DH and I are at our wits ends with our puppy.

[LittleRedWagon1]

Please let me preface this possibly long moan by saying that both DH and I have had dogs/puppies before. We lost one of our old ladies (DDog2) in December 2015 and our other one (DDog1) early June 2016, both were 17 years old. Both were cross breeds, we had DDog1 from 8 weeks old and rescued DDog2 when she was approx 18 months old.

We have done a fair to decent amount of research before getting DPuppy as she is a doberman and neither DH nor I have ever had a purebred puppy/dog before.

We got DPuppy at 8 weeks old, she is now almost 12 weeks, we've not had her long I know but we are completely at our wits end with her already. It would have been easier for us to have another child, we certainly got more sleep in the newborn phase with both DD's than we have so far with DPuppy. (I am going to try to not let this turn into a huge, long moan. I apologise if I fail)

The vet said that she cant be walked until 2 weeks after her 3rd vaccination (booster) which is not until the 10th of May this has changed from when we've had puppies before (there was only 2 vaccinations). This will mean that she will be approx 16 weeks before she can be walked! What about socialisation? Surely this isn't right!

We have booked her puppy training classes to start at the end of May but we would like to get her out and about to hopefully calm her down a bit and socialise her with other dogs.

All of us in the house (myself, DH, and both DD's) are working with her daily on basic training techniques and she has full access to our (fully enclosed) garden when we are in the house. She will go outside for the toilet but then come back in and do another wee or poo inside! We have started sitting out with her for half an hour or leaving her in the garden on her own for a short while but she cries, and this morning has just started to bark a bit!
I have apologised to both of our neighbours and plan to buy them wine and chocolates as soon as I get paid.

DPuppy sleeps in her crate nicely and only cries for the toilet at night (she wont do it in the crate thank goodness) she cries 3-5 times a night and either DH or I will pop down and let her out. She will sometimes cry for 2-3 minutes when first put in the crate but soon settles down. (She has access to water in her crate)

The DD's are still off school for the Easter holidays (back tomorrow) and they play with DPuppy outside. We are worrying though that she isn't getting enough exercise and socialisation with other dogs.

She nips the DD's, she doesn't nip either DH or I and she chews EVERYTHING despite having plenty of chew toys, balls, a teddy, and a puppy Kong. We have tried the deterrent spray but she loves the taste of it

Now I've seen it all written down it doesn't seem too bad but we are exhausted with DPuppy right now. If any of you lovelies could please throw some advice our way both DH and I would be most grateful.

We had a difficult beginning with our leonberger as like your rottie she was too heavy to be carried and taken out for socialising before all her injections were completed. We resorted to putting her in the trolley in pets at home and wheeling her around. And to stop the chewing we gave her hooves filled with frozen yoghurt. Messy but took her hours to finish. The 12 week point is the worst. It gets better after that.

Unfortunately its puppy stage of an active, intelligent dog and sounds like you are really doing everything you should already, just carry on being consistent and firm and your pooch will slowly start to come out of this phase! Your others may have been similar, youve just forgotton over 17 years how intense this phase is!!

With ours as well as everything mentioned above we taught her to have 'time out' where she had to settle, so we placed the lead on and sat down on the sofa making her sit or lie and said 'settle down'. Extending the time, so she was tought to essentially self settle and have calm time as she would literally whip herself up and puppies dont realise when they are tired, they just get more annoying!

My only other tip is to avoid routine if at all possible other than for toilet, these dogs are intelligent and soon pick up on routine and get fussy if expecting food, walks etc. Keep life unpredicatable if you can and they will look to you for direction.

Mental games:
Hide treats around house and direct to find
Treats in a plastic bottle for them to play with - feeds the chewy phase too

Thank you lovelies, all of the advice and support has made me feel much better. I've been having worries that she's going to grow up out of control and I wasn't looking forward to her getting to her full size being so uncontrollable.

DPup and DD's all had a mad couple of hours in the garden and now DPup is complete zonked out, it's so lovely and peaceful 😂

Hmmm she's verrry cute - hope you have a very big sofa x

Sam is now two. My God! He nearly broke us. Bank cards, socks, reading glasses, tables, chairs. Basically anything. I think we are finally out of the chewing stage. We just hung on I think and kept hoping he would get better. He didn't like being without us to begin with I think.
Might go furniture shopping soon!
All okay now (famous last words)

I can very strongly recommend clicker training if you haven't already looked into it. Basically the clicker marks the good behaviour so there is no confusion about different people training her and using a different word to indicate that she has done something correctly. Once you have got the hang of when to click then it should speed up the training process.

When toilet training if she goes outside then click as she is doing it and give a treat when she is finished so that she recognises that outside is the correct place to do it. You can train the dog to go to the toilet on a command word as well my mum has done this with her show dog before so that she can tell him when to go to the toilet at a show.

There are videos on YouTube and some good books that you can get to show you how to start as the first thing you would need to do is teach the dog that the clicker means that she has done something good. To keep her occupied you could teach her all sorts of tricks ... the sky is the limit!

When they get to one, they learn even quicker & respond well to food rewards. My girl is very good on & off lead & not at all uncontrollable. It can get tough, but if you persevere, you'll have a very loyal dog & friend for life.

For toilet training, take her out to wee as often as every 20mins when you can. Loads of praise when she goes outside. If she goes inside, whisk her out (don't tell off though) and praise when outside, even if this means a trail of wee across the floor. Have loads of chew toys at hand so immediately she tries to nip, redirect onto toy. TBH, nipping is so normal and will stop. Yelping and turning away can make things worse as yelping may excite her more. It helped me having my large breed pup on a house lead. If I needed to move him away from kids, a lead is calmer than grabbing a collar - which can encourage nipping! Also socialisation is more important (esp large breed) than minimal risk of disease. So, I got people to bring their vaccinated dogs round. I carried him in a baby sling to eg a park bench or high street bench so could watch people go by, get stroked, see dogs etc. Or, bung her in back of car ( do you have an estate?) go to supermarket car park, open the back, sit and wait for people to approach to stroke the cute puppy. Vets have puppy parties and some training classes accept pups prior to post vaccine (I had to carry my dog, size of a springer spaniel as a pup, 10mins up road to class from the car park!). Having a pup is totally exhausting but it is a phase.

Puppy yoga! 😉

Have you considered not putting food in her bowl so she gets it all at once but instead she gets from things she has to work at? I was advised this for a puppy. There are toys some food can be put inside.

Have little pieces of high value food like tiny bits of chicken/cheese/sausage for prizes when she wees. Then us e a clicker: wee + click plus chicken.

You could get a trainer to come for a one off to your house to get you started and advise the children too.

She will be a clever dog with needs for her particular breed.

Please do look at that group Cornflake mentioned. Their files on toilet training were really helpful.
I actually slept next to crate for three weeks to settle pup. She then slept through the night.
With the mouthing. Don't make a noise. Ignore or redirect. Offer a toy to bite instead. One bit of advice we had was get a massive fluffy toy (charity shop) one in every room pup goes in. Keep them OUT of puppy's reach. When pup has a mad bitey session grab toy, wave in a figure of 8 in front of dog and toss away from you. Once dog has finished biting remove toy and put up high again.

I'm a vet. It is reasonably safe to walk a partially-vaccinated puppy in a relatively low-traffic area. It is absolutely essential to get them well accustomed to meeting all sorts of things - not just other dogs but cats, farm animals, kids etc. I would try very hard to set up frequent brief socialisation opportunities with steady reliable older dogs and with at least one cat, if possible, who can be relied upon not to flee.
With other dogs, it might be as simple as seeing someone pleasant-looking on a walk and asking if you can walk along with them for five minutes. It's so important... do it!