but this only lasted 2-3 days before the smell disappeared. I did think it may have just been me geting used to it, and not noticing anymore, but I have questioned everyone who comes in the house, and they said they could not smell it either

Monty is really funny about his food he saves it for later in the day so he's eaten half his breakfast now and will eat the rest later. It doesn't matter if I put less in his bowl he'll still only eat a bit of it. He stops eating his biscuits at about 6.00 and to be fair he's never pooed in his cage.

Is Iams not a good food then? I fed my first dog on it for years and she absolutely thrived on it. Monty is on this Royal Canin the vet prescribed but to be honest I don't think he likes it that much. I can get DH to bring other food from the UK because that's where he works during the week it's just finding the best one.

I've seen the website for the Raw food - does it have to be kept in the fridge before being used or could I bulk buy?

toearly and Alicia thank you for my morning laugh.

Dita we do our last feed about 6.30pm, discussed this with the vet and they seemed to think it was okay, we had poos the first two nights and then none until last night, he was a bit runny (oh the joys of I own a puppy TMI, yet another way in which it's like having a baby.)

Otherwise things are going okay, trying to get a balance between crate time which reduces accidents during the day and cushion time which means he doesn't get over tired, go loony for an hour in the evening, crash for a couple of hours and then take ages to settle down in the night. Yesterday for pratcial reasons he has a fair bit of crate time and was wired about 1am bouncing his skull off the metal framed underside of our bed with huge bongs.

It was funny for about a minute.

alicia, I bulk buy raw food, there is a shop near me that sells it, it is an 1lb blocks and I just defrost it when I need it, cherry has 1/3 of a block a day (and they only cost 50p each), plus chicken wings, duck necks, bones, sardines in to sauce, eggs. I dont really know if Iams is good or bad but I know what comes out of the other end stinks, cherry has one or 2 tiny firm non smelling poos a day. I was worried about swapping him over to BARF but I spent ages talking to the sho owner yesterday and am much happier now, google it there is loads of info (although not as much about puppies). I do have a dedicated dog food freezer though so makes it easier.

I'm having a puppy related depressed moment. My DC came back from a sleepover about an hour ago, the mum who dropped her off wanted to see our pup and succeeded in winding him up by whirling her hand around his head and letting him get chewy with her hands which I had explained not to do, kept saying he gets over excited more and more firmly but it went in one ear and out the other.

Anyway, she leaves, I have to go sort something out and DC says "Down Puppy", then louder, then louder still. I come in, tell him to get down which he does, I remind DC not to shout at him because he thinks it's barking and an invitation to play at which point her face crumples.

Long and the short of it is she thinks that families who don't have puppies are the lucky ones, mostly, I think, because she can't play with our pup the way she would like to without pup getting overexcited, she's having to keep her bedroom door shut at all times because of his chewing and obviously the fact he is not reliably housetrained, so because I've been supervising puppy she's had a lot less time actually with me and has been glad to go to friends as much as possible.

I know this will get better, sooner or later they will be fast friends, but oh, I don't know, just at this particular minute I'm down in the dumps about it. She seems to be feeling a bit better and has retreated to her bedroom and her DS now that she's got that off her chest.

Anyone else had DC go wobbly on thier puppy? I've mentioned before that I thought the reality of the puppy (however much we'd told her) has been a shock to the system but this is the first time she's said anything.

I should also explain that my DH is on call out this week, has been hauled out of bed everything single night and average two call outs per day across the bank holiday weekend plus pup got an upset tum in the middle of the night.

We're all tired, probably 90% of why I'm feeling glum.

WyrdMother I know EXACTLY where you are coming from I have a DS11 DD9 and DD3. The youngest has never liked dogs much and did not want one. The older two have nagged for years for a pup. I also have a DH who works away from home for long stretches. He has been home for 3 days in the 2 weeks we have had pup, so I've been dealing with everything on my own

At one point in the first week, my youngest asked my mum if she could stay in her house "cos Mammy has that horrible dog" this was along with the refrain constantly of "I don't like dogs, I want a fish" and everytime he did something wrong, like pee on the floor, she would pipe up "and THAT'S why we shouldn't have a dog"
My 9 year old has been avoiding him since he nipped her by mistake, and my 11 year old would rather be on the xbox than play with the pup

The older 2 had a talking to this morning and have been told that there is no xbox, tv or computer time in future until the dog has had the time he needs. and if they fail to do this, the puppy, rabbit and guinea pig are all being rehomed as they are not responsible enough for a pet (obviously I would NEVER do this, before I get jumped on, but it works as a threat)

The older two I have found are more interested though in training him, so will get involved with that, and the youngest has come round totally now. She is much more confident with him than the other two, wants him to join in her games and has said he can sleep in her bed

How old is your DD? I'm sure things will settle down and she will come around

Hey there Tooearly, she's 8 and actually has bounced back again, we got pup in his crate for some much needed down time and he's having a good long sleep and DC has emerged from her bedroom. The kind of behaviour that upset DC is becoming less common after only a week so we will get there, just this silly, silly bint wouldn't listen. I shall be more forcefull in future even if I do piss her off.

DC's actually quite happy to get involved with taking outside, talking, stroking and has done a bit of training with him, I think she just had this image of gambolling through the daisies with him which has yet to come to pass because as soon as you excite him he starts to nip.

Do you ever think that perhaps the overromantic portrayal of animals in the media is just as bad as the portrayal of women/girls? (mostly joking).

Nooo dont say that! At our lowest point with my youngest I was ready to order dvds of 101 dalmations, lady and the tramp, Beethoven etc to try to brainwash her, they are a valuable resource

Ah, tis better now, DC is off playing with friends but had a friendly interaction with the puppy before she went. Puppy is now marmalising one of his toys which I am okay with and just let him get on with it, toys good, toes, shirts, shoes not good.

Sigh. I probably need the most brain washing. At heart I'm a cat person, husband is the dog worshipper.

wyrdmother, I have just got in from gambling in the daisies and rolling in the mud with my dd's and cherry, she is only 18 months and this summer has been the best we have ever had because the kids are happy to come out ith the dog, we have been having adventures, we have found rope swings and played in rivers and everyday they have been out in the fresh air (only down side is the amount of washing involved). we have spent hardly any money and are definatly the happiest we have ever been.
On the uppy side of things though I need some sleep.