Puppy Help Please

[fait]

We have a 12 week old poodle x - she is lovely (we have had her two weeks), but she is very different to my miniature poodle who I had as a puppy 13 years ago who house trained himself, had amazing recall and loved learning and relaxing ...

She is having Wainwrights wet puppy food - wondering whether this is sending her a bit OTT as she can be very hyper after eating? Any comments on that?

She wees a lot - sometimes (rarely) in her crate, frequently in the sitting room if OH does not keep a close watch on her. She goes out for a wee every hour, sometimes more often. She actually weed in her crate yesterday evening after having come in from having a wee outside - she watched us watching her! No circling - just squatted and weed ...

Her recall is awful. She is OK if there are absolutely no distractions and we play lots of recall games with her when we are out. But I cannot even get her to look in my direction if she is sniffing something interesting - not even if I am standing right behind her! She is not stupid (is happy to sit, down, and even wait).

She loves food, but loves life more - so walking on the lead using treats to keep her next to me is not working. I don't feed her for 3 hours before taking her for a walk to practice, but she is not interested in the treats if she can sniff the grass, floor etc.

She is happy in her crate and will sleep without making a sound from 10.30pm through to 6am (for which I am extremely grateful!)

She has learnt that if she barks, we assume she needs a wee or poo, and jump up to let her into the little play pen by the back door (which is there solely for pooing and weeing purposes). However, she has now started barking just for attention. As her poo and wee breaks are not exciting in the slightest - no playing or chatting, simply taking her from the crate to the play pen, I don't see why she should want more of them.

She is a delightful little dog (well, quite big now, which is why I msut get the lead walking sorted out!) - and a major personality :)

ANyway - loads of questions, and many thanks for any advice you are able to offer!

She sounds gorgeous and definitely clever. But she's still little and I don't think she's being unreasonably slow with the weeing thing - the key thing is that she's learnt how to go outside and seems to favour it. Our puppy kept on having random accidents for many months in increasingly remote parts of the house from her crate and, yes, it was sometimes right after going outside. She's fine now (nearly two).

Our puppy was also totally uninterested in treats. She likes a cuddle, though, and a real fuss when she returns has helped recall a lot. No chance if she smells a fox in the garden, though (she's a hound). I've read that some dogs respond well to a game with a special toy. Might that work for a playful poodle x?

We were very bad at lead training and only an anti-pull harness has saved our shoulders...

Good luck! She sounds lovely!

She's still so young. It does sound as if you are probably expecting a bit too much of her. Try not to compare her to your old dog, she's her own girl and she'll develop in her own way at her own pace. Just like children, you simply can't compare two puppies and judge one against the other.

Re housetraining. Why the pen? It sounds like she probably hasn't made the distinction between inside and out for toiletting. The only way of doing this is to dispense with all indoor pens and puppy pads etc and take her out so regularly that she is guaranteed to go outside at some point and then you praise and reward like mad. If she's not food motivated you can use attention and/or toys to reward her. Start off taking her out every 15 minutes-ish and gradually build up the time in between until you've worked out her limit. If/when she does toilet indoors, thoroughly blot the area to remove as much as you can, then use a proprietary bio/pet accident cleaner to really douse the area to ensure all the waste is completely broken down. If there is even a little bit of waste left she will be able to smell it and be more likely to toilet in the same place again.

She is so young to be expecting her to pay attention to you when busy investigating the big wide world. First step is to to work out what motivates her. What treats are you using? Have you tried liver cake or fresh cooked chicken pieces? They need to be really tempting and motivational, as the rest of the world is such an interesting place to a 12 week old pup and without a strong motivator it's can be hard for us to compete for their attention. If she genuinely isn't food motivated - and plenty of dogs aren't, she may be motivated by lots of fuss, games or toys or a combination of all three. Try lots of different toys out - ropes, tuggers, balls, squeaky toys, soft toys etc and see which one she likes best.

At this age, training should be done in very short sessions, that are lots and lots of fun. To do that she needs to come to the conclusion that you are where the fun is to be had, so you'll need to use your full range of silly voices (and embarrassing dance moves if necessary) to capture and keep her attention, as well as making sure she is frequently rewarded for remaining with you using whatever motivator you manage to identify, be that food, fuss/attention or a toy/s. Getting on the floor with puppies is often a great way of getting their attention and if you want them to come to you quickly when they're ignoring you, making a loud/silly noise, running away and then throwing yourself on the floor is really hard for them resist. Prior to being with you, she will have been with litter mates and spent much of her day playing, now she only has you she will really appreciate you getting on the floor for a good old fashioned romp about.

Finally, do come and join us over on the new 'Puppy Mummies Part 3' thread - the title is tongue-in-cheek and I promise we're not all busy babying our puppies! There are lots of different breeds, of all different ages on the thread and it's a great source of advice and support.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

I must have been a bit muddled about the pen and crate when I explained! She has a crate indoors (although she comes out to play during the day) and has a playpen outside which is purely for pooing and weeing as she prefers not to be wearing a lead when she poos and pees and currently the outside area is not secure. We have a big field which IS secure, but it is a 3 minute walk from the back door (live on a farm) so she goes there for walks but it is too far to let her off the lead when she needs a wee, particularly in the evening as there are no lights!

I have deliberately not gone for the puppy pads as I need her to realise the difference between inside and outside. Much of the time I can ask her to wee and poo when she goes into the pen and she obliges quite quickly. THen she will come inside and wee on the carpet - she seems to be able to store up a huge amount and release it in small quantities. I had wondered about an infection but she is able to go all night without accidents. Perhaps I need to get out more and think about it less!

I have perfected a few ninja moves - will rethink them into more of a dance style if you think this will help ...

I had to housetrain our dog when we got her this time last year - admittedly she was over 2 yrs old but she had learned that 'inside' was where you did things (Probably kept in a barn or a shed). We have a reasonable sized garden and the only way to ensure that she actually did things was to use a lunge rein and take her out and use the 'prompt' words and praise her when she did something - being very boring standing with the lunge rein in the garden was very different from being on the end of a shorter lead on a walk (when she also didn't do anything)(partly as it was too exciting). If she often stores more wee, encourage her to do more than one lot rather than taking her in immediately.

But she is still very young, so don't expect too much of her yet!