Young Puppy Support Group

[DuchessDarty]

I’d been looking for one of these but the only puppy support thread currently running is for older puppies. I’ve seen a few threads recently from posters who have new puppies like me, and thought I’d start our own group as I’d love to compare notes. But all welcome!

To kick off -

My pup, DartyPup, is a female poodle cross who is nearly 11 weeks old. Very sweet, friendly, fairly calm, sleeps a good stretch at night in her crate no problem and is happy to play in the garden by herself if I’m in the kitchen/conservatory and we easily have eyes on each other. She has a lot of naps and is doing well with house training.

But- she has the usual puppy traits of being needy and nippy. She loves biting bare toes and has a witching hour in the evening (as another poster aptly describes it!).

I adore the bond we seem to have bit am finding it draining. My children are old enough to be hands on and are keen to be, but their periods of peak energy don’t always correspond with the Pup’s. And when it comes down to it, she often wants me and so will whine if left with them downstairs while I escape for a rest. If they mistakenly leave a door open giving her access to the stairs, she’ll leg it up to find me. A stair gate isn’t an option unfortunately due to the design of our stairs.

Both my kids have never been particularly early risers and I’ve always been secretly pleased about dodging 6am wake up calls ... until DartyPup.

Also, I recommend blackout in the room where your puppy is sleeping, if they aren't in a well/dark covered crate. It makes a big difference. I had a month or so when the 6 month old puppy moved from sleeping in his crate and was sleeping really well in a quiet dog proofed room downstairs in his basket instead (and seemed to prefer the freedom to drink and move around), and then the sunrise suddenly kicked in (it was an east facing room), and we noticed a massive change in his waking time. After putting up blackout on top of the blind, (an emergency dark blue blanket) he went back to sleeping till 8am again..

He has now been asleep since 1pm..I could have gone out and he would never had noticed.

Thanks Nettleskeins this is v helpful. I’d noticed that there are regular-ish times when DartyPup has a nap, or more to the point, is overtired desperately needs one!

As of Monday when the kids are back in school and we get back to normal, I’m going to make a note of when she naps and try and engineer a nap routine.

hi my puppy is 12 weeks he is a golden retriever and he is lovely he is very calm which i find a bit unusual i was expecting a bouncy puppy but he is not like that.
his mum is a very calm and lovely dog but i was expecting more charging around the house,
i have just changed his food because the food he was on seemed to not agree with him and i think we are finally starting to turn a corner on that but we will see.
i tried to take him out for the first time today but we got 5 minuets down the road before he decided he wasn't going any further and we went home.

So CanoeDog has worked out how to remove the newspaper from under his water bowl and is now having the time of his life destroying it!

im sorry Canoe but that really has made me laugh
i was expecting more of that from my puppy but he is like an old man already he is already toilet trained he sits stays and gives paw i just keep thinking at some point its gonna come hes gonna do something crazy but so far he just bounces for half an hour and then sleeps

Honestly calm, it's like the newspaper has insulted his ancestors or something.

He did a poo in the garden this morning (good dog) and whilst I was picking it up he took the opportunity to take my slipper off my foot (bad dog) and it took me ages to get it back.

7am on a Saturday and there I am hopping around the garden in my dressing gown trying to get my slipper back without treading on the grass where he'd had a wee. Thank god we're not overlooked, there would probably be a post about me on our local Facebook page!

Can I join? I'm going to pick up my pup on Thursday. I'm so excited. He's a cockerpoo and my first dog. I'm reading this thread with interest and feeling a little daunted but undeterred... Right. Pen at the ready will take all tips...

I am a very proud pup owner. Tonight while I took dc1 to a concert, DH and dc2 were in charge of DartyPup and took her for her 3rd ever walk in the park’s dog enclosure. The first time she was scared off by a corgi, the 2nd (last night) she nervously but quietly stood her ground in the face of 3 big adult dogs (who were lovely), but tonight she apparently played “very nicely” with a shitizu who was the same size as her. Big win on the socialisation front. I am sad I missed it!

Am now on way home from concert and DH has apparently just been singing DartyPup to sleep

@DuchessDarty well done DartyPup, you must be so proud!

I'm so excited to pick up MarvelPup. What's annoying is he's ready to come home a week earlier than I'm getting him but my DH is away with work that week so having to delay until he's back. Didn't think it wise to settle pup into a house with one of the adults missing, for either pup OR DH!

We're off to visit him again next week though so we can get a fix.

Can someone remind me when they get their second lot of vaccinations? It's been a while and I've totally forgotten the schedule

I think the vaccines are all 2 weeks apart, is that right? That seems to be the schedule we are on anyway.

Gave pup a pig's ear yesterday to chew while we were out - he loved it & didn't bat an eyelid at our absence, but it's obviously disagreed with him as diarrhea all over his crate in the night. Yuck. He definitely has a sensitive tum, but vet has given us something to try for it so might give him a first dose today.

Does anyone have any good ideas for games with kids & dogs? My children are 10, 7 and 3 (nearly turning 11 and nearly turning 4) - the puppy is very bitey with them & I need to give them ways to redirect the play as they encourage it...

MsMarvellous I'd check with your breeder what type of vaccination they gave or are giving your pup because it does depend, it is usually 2 weeks but can be 3. Like a PP, our local vets do not do the same type of vaccination as the one DartyPup had, but unlike the PP I was luckily able to find a good vets that did not too far away. Did take a fair bit of ringing around and googling though.

So my top tip is to check with both your breeder and vets so you can be organised in time! Our local vets says it happens a lot and often people have to start again from scratch with the different type of vaccination.

@sophy channel 4 puppy school this week was all about dogs and children so might be worth checking out if you haven't already.
I'm feeling a bit down today.... Is puppy blues a thing? I suspect it is because I have to go to work tomorrow for the first time since getting him. Ds19 is on puppy duty and I know he will take good care of him. He is a psychology student so probably better at the training and reinforcing than I am!

Yes puppy blues totally is a thing (according to other threads here). As apparently is 'puppy brain' - not entirely sure about the legitimacy of that one but hey I'll take it

Thanks folks. I'll ask my breeder and speak to my vet. We have a cat so already registered and I know they're good so they should be able to advise.

I can’t wait to get my boy. He might be ready 3 days earlier if the breeder can get the vet appointment earlier for his final check. He’ll be 9 weeks either way. The mum rejected the pups so he’s been hand raised. He’s the one who chose me and he sat by the edge of the pen when I was leaving looking up at me as if say ‘am I coming too?’ . We’ve seen him once since and hoping I might get the chance to see him again before we go to collect him.

Hope everyone has had a good day with their pups. I am currently stood out in the garden while ours has his bonkers half hour before settling down for the night. It rained all afternoon here so he is filthy! I managed to give downstairs a good clean today which made me feel a bit better. I haven't been able to get much done since pup arrived so the house was getting a bit grim which really didn't help my mood. I have tried to step back a bit today and let Ds19 see to him. I also contacted a local, highly recommended, doggy day care/ boarding service. I don't intend to use them regularly (my parents will be the first point of call if we are stuck) but it made me feel better that I can have a back up plan. The lady is going to come and visit us in a few weeks time.

For those still waiting to collect your new additions... Enjoy the rest while you can!

Hi can I join we have 12 week old Jack Russell puppy called Badger, he's lovely but WAY harder work than my laid back lurcher ever was. I'm shattered. I've had three weeks more or less off work to settle him in, back to work in Tuesday and he is going to doggy care care and I'm already having sleepless nights about it, it's worse than sending first born to nursery school Firth's first time! Training wise pretty good but need to work on him being comfortable alone (he cries when I leave the room), it chasing the cat, and not barking at dogs he meets in the street (in other words not being a typical jack Russell!)

Was in tears earlier.

Dc2 (10) keeps inadvertently overexciting the dog by not respecting her boundaries or heeding my requests to leave her alone when she’s lying down and resting.

She’d been overexcited while I’d tried to groom her in the garden, trying to evade grooming by trying to nip me. She’d just settled nicely, lying down on the picnic blanket snuggled up to me. When DC2 came garumping outside, with a chip in one hand and steak in his mouth, and said “aw”. DartyPup was immediately on steak alert, followed DC2 back inside for some of his dinner, got none, then came charging back out towards me, jumping up at me growling. She bit me on the arm and drew blood. First time she’s done that.

Oh bless you Duchess

I’m dreading what mine will be like with PudPup. We’ve been watching recommended YouTube videos on handling, training and the do’s and don’t’s and today I made them clean their rooms out specifically looking for puppy hazards. We’ve bought one special toy for each child to play with with him that no one else will use and they’re going to have training time with him too alongside us.

And that will last precisely 10 mins and 45 seconds before hell breaks loose and I’m a quivering wreck in the dog crate!

Well calm pup has finally started doing normal poos without bleeding so I might have cracked the stomach issues he’s been having since he arrived.
He is having to have a third set of vaccinations as the first vaccination that the breeder had done only contained 2 instead of four parts to it so although he is allowed out he can’t go near puddles or water due to him not being fully covered.
Not that I can get him to walk more than 5 minutes down the road before he refuses to continue any further unless we are going home.
On the plus side he is much more playful but still very good no bad behaviour yet
Actually he nipped me today as my foot was too near his toy that he was playing with so I’m taking that as my fault

I hope you are feeling a bit better this morning duchess. We are all still learning (even if we have had dogs before) and of course so are the pups. I remember as a child our golden retreiver biting my sister over food. He never did it again thankfully.

Well in other news it's two weeks 5 days until pup arrives and we have builders starting this week to redo all the front driveway and retaining wall and take out a feature on the front room which will mean the house in uproar. They've promised it'll be done by the 15th but that's cutting it pretty fine. Hooray 😭

Can I join?

Had our gorgeous Cavapoo for just over a week. His breeder cage-trained him so no issues at night, been dry at night since night 2 🎉🎉. 99% of the time he lets us know when he needs to go out. He hates it when we leave in the day and just went beserk when I popped to the loo and left him in the kitchen.

However, he chews and nips a LOT, I know it’s normal and we give him ice cubes to cool his mouth and try and distract him with toys. We can walk him this next weekend so I think he’ll get rid of a lot of his energy that way (fingers crossed).

What food have you got your pups on because I had some issues with calm pups stomach and I changed his food and the problems seem to have stopped but now I’ve been told that the food I have him on isn’t the greatest either and I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing food wise anymore

We’ve got a 9 week old puppy here causing chaos! Biting everything and everyone. My dd has autism so it’s stressing her out quite a lot. I’ve averaged about 3 hours sleep each night as the puppy has decided to poo in his crate most nights, covering himself in it. By the time I’ve bathed him and washed down the crate, I’m too awake to go back to bed as I know the early alarm for DH will be going off soon! The puppy has time in the garden before bed to go to the toilet but still the poo happens in the crate. Yet, during the day he is quite good about going in the garden. I’m just so tired now and it seems quite relentless at the moment.