Puppy support

[ChestyNut]

Not sure if there’s is a current thread for support for new puppy owners, would anyone be interested?

ChestyPuppy arrived on Saturday and is 10 weeks old.
Finding it tough as forgot how brutal the early days are. Our Chestydog died after 12 years earlier this year, he was my best friend

Highlights of today have been...
Standing in the pouring rain in pjs and a coat shouting “do wee wees”

Dealing with a puppy pad snow storm from her shredding during the night.

Turning into a bitey hyperactive monster during a visit from my friends

Please tell me it gets better?

I don’t know where you read that but an 11 week old puppy that you have had for 2 weeks absolutely won’t be able to be left for three hours. What sort of breeder sold you a pup with those arrangement in place?
You need to find care for the whole day, take time off work or rehome.

Hello all, reading with interest as we are getting a Grand Bassett Griffon Vendeen bitch at the end of February and I want to try and read up a bit so the toilet and sleep training aren't too much a shock 😳

Are you sure you haven’t confused the amount of time they can be left without toileting? There’s lots of advice online saying you can leave them an hour per month: meaning you can leave toilet trips that long once they get the hang of it.

But I can’t find anything saying you can leave them alone that long - where did you read that?

lethlee my pup is now 14weeks old and has literally just started to be left for a decent amount of time. Before that we were with her both myself and DP for 4 weeks constantly, in this time we tried to build up the time she is being left, shes varied massively between screaming, crying, howling the house down and other times crying for 5-10mins then just taking herself to bed.

She also has been to daycare and has the option of this but it really realllly tires her out!

Last Friday pup was left from 10am - 1pm when I came home for lunch she was clearly upset and distressed it was heartbreaking. She calmed right down and was tired, I left at 2pm and partner was home at 3.30-4pm she had just slept the afternoon.

She has been left again today 10.15am- 1pm shes whined for 5-10mins played and then slept (I has a cam) I came home for lunch hour. We had a successful wee and poo in the garden! and a play and cuddle...I hid some treats in her bed and left...shes gobbled them all and now is fast asleep and porbably will be till 4 with DP gets home.

Sadly I don't think we will have plain sailing im sure its now going to be straightforward am just not sure your pup will of had enough constant time with you to feel safe and secure they just think your never coming back again...they need to trust you enough and learn that you will

The biting is really starting to get me down. Purplepup is now 12 weeks. Happy in his crate and his pen, is sleeping through the night, toilet training is pretty much cracked. He knows "sit" and "wait" and "no"
But the biting. He's still doing it and it's now harder as he's getting bigger and stronger.
We've tried ignoring (he just keeps going and going), we've tried "ow" it riles him up. We're now trying time outs. He's biting our other dog on the face, trying to dominate some of the dogs at day care. I don't know how to get through to him 
He's going to start teething soon and I read if he doesn't learn to soften his bite by 16 weeks it's nigh on impossible to train him to do so.

Lethlee could you mix half a day at day care and the other half with a neighbour? We've been doing this since we went back to work and it's working really well. He's so tired after morning of play that after he's had lunch he just sleeps for a couple of hours, our neighbour pops in to spend bit of time with him and our other dog and then he naps again until my husband gets home half an hour later. We have a camera in the room with the pen so can see him at all times and he doesn't even stir.

purplegoat the biting was bad with my puppy. I think it started to settle down around the 5 months stage with only occasional bitey stages when he was overtired in the evenings (this lasted for a few more months).

Repeated timeouts were the only thing that worked for us.

I read if he doesn't learn to soften his bite by 16 weeks it's nigh on impossible to train him to do so.

My dog never got that memo. He still had bitey sessions after that time but is now the most gentle adult dog.

Yep mine missed that too!!
It’s not biting. It’s mouthing. They explore the world and play with their mouths. It’s what they do. Mine “explored” through a wall once. Don’t try and stop it. Just constantly direct it to what you don’t mind being chewed! Toy, nylabone, kong etc.
No is an interrupter but it isn’t really a command a dog can understand. Focus on what you do want them to do. Sometimes a training session would interrupt the chewing nicely for us.
And he’s not trying to dominate other dogs. Pack theory is rubbish. He’s a young pup who hasn’t learnt manners yet! Daycare may be too manic and overexciting for him at the moment.

Thanks both. But it isn't mouthing. Mouthing I can handle. This is biting. Hard. And we need to sort it. We've been redirecting him to other things since day one.
He's definitely trying to dominate her. She's a very submissive character anyway and is tolerating a lot from him but he grabs her cheek and pulls until she yells but then doesn't stop like you'd expect he jumps in and goes harder. And so it continues until we have to separate before one of them gets hurt.
Day care wise he goes for half a day 3 times a week when I have to be in the office. We purposely chose a very small one that has a max of 10 dogs but most often 3 or 4 and he gets a lot of time in a separate puppy zone that is quieter, we agreed this until he's older and can keep up with them all - especially as he's a large breed and I don't want to damage his joints.
The alternative is he gets left at home which isn't right to do.

Dominance theory is rubbish. It really is.
Mouthing IS biting. It can be worse when they’re tired or overexcited and seems worse when it’s a big dog. Mine bit holes in clothes and made me bleed more than once.
Yelping overexcites mine. She wouldn’t see it as a signal to stop at that age at all. It’s just OTT puppy behaviour.

My dog is now an adult but still wouldn't tell off an over enthusiastic puppy. I think people assume all dogs will put puppies in their place but mine won't. You need to seperate them until the puppy grows up.

Mine was very bitey hence the MN username. They hurt with their needle teeth and redirection did not work for mine but timeouts did.

purplegoat it sounds like he’s trying to get her to play rather than dominate her?

Are the time outs working to calm him down?

Morning all! Cromerpup now 10 weeks and we've had him for 2. Although it feels like he's been here forever.

Settling and sleeping through has gone well. He has a puppy pen around his crate, so can get up and pee during the night if needed. We join him at 6 in the morning (this has stretched out from 5 in the first days) and the advice, from both breeder and trainer, to ignore whining and even barking so he settles has been rock solid.

Of course, the relaxed attitude to peeing on paper overnight means that peeing is pretty scattergun during the day, although I am rewarding lavishly when he gets it right. Pooing, thankfully, mostly happens on the paper/pad area, and the signals are clearer too. We had second vaccinations yesterday, so we can start to go outside in a week (now 6 days and counting - can't wait to get his feet on the ground outside). That's when I will be taking outside to pee. Can't see us doing it overnight though, so we might find that it takes longer.

One thing - yesterday, because he was going to the vet, I upped the treats to include small bits of roast chicken (he's on Benyfit raw food, and usually treats are crumbs of that). He absolutely loved it, was fine at the vet, but spent the rest of the day at home whining, moaning, running around really agitated, couldn't settle or sleep, wouldn't leave me - it was a nightmare! I thought it was a reaction to vaccination, but eventually, at about 7pm, he had a massive poo and finally obtained relief! I think the change in diet was to blame and won't be doing that again. Poor little boy. Thankfully, slept well and seems to be content and catching up on his rest today.

Forgot to say - we start puppy classes on 28th, and looking forward to getting some experienced input into training. Am trying to follow books and YouTube, but it's doing my head in really. Everyone does something slightly different and the clicking techniques are particularly frustrating. Perhaps my ability to sequence is poor. The trainer we're going with does the whistle for recall, so we're using that at home to get the association with whistles and good times firmly established. Sit seems to work quite well, but he's too wriggly to do 'Down' from Sit.

Ok Wolfie. You're the expert and the rest of us know nothing

Not me. Even the guy who came up with dominance theory now accepts he was wrong. These are outdated concepts.

Hi can I join we have an 18 week old puppy.

She's doing marvellous in her crate, goes in it around 11:30 when we go bed and doesn't make a sound until we get up around 7:30am, she's stopped having accidents in there and manages to hold herself all night. The problem is having with her is she will not let us know when she needs to go so ends up having accidents in the house, we take her out every 30 mins or so but she still has these accidents. My question is at what age do they find ways of letting you know they need to go in the garden?

uhtredsonofuhtred mine never used to let me know but what I discovered was that he used to do a half hearted paw towards the door so unless you were actually staring at him I wouldn't notice him indicating. I changed that by buying some training bells which hung by the door and within a day had trained him to bash them with his nose when he wanted to go out. The problem was he soon got the hang of that and demanded to go out to play as well as pee

We got rid of the bells when he was fully toilet trained as he then knew he needed to get my attention.

I was wondering the same thing uhtredsonofuhtred.

Mine does very obvious sniffing so I can take him out in time (mostly). Also he will pretty much go on command outside so if I take him out and he wasn’t sniffing then 9/10 he’ll still have a wee while he’s out anyway.

But he’ll just as happily wee and poo inside if I don’t spot that he needs to go. I’m sure what the next step is.

Hello to all the new joiners by the way!! You pay your entry fee in puppy photos here 😉

@BiteyShark thanks I'll look in to one of those.

@LittleLongDog same here with the going on demand, it's so frustrating 😬

Here she is

She’s beautiful!

Losing the will here! I'll be so happy when she can go out the front door! Despite the fact she's never gone outside that way unless she goes on a carry or to the car if weve missed her (non existent) signals to pee or poo she'll 100% do it by the front door.

She also hates being picked up and will 'growl' I've put it in inverted commas because it doesn't sound viscous more 'oh ffs what now' which is annoying because I know she must be frustrated at being picked up if she's circling or if the pee alarm (on my phone at least one an hour) coincides with her chewing something fun but she cannot go outside the front door because it's pavement and we live on a really popular dog walk route so it's just not worth the risk to put her lead on and take her out the front door with a poo bag until next Tuesday.

I feel like she's so bloody intelligent, it's hard to tire her out mentally, so I bought a few books on brain games 😳 she learnt sit, down, off, stay and come in 3 days at 8 weeks. It's exhausting trying to tire her out! She worked out last week that she could jump on the pedal of the bin and then jump up whilst the lid is open to get to the contents so now we have a lockable bin! She also realised that if she gets into the kindling box and picks out our other dog a good stick ( he just demolishes it and spits out all the stick) she can dart in as he's chomping it and steak his chew 🤦‍♀️

Very outing photos but I don't care 😂

Cute puppies

Chestypup is 16 weeks now! I’ve decided I like her now
Not so much when she drags branches in from the garden and eats stones.

purple puppy class told us to have her on a house lead and time out for any undesirable stuff.
They get time outs in puppyplay for biting.
Do they have any effect on pup?

Timeouts worked great for my puppy, especially with the biting of me .

If he was worked up because he was over stimulated it gave him a chance to calm down or sleep and if he was just in a bitey mood then the ultimate 'punishment' was being separated from everyone which was dull and boring. You do need to make sure the timeout space is boring and puppy safe.