New Puppy Mummies Part 2

[SallyBear]

Just thought I'd start the new thread!

Toby (foxy coloured yellow Labrador) is now 13 weeks old. Long, lean and lanky. Still wonderfully tempered and is sleeping through and no longer messing in the house.

Has anyone got cats on here ? My two cats are so not happy about Pixie's arrival. Billy is upstairs and i have to feed him there and Daisy has just come home after staying out all night and day in torrential rain. Shes upstairs skulking around with a pissed off expression on her face!!!

Hi stirrup leathers welcome

I have one cat, they were ok together, I have a 13 week old Rhodesian ridgeback, then she started barking at him all evening he only gets up in the evening and comes downstairs then she runs after him barking he hisses and spits at her.

Just took her out 5 mins ago as she was sniffing and she came back in, next thing I catch her doing a poo I interrupted her and took her back out. That's 2 poo and 2 pees in the house today that's what she was doing 5 weeks ago.

All these big dogs i think Nala will be on the smaller side of a female RR according to her breeder so a bit larger than a lab but leaner.

stirrup
How much does your Shitzu cross weigh? My neighbour has a young adult, dad unknown, but think it is a cairn terrier. He's lovely.

Omg Puppy barked all night, all night....I can't even say her name because I'm so fed up. I put her in her crate at 10pm music on radio, little light on. She prob had an hour or so where she didn't bark....What shall I do? This is her second night, much worse than her first....

She's feeling lonely and very confused, poor little thing (and poor you, not nice trying to cope with no sleep)

Can you sleep in the same room as her for a while? She will find that much easier plus do loads of work on making the crate a fab place to be.

Our puppy sleeps in his crate in the kitche/playroom and for the first few nights I slept on the sofa - he's now sleeping through and we've never had any disturbed nights (early starts though!)

Really? Ok anything for some sleep. I don't understand why she slept the first night....I made the crate really comfy...argh I will sleep in there tonight...Ha ha....

Hi stirrup, it's really exhausting at first getting the sleep sorted but it will come. We found during the first two weeks of our puppy being here this was the hardest aspect of having him but it gradually improved, just not always in a straight line! Two steps forwards, one back, sounds like you've just had the one back but it will come, she will settle, just needs time.

Stirrup, after a week of camping on the sofa and getting up every 2-3 hours to let Toby (then 8 weeks) out we bailed. He now sleeps upstairs by my bed

Hi Stirrup, we had one week with pup in crate in our room & then another week with DH on sofa whilst pup was in kitchen. Now he's down there by himself at night:) Gradual process....

Hi Stirrup, agree with what others have said. She needs your company for a while until she gets used to being in her new home, plus she needs lots and lots - and lots of positive associations with her crate during the day so she sees it as a nice safe place to be. You can do that by dropping a treat or two in every time she goes in, feeding all her meals in there and giving her stuffed kongs or other chews/treats in there.

She probably slept the first night through sheer exhaustion after all the stress and excitement of changing homes.

We took it in turns to sleep on the sofa with Pip's crate in the living room for the first couple of weeks. Then left him in the living room, before eventually moving the crate into the kitchen with our other dog.

He usually sleeps through from about 10.30 to 6.00/6.30, but last night he woke us at 3.30 for some bizarre reason and was unsettled for the rest of the night.

Toby will sleep in his crate which is DH's office, when DH is in there. This is progress as he wouldn't go in it before voluntarily. Toby is a pampered pup with three beds throughout the house. He loves company, my old Labrador Sally would slope off somewhere quiet to get peace. He just seems to be un-phased by four noisy DC!

Pip has three beds to choose from as well. I think it's good to allow dogs choices about things like that, as they have such little control over their own lives as it is. Obviously we sometimes need to tell them which bed to go into, but I think it's only fair to give them freedom of choice the rest of the time. We get to choose to sit/lie in different places according to our mood - so should they.

This ties in with the Ahimsa dog training doctrine, which is about doing your level best to work with, rather than against the dog and only employ totally positive methods and in line with what Kikopup teaches and practises.

Yay for three bed dogs!

Puppy has various bits of bedding/beds and prefers to sleep on the tiled floor of the kitchen, in his crate he shoves all his bedding to one side and sleeps on the bare metal tray

Someone asked up thread about which breed my 15kg puppy is, he's a Golden Retriever x polar bear

At what point is it safe/sensible to let the puppy have the run of the house? At the moment Fitz spends most of his time in the kitchen/playroom (large open plan area) and garden. It's completely puppy-proofed and his crate is on one corner of the playroom. We've got a stairgate blocking the doorway to the rest of the house so he can still see what's going on but at the moment he only goes into other rooms under very close supervision. It's partly because we have two cats one of whom is quite timid and elderly and the other is an ex-street cat from the Middle East who we think may well have had a bad experience with a dog in the past so we want them to feel secure and to be confident that they're safe at all times (Fitz would love to play with them but his definition of play is quite different to theirs!). It's also because there are lots of wires etc in the front room and the thought of what he could do in there in a few unsupervised moments makes me feel quite faint!

Am I being mean? Or is this a sensible way to start off while he gets a bit more mature and they get a bit more used to the ide/ of him being a permanent fixture?

Sallybear me and DH laughed out loud when I read about your puppy sleeping by your bed ha ha...that will b us tonight!!!

Stirrup, all our dogs have slept in our room/on the landing! We are soft hearted foolish people!

Dharma by Border Collie x girl was like that. She used to turf all the bedding out of her beds and lie on the plastic base or on the quarry tiles in the kitchen. Her absolute favourite place though, was to lie in the middle of the garden in the coldest possible weather. I have vivid memories of one particularly snowy winter, just being able to see the tips of her ears above the snow!

Basildon, I think you're very sensible keeping that set up until he' at least past the teething stage. Our house is tiny, so we only have the kitchen and living room. Pip has free access to the kitchen and garden when we are home and is allowed in the living room as long as either myself or dh are with him, but gets put back in the kitchen if we have to nip upstairs or something. We often leave Lurcherboy asleep in the living room and will do the same for Pip when he's fully mature and grown out of chewing.

We have just had a lovely walk. Which is a surprise, as I now have dd's bug and was totally disorganised, forgetting to take a ball and flinger with me for Lurcherboy, as well as the whistle for recalls. Fortunately we had a couple of frisbees in the car and Pip was hungry enough to return to verbal cues. Then we bumped into some people we knew with their young dog and as we stood chatting Pip decided the dog was nice enough to say a proper hello to. It was fantastic socialisation for him, as the other dog is friendly, but submissive and in the end they kept just going back to say hello to each other again. He also chose to approach another Shih Tzu type dog and say hello, despite the fact that dh had gone ahead with Lurcherboy - so that was massive.

He's really coming on now. Still wary, but definitely becoming more and more confident around other dogs and far more willing to interact.

Oh - and we took him to PAH and bought some dreaded pigs' ears while we were out as well. Dd has some sort of sponsored event this week, so I'm going to have to be out for about an hour and a half. I've bought two more big kongs and am going to leave him with extra kongs, a pigs ear and some fish4dogs braids and hope for the best. He can do an hour now, but an hour and a half is pushing it.

How long do pigs' ears generally last other people's pups?

Whats a kong? And should i get some pig ears for Pixie?

Pigs ear lasts about 20mins. I have been giving him them for about a month. Before that I'd have worried about the baby teeth.

Kongs are great. Puppy kongs are best as the rubber isn't as hard. You fill them with a variety of foods. Peanut butter is good, or packed tightly with ham hock, a lump of cheddar, pâté - you get my drift.

The kongs last 15 - 30 mins. I give my puppy one at school run time.

Hmm, so hopefully, if I give him a pigs ear as well as his kongs it should extend the time he's quiet by at least 15/20 minutes.

I've bought a couple of extra ones so I can try it out and see how he goes.

Are they definitely safe to be left with them? I'm paranoid about him potentially choking.

We have left him with a pigs ear before in his crate. Though I tend to prefer a kong if I'm going out. The pigs ears are crunchy.

If it works for you. Costco do 20 in a box for £10.

Thanks Sally.

Just made the decision that dd can't go back to school tomorrow, so will give him his trial ear for tomorrow afternoon's pick up, as dh will have to take ds2 in the morning.

She is still no better??