Puppy in garden and new rooms

[inappropriatelyemployed]

We brought our puppy home on Friday. Breeder suggested limiting access to a room or two to create a safe space until he settled.

He runs through kitchen, utlity room to garden. His crate is in the kitchen but he is only left there when he sleeps. We are with him in kitchen and garden once awake.

He was doing really well so I asked the breeder should I push on and start to increase access to other rooms. She agreed this was a a good idea.

I did this yesterday for short bursts and today. But he seems to go bonkers. I think it's the carpet (hard floors everywhere else he has been so far including breeders). So he gallops and leaps and growls and needs a bit of calming down. He did a wee inside today for the first time too.

Should I continue? Thing is we have a gate at kitchen so he will occasional whine to go out to other rooms (as I say, it's not cos he's left alone).

Garden question or 2 - he started toileting outside really well. Now he just goes off gallopping around and trying to eat EVERYTHING! So although he generally still is very good at toiletting outside, it has become a bit manic as he then legs it and starts trying to duck under bushes, eat leaves or stick or stones etc.

Advice?

I lived in my kitchen for many weeks. This helped because any accidents were contained and also it was completely puppy proofed. I only ventured into other rooms when he was much older and any bad behaviour we went back into the kitchen so it actually became an 'earned' privilege to be in the other rooms and I found it was then easier to manage the puppy behaviour (chewing etc).

Mine used to eat stones as a young puppy. We ended up sectioning a bit of the garden off temporarily so we could limit it.

Thanks that is really helpful. I wasn't sure whether it was a case of him just getting used to it bit by bit or it was just too much for him.

I am thinking of that as it's too stressful. I hadn't realised all the stuff that was bad puppy wise until you start to see it through a puppy's eyes!

I feel stupid really for not considering it too but had left DH and the boys on the prep for dog.

No advice but my 12 week old puppy is exactly the same, trues to eat everything in the garden and home! It's very tiring watching him and he also swallows foreign objects as fast as he can arghhhhhh.

He is sectioned if by baby gates in hall/ kitchen and also cries when I go out of sight, we are working on that...

It’s something new so he’s probably excited, he’ll calm down when he’s in the house after a little while, it won’t be so exciting anymore.
My pup had the run of the whole house and he didn’t go bonkers in it...well actually he did sometimes go bonkers because that’s what puppies do but he calmed down.

Thanks - so would you just keep on with it? We want him to have the run of downstairs but don't want to freak him out!

Our pup had the run of most of downstairs, but we have hard floors with rugs, so we just lifted all the rugs and kept the mop on standby. She is now 16 months and has only recently stopped having regular zoomies (using the sitting room like some kind of gym). She managed to destroy whole beds of daffs too. They grow out of his stage, so just bear with it. Also a good fit of the zoomies wears them out nicely, so it does have an upside! I quite miss seeing her leap from sofa to sofa.

It's entirely up to you OP whether you let him have full use of the downstairs or not at this stage. There is no right or wrong thing to do.

I found it easier for toilet training, chewing etc to limit access until he was older but like most things about raising a puppy it's down to personal choice.

Thanks Biteyshark - so you didn't find that he was freaked out by accessing new rooms at a later date? Sorry for all the questions!

Mine is 3 in August and still does this every single time!

When we introduced him to the new rooms it tended to be just for a short time at first. Often he would sniff about them but if he then started to say chew at something he shouldn't in the room and wouldn't stop doing that we would just go back into the kitchen.

Like anything the more we did it in short bursts the more he got used to the other areas. When mine had the zoomies I certainly wouldn't have wanted them to happen in rooms other than the kitchen as he could have easily hurt himself and toilet training was much harder to do from other areas of the house so we only went in the other rooms when he was calm and I knew he could hold his bladder for a reasonable time.

Elfpup is still only allowed in 4 rooms which to be fair are the ones we use the most anyway. He has yet to be allowed to explore the rest of the downstairs ( only had him 7 months!).

Eating everything in the garden sounds entirely par for the course. Mine is a puppy death trap so he was taken out on a lead or confined in a puppy play pen until I could identify the worst hazards and remove them. It still didn't stop him grabbing grapes from the vine one morning as he walked out. I ended up carrying him from the kitchen to the car for weeks.

Thanks - it is a worry as he is a big pup and the puppy play pens I have looked at seem very small.

But he is scampering all over the place and getting behind bushes so it's a constant battle some times.

A

If he can’t escape the garden him running about in it and diving in the bushes sounds like great fun and exercise for him!

Mine had the kitchen and hall when she was tiny. I would bring her into the lounge at a sleepy time when she had definitely already had a wee. She's had maybe half an hour in there and then I'd put her back in the kitchen. If she got too bonkers I'd take her into the garden for a play, or put her in her crate for a bit of a time out. I didn't want her learning that it's ok to race around the house! It seemed to work well and I slowly built up the time she spent in the lounge. I often did training with her in there to keep her occupied.

Thanks all.

Cath - I just worry that I don't know what the bushes are and whether they are a risk. He eats everything!

He is such a good boy. He was settling well in his crate but now likes to sleep on the kitchen floor as I think he realises we leave while he is asleep.

I'm trying to settle him back in his crate for sleeps. Any tips? DH says it's ok for him to go in and whine for us while he goes to sleep but I'm worried this would make the crate seem like a punishment.