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.

Puppies will see when playing, after drinking, and when they wake up.. So basically all the time! They say the rule is to take them outside as soon as they wake up and shortly after they've had a drink of water and keep an eye out at all other times and be prepared to interrupt a wee!

You can have set times at which water is available to puppy, which will help with keeping track of when she's drinking, just be sure water is available more often than not (though I thoroughly support taking away the water from 8pm to limit nit time trips outside).

My breeder recommended putting the water bowl outside so that he goes out for a drink and then thinks, ooh I need a wee. Seems to be working so far!

Hi sebastian, glad she's home and settling in. Mabel is a lovely name.

Puppy books: most people recommend Gwen Bailey's Perfect Puppy which is great, but a bit full on and can be daunting for some. I really like Life Skills for Puppies, as it's not too overwhelming and really easy to follow. I gave it to my two dses to read before we brought Pip home, so they understood why we needed to do all the things we are now doing, rather than just telling them. It definitely helped.

I told all of my dcs that I was in sole charge of training and they could help with feeding, grooming and playing. It can be very confusing for a young pup to have lots of different people trying to teach it, all using different body posture, hand signals, voice tone etc. Much better for you to take charge and they can help with the positive reinforcement once you've reached the point where she is really understanding what's expected of her.

As Wispa said, puppies need to be taken out to toilet, on waking from naps, after food or drink and when they've got all excited whilst playing. Going outside roughly every 15 minutes is a good plan to begin with and then you can gradually build up and you work out how long she can hold it.

We brought Pepsi home around 10.00am and have had a fantastic day.
She's been brilliant, lots of cuddles, play and sleep.
Hasn't had any accidents inside (yet, I know I was just lucky today)...

Couple of times she nipped DD (9) on the calf whilst playing which upset DD but apart from that she has been brilliant. Comes when we call her name (breeder has been calling her the same name for us from week 2 so I'm sure that helped).

DH is going to sleep downstairs near the crate tonight to help her settle and to whip her outside to go when needed.

Hi Heifer, congratulations of a successful first day. Fingers crossed for a quiet night.

Just had a peek at your photos. She is ridiculously cute.

Tonight is the first night we are going to both sneak upstairs once Pip is asleep. Dh has been on sofa duty for the last two nights, as I haven't been too well, but he's been on his feet doing hard labour restoring a VW camper today and is fit to drop.

Going to set up dd's old baby monitor so we can hear and get to him before he reaches neighbour disturbing decibels, as the neighbours were so good about Lurcherboy's howly Separation Anxiety and I'd hate them to think we're taking the P.

With the 'no going out until after jabs' rule, I know pup can go in our garden as whippety boy is all vaccinated does this also apply to a field that I own and consequently know there are no random dogs in there with their bugs? Life would be a lot easier if we can go and chill out there from time to time.

It's foxes and the diseases they carry that you have to be worried about.

Ahh! Thank you, no playing in the field until jabs are done then.

last night wasnt a good one with Olly pup = 3.30 for a wee, then he rumbled around his crate until 6 then cried... so got up and he was desperate for loo again and wanted to play. So now I am up - both dogs have had breakfast, big dog is asleep next to me on sofa and puppy is making mega mischief!

Eek sally there are loads of foxes which come into our garden - does that mean we shouldn't be letting Fitz in the garden at all??

Morning!

Kind of a good night here, she settled in her crate within a couple of minutes and slept all night. I didn't hear a single whimper, although I was awake for most of the night waiting to hear. We are in a bungalow so easy to hear even if in a different room. Snuck my head round the door a couple of times and nothing! Went in at 5.50 and she had pood all over her bed bless her. She still hadn't said anything. I suppose she is used to being in kennels where making a noise overnight doesn't matter! I was unsure whether to put her out anyway, regardless of noise but she hadn't wee'd.

Have already been ot in the garden and practised Sit and a bit of lead walking. She is quick to catch on!

Put her in crate for time out for a few minutes, mainly for my sake this morning!

BB - I found this article which is interesting. Having list a puppy to parvo and another nearly due from it (they were siblings), I'm quite paranoid about parvo. Foxes can carry parvo but they're not very sociable animals. It's all about keeping your puppy healthy in between vaccines. When we got Sally it was a four week break between first and second. Toby has a two week schedule. Thankfully, as I suspect he will be itching to get out there!! www.thelabradorsite.com/?p=1187

*having lost a puppy from parvo and another nearly died from it - iPhone!

Autumn is having a lot of exercise now. We live on a big block of land and we're outside a lot, so she is tearing around by us. Hopefully her bones will be ok, because she is definitely going to be quite small.

She started off weeing every 30 minutes, but these days (at 14 weeks) she is every 2-3 hours and right through the night now. It soon gets better, just like real babies.

She tried to chase the hens today. We have been putting her in with them from right when she arrived and she seemed to be used to them and didn't bother them. But today, she tried to play with one and it ran away, so she chased it. The the 2 feistiest hens saw what was happening and charged at her and gave her a good pecking. Hopefully that will put her off.

That's a great article Sallybear thank you. So sorry you lost a puppy to parvovirus though, that's must have been heartbreaking.

Horrid disease. I think I would do a good sweep of the garden for poo of any description. I'm sure that your after hours visitors will soon realise that its a dog's garden. Put it this way, we've had cat poo for the last month (took them about two weeks to realise) since Sally died on the 1st July but so far there's not been any fresh cat poo since about Wednesday. I think they may have got the message.

Sebastian, sounds like a good first night, all in all.

Sally, thanks for that article. I am a teensy bit paranoid about this with Pip having his second jab delayed. We never get fox poo in our garde and I'm not 100% sure we get foxes, we used to but don't hear them anymore since they build a new housing development nearby, so I suspect they were evicted. Some mornings Lurcherboy gets up and sniffs round the whole garden with his tail between his legs looking scared and being daftly skittish though, so I wonder if that's due to some form of wildlife, as he seems to follow trails around the lawn.

Aw, poor Autumn, henpecked in the truest sense of the word - but hopefully it was just the reminder she needed not to chase them.

Well ... we went upstairs when Pip went to sleep last night and ... not a peep!

Dh ended up getting up at 4.30 am anyway (thanks to ds1) and decided to go downstairs before Pip started wailing, as we thought there was no way he could have slept through it, but he had - and dh going downstairs woke him up! Fortunately he went straight back to sleep and slept until 6.30 am. Result!

Planning to go out somewhere today as it's the only day we have dh all weekend. There's a big vintage car rally with craft and collectable fair at a local agricultural ground or we need to go into town and buy the dss' school shoes, so dh could take the dcs in, while I have Pip on a bench outside. Not favouring the second option, but won't get another chance and next weekend is going to be hell on earth in the shoe shop.

I'm having a bit of a down day today - Stanley is utterly adorable, but it's all such hard work, and I can't help questioning if I've made a mistake getting a puppy . Being woken every morning by a howling puppy is starting to wear very thin - DD is 15 so my days of being dragged out of bed to crying are long gone!

I think he's getting somewhere with housetraining, but then he'll have another accident; I'll go to clean it up and he'll stand in it, then spread it around the room...it's just endless.

Tell me my vision of a happy, well trained spaniel trotting nicely beside me through the woods, or splashing in the sea, before settling down by my feet at night, isn't completely unachievable?

Baldric and Bessie were nine weeks old. Bessie was sick first so I took them both in even though Baldric was fine. Bess made it, he didn't. My friend's puppy caught it at Christmas. They'd only had her two days after they got her from a pound. She went online and read that Tamiflu was a successful treatment for Parvo. She made the vets px it and her puppy pulled through. The vets px Tamiflu to treat a big parvo outbreak a few months later because of her success.

TMB it will get better. I have to confess that we've made the decision to let Toby sleep upstairs with us. All of our old dogs did, and as I'm a bit deaf it helps when DH is away. What we haven't done yet is worked on leaving him on his own. He's been fine if either of us have left the house as the kids are there, but what he'll be like once term starts I don't know.

So sad SallyBear......

haven't read the whole thread - ( wow 17 pages!) but just a note (if not already given) for those with puppies that life later on will be a LOT easier if you introduce them to grooming, ear checking and nail clipping earlier rather than later....

The whole poo/pee thing gets better quickly.... Our little guy is 2 now and "a proper dog" not a puppy any more......

unless he sees a butterfly!

TMB, don't panic. I think it's a normal feeling we all get at some point. These first few weeks are exhausting. We're all getting less sleep than we're used to and spending our days hypervigilant and constantly on the move following our weeing, pooing hyperactive four paws around. You're bound to reach a point where you feel like you've had enough.

Is there someone else who can watch the pup while you go out for a couple of hours? Just like with a newborn baby, it really does make a difference if you can just have a nice long bath and read a book or go for a mooch around the shops and stop for a coffee or something.

Your dream is a very real possibility, but it's going to be a while and a lot of hard work in the meantime. I have Lurcherboy sitting on my feet right now, good and gold. He, pretty much, never does anything naughty, is always there for comfort and companionship, has been for years now and I can barely remember the puppy stage with him these days.

Hang in there, it will get better.

If being woken by him howling is a flashpoint, could you possibly set your alarm to go off half and hour or so before his usual wake time, so you're interrupting and waking him, rather than teaching him that the way to bring you to him is to howl? Somehow if you're in control of the wake time, it doesn't feel as bad as getting a loud and rude awakening from a screaming pup.

I agree. We are working on tooth brushing too. Sally had to have 9 teeth at 13. She had too much wet food and hated her teeth being touched. Besides DS4 has Autism and he hates his teeth being brushed so we are hoping to train Toby to have his brushed with DS4 every night as part of his routine.

MadeOfStarDust, thank you for posting and reassuring us. Some of us. well lots of us really - me included - really need to hear that right now.

You're absolutely right about grooming etc as well. I brush Pip every evening while we're having a cuddle and have clipped just the tips off his nails with baby nail clippers a couple of time too to get him used to the sensation. I also go over his whole body and give him a check up daily as well, so we do eyes, teeth, ears, between toes, under tail, tummy, leg bones etc, just like a vet might.

He's also had a couple of trips to the vets where she hasn't done anything horrid to him and has cooed, fussed and fed him treats, which is building up a positive relationship there as well.