New Puppy Mommies in here *blerk*

[Awks]

Got our new puppy on Saturday. I was in tears this morning and I'm a pretty experienced dog owner. Its just so hard moaning cow that I am He is a 9 week old cocker and is a beautiful, cuddly boy but is a massive shitting machine. And not in the garden either.

So any new puppy owners want to weep in here then please do.

Awks, when he goes in front of you. Instead of just putting him on the doorstep and not acknowledging him, take him right to the place you want him to go and wait there with him till he goes (he should need to if you interrupted him) then treat and praise like mad. He isn't understanding what you mean by putting him outside. Have you given him a toiletting cue yet? That might help, as once you've paired the cue with the act he should go immediately when you need him to.

If he's wandering off, getting distracted and not weeing, you could try putting him on the lead while you wait for him to wee, to make it as boring as possible, then loads of fun after he's done it, iyswim.

birdmomma, sounds like a typical puppy mad-one. It either means she was actually tired and not able to calm down enough to rest or she had loads of extra stored up energy she needed to dispense with. Best thing to do if she won't respond to toys or training at those times is keep her confined to the safest possible area or perhaps out in the garden and just watch over her.

Sally - that is one clever puppy you have there!

Pip slept from 11.00 pm until 6.30 am last night! Dh was downstairs with him, but tonight's the night for us trying leaving him after he's fallen asleep.

Awks I came on to moan about toilet training too. Stanley just doesn't seem to be getting it. I praise and treat like mad when he goes outside, then I turn my back for a second and he pees in the kitchen, having gone past the open door to the garden. I'm getting fed up of constantly cleaning up!

Sally and Monty both slept upstairs in our room at night. They had upstairs and downstairs beds. They never messed in the house apart from the initial puppy training. I think that yes Toby is clever, and I am working on him following me at my heel off the lead in the garden. Scarily picked it up very fast. Sally took ages, but then she was a very blonde Labrador....

I've just come back from the train station as DH and DD are off to GOSH, leaving him with the boys. Didn't wimper once and took himself out to the loo.

So far, so far, so far there has been no mess in the house. This time yesterday I'd already cleared up 7 wees. Oh and I've been telling him to 'go out for a tiddle' and when he does a wee/poo I've said 'good wee-wee/poo-poo Toby' and then given him a treat and lots of ear ruffling. I think we maybe getting there!! Phew!

TMB, Just a thought. When you take him out, do you get him to follow you or do you carry him? If you're carrying him, even for a large percentage of the trips, he won't be committing the route to memory.

To be honest, we spent most of our time going in and out, in and out, even when he didn't need to go last week so he learned the route to the toilet area.

Pip 12 weeks tomorrow and doing really well with his house training generally, but he squatted on the living room carpet earlier today. I just interrupted him as soon as he squatted, said a firm no and took him outside to where I wanted him to go. It took a few minutes, probably because he was a bit unsure after being interrupted by me, but then he started to look like he might, so I gave him the cue, he went and got lots praise and fuss for it.

Some pups just take a little longer to develop sufficient bladder control, others struggle to put together all the pieces of what they need to do ie, realise I feel like I need a wee, head towards back door, go outside, head to toilet area, do a wee. It's a lot for an 8 week old pup to take in, but just like potty training, even though different dcs do it at different ages, it will come with time.

Sally, it sounds like you are doing great.

Moose I am not sure if I'm doing great or if he's a lot more savvy than I am. Anyway we are pleased and I know that we still need to be vigilant of his movements around the house to keep reinforcing outside means toilet, inside means bed and clean. The breeder rang me last night and said to keep his bowls outside so that he has to go out for a drink. That seems to have worked and also lifting all bowls after 6.30pm. Every time he does the right thing it's like cheerleading practice here!

Thanks for the advice - trouble is he does such teeny tiny wees. It's like I'm taking him out too often he never gets chance to do a full one so the bits he does on the floor are so short I am not interrupting him, he's already done! Doing ok today though so far.

TMB is's quite demoralising, isn't it? But I am sure there are many more stupid and uncaring people than us who manage to housetrain dogs.

When you praise him for weeping outside are you doing it while he is doing it or once he's finished? I realised that saying it to him whilst he was doing it was distracting him, so once he's finished ie moved away I praise him. Also moving the water bowl outside made a difference to him.

Weeping?! Weeing!

Ah, now Pip does massive torrents, so that's probably also got something to do with why I an interrupt him.

Perhaps you are taking him out too often? Pip only goes about once an hour now, unless he's just woken from a nap. He needs to learn to hold it, so perhaps you could try starting to leave it an extra couple of minutes each time, building it up gradually?

I get this 'praise the good and ignore the bad' thing, really I do. However, it's not easy when Ollie is in a playful mood and clamps his sharp little teeth into the sofa / my clothes / me! Is removal by the scruff of the neck totally unacceptable?!!!

MOG, there are several things you can do

1. Interrupt and distract, so either have a pocketful of treats constantly and reward as soon as he turns away from whatever you want him to leave or get him really keyed into a particular noisy toy that you can use to distract him away from things you don't want him to have.

1. You can condition an interrupting sound using a clicker or similar positive reinforcement process. (There's a Kikopup video on this.)

Basically, you decide on a noise that you'd like to use to get the pup to leave whatever it's doing and look at you, then you can more easily redirect the undesirable behaviour without any negative reinforcement.

1. Work really hard on training the 'leave', but it takes a bit of time before it's reliable enough to add the cue and your sofa may well have already suffered by then.

Forgot to say. Pip is at his most 'Landsharky' just after he wakes from a nap. He seems to want to run around biting absolutely everything he can reach at those times (it was my Mother this afternoon and that didn't go down at all well ).

I tend to whoosh him straight out to the garden, play lots of running up and down games, and throw in a quick clicker training session to get rid of the excess energy. It definitely helps.

I think maybe my staring at him in a weird smiley fashion when he's weeing might put him off. I'm sort of trying to bend down to see if he's actually weeing though

Anyway fuckit I am doing my best and he's happy. But have discovered carrots. One half carrot = 10 minutes peace. My friends, I share that with you ha ha

And I shut Jarvis in his crate for half hour just now and went in the bath

Toby had two carrots today. Ate one and mouthed the others in a demented fashion as it dared to roll away from him! Much hilarity watching him trying to 'kill' a basketball. Think my Toby is going to be a bit of a barker. Oops.

I knew there had to be some advantage to having a puppy with ridiculously long legs. I am never in any doubt at all when Pip is weeing.

I tried Pip with a carrot before he went on his exclusion diet - he looked at me with utter disgust and walked away. All my other dogs have always loved eating fruit and veggies, particularly carrots and apples, but not Pip - it seems for him it has to be fresh meat or nothing. Spoiled puppy alert!

Half an hour of peace while you had a bath!

Dh is out tonight and I have hardly had chance to sit down for more than two minutes, as Pip slept for ages this afternoon and is now on a trouble finding mission. Hopefully this means he will sleep through for longer again tonight though?

Sally, Pip is scared of ds2's old Thomas the Tank Engine football. He's fine until it starts rolling, then he seems convinced it must be possessed to be moving on it's own!

He's fine with other balls, even other footballs. I think it must be Thomas's face that he finds disturbing.

I don't think that I blame Pip for barking at Thomas the tank. I would too!!

Why are they always at their most annoying at 9pm? Honestly, I am knackered after all the bloody tugging games he so loves

So why did noone tell me about carrots. This is my third dog and no previous dog ever liked carrots. But this one does

Pip has crashed now, having had his crazy time a little earlier than usual this evening. Lots of tugging games here this evening as well, when I wasn't trying to retrieve my crocs or stopping him from ragging Lurcherboy's beard!

Am I too late to join? I have been having a terrifying lovely time reminding myself of all the puppy joys to come. We are picking up a little girl whippet puppy in a weeks time to go with our whippety boy who is coming up for 2 years old. I am excited and terrified and utterly in love, plus I've turned into a terrible puppy bore.

Hello LostInWales.

A Whippet, another sighthound to keep Pip company on the thread.

What colour is she?

Awks - I'm laughing at you staring at him weeing in a weird smiley way. Very familiar. I am stooped right down to inspect the flow as well. Autumn always runs off as far as possible away from me to poo, and gives me hunted looks over her shoulder if I dare to stare too much.

I would say Autumn (14 weeks) is now pretty much toilet trained. She hasn't had an accident in a week, we no longer watch her like a hawk, we don't panic if she runs off out the room (although she usually comes back triumphantly bearing some precious object from the DDs' rooms) and she scratches and whines at the door when she needs to go. A couple of weeks ago we were having all the same issues that those of you with younger pups are currently having. So, it does sort itself out, and quite quickly for us.