New Puppy Mummies, Part 3

[DharmaLovesDraco]

New thread, because quite frankly I can't do without you all :)

Hehe thats cute. We can't really settle on a name until DD knows, but Dougal, Casper (lovely irony) and Baggins are all currently being banded about. Dougal means 'dark stranger' so befitting of a black dog.

We were thinking of getting Finn to do our first footing at New Year, he's black and white and loves coal so would be happy to carry a piece, I might have to assist him with the whisky!
Dougal sounds lovely and spaniel like, not sure why, what a fantastic surprise for your DD.

Croc's rock!!

Our new addition, who will also be black (apart from a tiny streak of white on bib and toes) will be called Hector, to compliment Harry, our Springer. Even the breeder laughed at the name!

Aww, I welled up a bit at the thought of cleaning the belongings of a much loved companion.

Hector and Harry sounds great, rather like a dynamic duo from an old fashioned detective novel.

Our last dog was a Springer, she died 2 days after Christmas last year curled up in front of the fire, she was 14. Finn hasn't taken her place, he has his own Border Collie shaped space, he sleeps on Pippa's old bed and has her lead but I gave everything else to my sister for her dogs. She wasn't a great toy fan so it was only bowls and brushes etc.

I love the name Hector! I'm on the raw feeding UK group and someone there has a French bulldog called Hector

re indoor/outdoor dog baths, keep an eye out for gellert solar showers. B&Q had them last year reduced to about £4. Fill them, hang it in the garden and shower the dog in the garden. Worked a treat and was beautifully hot after an hour or two.

I love Hector too, would remind me of Hectors House that really lovely TV programme from my toddler/ pre-school years! This was early 70s so sure lots of you not even twinkles at that stage!

How do people play with their puppies without over stimulating them? I am really frustrated with this aspect of our care as I think we're getting it totally wrong and I can't work out an alternative. So say minty is settled in the sitting room lying on floor, chewing on a toy/antler, with us watching TV, all happy. Then he'll mooch around the room find another toy and bring it to one of us. Fine, we'll throw it across the room for him, he bounds over to it delighted, grabs it brings back etc.. After about 4 goes of this he starts leaping at us with his mouth open and might grab a sleeve and just is a bit random and leapy. Gets told off, gets more excited, gets taken outside, barks at the door, all gone horribly wrong in a space of minutes. What are we doing wrong?

Evening all.

I am finally starting to feel almost like myself again. Managed to go out Christmas shopping for a couple of hours with my dsis this afternoon and squeezed in a coffee and cake while we were there. It was soooo lovely to be out of the house for longer than half an hour!

Sorry I haven't read back. I'm hopelessly out of date now, so will just keep going from here if that's ok?

Mint, if I were you I'd add some training/control aspects to the game. So for example he gets to have you throw the toy again, but first he has to do a really nice sit or down or shake a paw. That way you are keeping him focussed and calm and not letting his excitement escalate. The game is the reward for a bit of training, but that doesn't make it any less fun for Minty. Use your clicker-training principles, but get him to work for the toy, rather than food and you don't need a clicker if you want it to stay ad-hoc, just pick a marker word like 'yes' or 'good' and use that as the release for reward.

He will still get over-excited sometimes, Pip does. We just stop the game at the very first sign of him starting to get hyper and start giving him the settle down cue, which is then rewarded with a treat once he's lying quietly. He's learned now that 'settle-down' means go and lie quietly in your crate. He doesn't always respond immediately, but usually gets the message fairly quickly.

Glad you're feeling better moose - I think we're on the mend here too - the only family member who hasn't been ill is ds2 who is hardly ever ill (he obviously has a cast iron immune system despite looking like a very fragile stick insect )

Mint - I make Fitz sit before throwing his toy - it helps keep him a bit more sane. I don't actually ask him to sit, just wait and then throw straight away - he learned very quickly that no sit = no throw...

Had a bit of a scary moment yesterday - I bumped into a friend with her dog (who's v tolerant of Fitz although doesn't play much with him) and we ended up doing her usual circuit. My normal route is a) a bit shorter as he's still only on little walks and b) has no roads nearby so I've felt perfectly confident in letting him off lead. However we needed to cross a fairly busy road halfway through. I let him back off lead when I thought we were safely away from the road but he got scared by a couple of snappy schnauzers and suddenly bolted in the direction of the road eventually he came to his senses and calmed down enough to hear me calling him and he ran back to me but Jesus it was scary. Bloody patterdale for attacking him it's made him much more anxious of certain dogs - and I've discovered that this particular dog is renowned for beating up puppies in completely unprovoked attacks which makes me even more that he's not kept under better control grrr

This made me laugh today. Toby is definitely too big to fit under the chair now.

then and now

Sally that is so cute!

Had a great walk with Rox this evening she is sitting and not pulling half as much as before which makes it much more pleasant for both of us.

Puppy training not so great it's such an effort to get us all there and then she does nothing I ask her to and she bounces about and makes me feel rubbish.

I'm wondering if I should look for some one to one training, what do you think?

Oh and thank you for the bath replies.

I bathed her upstairs in the bath in the end she was very good and I smelt and looked like a wet smelly dog by the time we had finished

Basil, I had a similar experience this morning. It's so scary when they bolt, especially if they're heading towards a road.

This morning Pip and Lurcherboy made friends with a lovely retired greyhound. I let Lurcherboy off first and they had a nice play, but Pip was a bit woofy, so I kept him behind me and ignored him until he calmed down. Fortunately, she was a very confident, but sweet dog and approached him really carefully. After gentle introductions I let Pip off and they did a few deferential play bows and bouncing about, but then Lurcherboy and the greyhound decided to run and Pip panicked. He bolted towards the main road, with greyhound in hot pursuit and like Fitz, it took what felt like a lifetime for him to come to his senses and hear me calling. Didn't help that because I panicked I didn't grab the whistle. I was just calling him, so am so relieved that he came back. He got such a huge gobful of chorizo and cheese and a huge big fuss when he made it back to me.

Fortunately the owner was really friendly and hung around while all three dogs reintroduced themselves nicely and the greyhound and Lurcherboy had a few more plays, so it ended positively.

Pip also said a nice hello to the cocker that ran all the way across the field and scared the life out of him a few weeks ago, having been introduced to her properly a couple of weeks back, so that was another relief.

Both dogs are covered in mud and exhausted and Lurcherboy has managed to tear his stopper pad.

Sally, that is so cute! I had to laugh when Pip ran into the swing the other day. He used to be able to run under it, so went full Lurcher-pelt and nearly knocked himself silly. He pulled up short and stood there shaking his head, looking totally stunned. Daft mutt!

ITRC, why don't you book just a couple of 1:1 lessons to give you more confidence and keep going to puppy classes alongside.

need, cleaning Bobs things for pup wasn't nice, half of me thought I'd take them down to the charity shop, but as I was going through them finding his favourite squeaky toy etc it made me smile and I thought pup getting some fun out of them as well might be a good thing.

I'd bought Bob a Star Wars collar not long before he died as well, I've also saved that along with his Harley Davidson collar. Harley is another name we are considering as well so that would be fitting.

You can get Star Wars collars! Great, where from?

I've bought a Kong. What is best to put in it for a puppy? He's only had dry food so I can start with that. I don't want to upset his stomach.

Oh my word! I have just discovered what the combination of miles and miles of that brown paper Amazon pack their boxes with and a crazy puppy does to a living room!

He's having such a lot of fun that I haven't the heart to stop him.

It's a bittersweet feeling, because Oldgirl that we lost in the Spring used to absolutely love shredding all our wrapping paper. He's like her in quite a few ways (most of them annoying ) although still very different. While it's lovely to see him loving doing all the things she loved, it smarts when I remember this will be our first Christmas morning for 14 years without her bouncing up and down, excitedly waiting for us to ball up the paper and throw it to her, then us having to remove knee deep shredded wrapping paper from the kitchen before we start cooking lunch.

Just found this thread again sorry haven't kept up.

Nala is now almost 5 months old, growing big, she's teething like mad just now, teeth falling out, big ones app tearing.

Our main problem is jumping up, on everyone and everything. We gave up puppy training as I just didn't like it. We are doing the no attention turn your back when she jumps and loads of praise when she has 4 paws on the ground. Other thing is stealing of food but as this is a ridgeback breed trait it's more prevention than cure just as well she's a gorgeous snuggle hound really.

I hope you and all your pups are well.

Hi sweetkitty. She'll calm down eventually if you're consistent and make the 4 paws thing rewarding enough. I know they seem big to us know, but they're still so young and have a long way to go to maturity.

Lurchers are terrible food thieves as well. They call it 'worksurface surfing' or 'counter surfing'. Pip hasn't been too bad, as I made training 'leave' a big priority very early on and have reinforced it a lot. Lurcherboy was an absolute nightmare and it took until he was fully mature until he got the message. I can still clearly remember everything having to be put on top of the fridge freezer or eye-level grill if we needed to leave the kitchen when there was food about.

Problem with Pip is his level of persistence. You tell him to leave, he backs off, cue him into a down he lies down, then he waits about a minute and a half before approaching again - over and over. The amount of time he waits is growing, but it's very slow progress.

Well, apparently paper shredding is as exhausting as a good long walk, because he has now konked out in the middle of all the chaos and is snoring like a little big piggy.

I've bought him one of those water bottle cover toys for Christmas. It's supposed to be a fox, but it looks just like Pip! I don't normally do dog Christmas presents, but couldn't resist. Will have to get something for Lurcherboy now.

reup Bobs Star Wars collar and matching lead was from a small pet shop in a retail park near where I live in Staffs. If you do a google search there are a few places that sell them though they seem to be in the USA. It's This One

He also had a Batman logo collar which came from a local groomer who makes collars herself (really good quality ones as well!) They start from £7.99 from memory, which was the size that fitted Bob (a westie) perfectly. Her Facebook is here. Some very unusual collars on there

Meg has been bitten. She cried and cried. Feel awful. Let her off with two pretty spaniels (after checking with their owner). The female went for her. Afterwards owner said, "It's about being a dog, innit? It's going to happen sometime."

Thanks for that juice. Those costumes are very funny.

Poor meg. That must have been awful for both of you.

What a bitch of an owner barbarian. Poor puppy

barbarian - oh dear about Meg, poor thing. Spaniels are usually very friendly too.

at Star Wars collars! I like the name bob too, such a solid, happy name.

Harry is a scrounger too, he's too placid to actually counter surf, but will sit and stare at you intently during EVERY mouthful of food, or if you are preparing it etc etc.. DD walked off the other day, while eating a piece of cake, complaining that it was like being stalked!

I have nothing to say to you all of any worth whatsoever, but if I don't check in, then I can't keep up

Oh poor Meg. I can't believe the owner didn't even apologise. Lurcherboy had a grumble at the greyhound today when she cheekily went to eat his treat - just noise, nothing physical and actually very unlike him, but I still apologised profusely to the owner (who actually said it was her own fault and Lurcherboy was in the right) and we both made sure they were still ok with each other before we parted.

Bit worried about him actually. He's never so much as grumbled in his life before, but that's twice now in a matter of a few weeks. First time was over the love of his life - a tennis ball and with an extremely rude and uncontrolled Labrador that just wouldn't quit and kept coming at him over and over until he dropped it, then tried to get it before he did. As a result I have stopped taking his ball with us so there's nothing for him to defend or compete for, but he was 8 last month and he's never done anything like it before. It's never more than verbal aggro iyswim, but all the same I don't want him behaving like that and need to understand what's at the root of it. He's not like it with Pip - he lets Pip take anything off him and is hopeless at putting him in his place.

I can't put my finger on it, but he just doesn't seem himself recently, as if he's feeling under the weather, but no obvious symptoms and he's been seen by the vet twice in that time for routine stuff and been pronounced fine and healthy.

Thanks, her first nasty encounter so perhaps we have been lucky. It was in a big empty field where we have learnt to recall and sit at a distance to a hand signal (hurray!). Spaniel owner seemed to imply it was his field but I happen to know the owner so that wasn't true.

I hope Lurcherboy is okay- is he teething? Meg has quiet days followed by rocket propelled ones, alternately.
A nice thing happened on Sunday- 200 hundred people in church plus pets, everything from ferrets to a donkey and ponies outside (doors left open). Lovely howling at the hymns, no fights, and every animal blessed by name on the way out!