Puppy Survival thread part 4

[GooodMythicalMorning]

Puppy's getting bigger!: continuation of Bitey's thread. If anyone wants to join feel free.

Create a digging pit?
Use a longline and stop digging each time?
Redirect to a different game?

I might create a digging pit. She's not much of a chewer or barker, so she needs something to do! Ever since switching to raw food she won't touch her pig ears or dental chew sticks either. She has a couple of fun toys but that's it.

Mine eventually grew out of digging. I just cordoned off areas in the garden so he could only dig in his patch and not everywhere he felt like it.

Hello, afraid I have another question thanks everyone for being so helpful. Have had to avoid some of the dog forums as some people are just so condescending and often a bit rude and when you're sleep deprived and probably have had a touch of puppy blues and 'omg what have I done to our lives' moments, that really doesn't help.

So we had a much improved toilet training day yesterday (hurrah!). However as you know he's really quite spectacular with separation anxiety if I leave him for even 30 seconds. If I crate him and leave the room, he goes nuts. Jumping at the bars, digging wetting his bed (if he even vaguely needs a pop he'd do that too) and crying non stop. I figure I need a different tactic as he just doesn't calm down for me to be able to go back and it can't be good for him to get so distressed in his crate.

I'm now crating him, sitting nearby until he settles and gets sleepy and then start moving away. That seems to be working pretty well and he'll wake up and watch me pass without fuss if I'm moving round the house so I think that's a bonus. However the second he properly wakes up I hear him cry, and when I go over he's instantly got up and wee'd usually. I always take him out to toilet when he wakes from a sleep but obviously if I don't know he's woken up I can't do that. He will also let me know he needs the toilet in the night and hold it until I'm up and we're outside so during the day seems to be different, which I assume is because I'm not in his vision.

We have to be able to leave the puppy, it's not an option not to. He's pretty good when I have a shower in the morning, I put him in the bedroom crate and he doesn't wee. Maybe a few whines but goes to sleep while I'm showering now.

Anyone else experience this? Does what I'm doing sound OK with waiting for him to calm? Do you think just carry on and persevere?

Next week my husband is off with kids for half term, but they can't be bound to the house 24/7 and I have to go back to work. Feeling like the worst puppy mum sometimes

My pup is driving me insane, completely lost the plot this morning. He's 5 months and still toileting in the kitchen most nights, pick his food up at about 8 so he's not eating over night and still coming down to to a present every morning. I have 2 older dogs (7 years old) so they all constantly need bathing as they stink. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but loosing the will to live at the moment.

If he's ok when you are showering that is probably because he's got used to you doing that task and knows you will be finished soon and out. Do you have a baby gate? Mine used to watch me come and go in the rest of the house whilst he was behind the gate in the kitchen. The good thing is when he cried I could appear but not go to him as I could then go in another room or just enter the kitchen but ignore him then exit again. After a while he even recognised the hoover meant he was on his own for a bit as I was cleaning so would settle to sleep and more often than not he would go in his crate himself to sleep. I think the gate worked better than the crate in this situation as he could see me going in other parts of the house but he wasn't with me if you know what I mean and this got him used to me not being with him all the time. Then you could build it up so you left the house and came back etc. Then you could do the same thing but with him in his crate when he might be more ok with you not being around.

SheSaid how long overnight are you leaving him. At that age I still got up after 6 hours to let him toilet. Also if he is waking before you he is going to want to pee and poo so unless you hear him he is probably desperate and is just going. Do you use a baby monitor so you know he is awake and you can go and let him out (although I had a monitor I still got up after 6 hours to let him toilet and just kept extending the time until he was older). Even now my 1 year old dog often only lasts around 7 hours until he needs to toilet overnight so no long sleepins for me :(

Bitey my DH is a good sleeper, too many years of night shifts, so he normally lets pup out about 4am and I'm up at 7/7.30. My other dogs took forever to be dry overnight too, I crate trained them in the end at it worked well, but as they no longer use them crating the pup caused hell on Earth and I don't have room for 3 crates (large breed dogs).

Thank you! Unfortunately because of the toileting I moved away from using the baby gate as he'd just instantly pee on the kitchen floor and was just making the toilet training process even harder

His crate is in the highest footfall area of the house. If I'm moving around in the kitchen he can see me so if he makes a fuss I appear in there and ignore him...

*isnt a good sleeper

SheSaid does the pup go to the toilet at 4am? Is it a poo he is doing before you wake, if so then he is probably just needing to do it around that time so you might need to juggle dinner times or the time you get up in the morning. Mine tends to need to go around 11-12 hours after eating his dinner for his first poo in the morning.

Bitey sometimes a poo sometimes just a wee, there's a poo waiting for me regardless though. I will make sure his kibble is getting picked up earlier, they have their last meat meal about 6ish at the moment.

Or maybe make dinner a bit later if you are wanting him to poo after you get up rather than when your DH gets up. We have been trying to get BiteyDog to not wake so early so have started pushing dinner time back a bit.

Lise07 sounds like just keep doing what you are doing then with the crate by getting him used to you coming and going.

My vet disapproves of the raw diet, and said I should never give her bones. She loves eating raw, won't touch kibble. Chicken wings fill her with joy. I thought only cooked or even raw weight bearing bones were the problem?

ownedby I don't feed raw but yes I thought it was certain weight bearing bones that were a no as well. To be honest if you want to feed raw and my vet disapproved I would look for one that didn't because I would be worried that they would blame that for any issues. I don't think my vet has any real opinion on types of food as long as they are healthy.

We feed raw.
Wolfie loves chicken wings and necks and duck necks and lamb ribs too.
Never cooked tho as they can splinter.
lise I remember the OMG what have I done and the sleep deprived stage oh so well. Sounds like things are gojng well. I couldn't leave wolfie at all to start with!
She said how about a late night walk round the block to see if you can get things moving?!

Bitey, that's a good point! I'll carry on as we are but if he makes a fuss about feeding raw in future I'll change.

Thanks Wolfie! When did it start to change and you could leave?

We got so we could leave her all morning. Now she whines if she's in her pen and hears us! She's a bit of a special case really. Her anxiety was massive. Wall eating and weeing in bed and eating it.

Lise07 have a look at this guide to crate training, it covers getting them used to being alone as well. Although it sounds very long winded puppies do catch onto it really quickly. It's far more reliable than any method which involves your puppy crying or being at all distressed in their crate.

SheSaid does your pup have set meal times or is his food down for longer periods for him to graze on? If it's the latter he's likely to have a better toilet routine if he only gets meals at specific times.

I had 2 Romanian rescue pups arrive on Saturday. Typical brit on holiday story we fell in love with their mum and involved a rescue trying to catch her and sadly couldn't.

Over the summer I received an email telling
me she had abandoned two puppies and now they're home!

Did not realise we weren't supposed to get siblings (have had dogs all my life) until just before they came and too late then! We had a couple of days of hell where they basically ran riot and woke up every couple of hours in the night but we started short walks last night (they're 16 weeks, had to have a rabies jab before they could travel) and today they have been perfect little angels.

Bar one of them managing to scale the 8 foot sunbed which is propped up almost vertically whilst I was tidying the garden 😬

Amost having a little sob, they're cute but not particularly beautiful or stand-outish dogs so do feel like if we hadn't adopted them they would of spent their whole life in the Romanian kennels as sadly many do, there's so many and although they try, it's only a small charity and not that well known. Little shits need to realise how lucky they are 😂😂😂

Aww, congrats on your puppies. Why shouldn't you get siblings just out of interest? PizzaPup's brother is still in Romania and I keep joking to Dh that we'll get him.

Why shouldn't you get siblings just out of interest?

This article explains it pretty well. The links at the end are worth a look too.

In short, it's much harder to deal with two puppies as they're apt to focus on each other rather than you. They will reinforce each other's puppyish behaviour, after all play fighting and biting with each other with no constraints is much more fun than being expected to learn to play nicely with people. It's much more than double the work of a single puppy as they need to be walked/trained/socialised/taken to classes/played with/etc. separately and together as well so they learn to both cope apart from each other and to behave appropriately when together.

forever they are very lucky but do you have someone else to help so you can train them seperately?