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.

Recommended this group and really glad.. struggling with puppy blues though getting a little easier...at least I can eat now! . Had our cavapoochon 2 1/2 weeks now. Re the walking... we have had same problem but is getting better ... rolled a ball in front of him.. hard work but is paying off .. miss my lie ins....

Also struggling with puppy blues in this household - although not me but DH. He agreed to dog on proviso kids and I did the work as he didn’t want one. He was coming round but after 4 weeks we still haven’t cracked toilet training which is quite normal I believe, but he has an acute sense of smell and anxiety about hygiene, so the crapping on the carpet and weeing in the kitchen - on top of the biting and jumping up - is really getting to him.

Pup is good at going into the garden to wee usually but point-blank refuses to go outside if it’s raining, so the other day with non-stop rain was bleak.

I’m doing most of the work and am exhausted, but am getting a lot of pleasure from the pup. Feel awful that DH isn’t happy though especially as it affects the kids too - this morning he inadvertently woke them up by shouting “that BLOODY dog”.

its really hard isnt it.. I was the one who said lets do it, but only for reasons to try and make DH and DD happy as they were keen. Now I just am so desperate to feel 'normal' again and for life to feel relaxed.. My home used to feel like a refuse from the world but at the moment, work is and thats not right. Our puppy isnt even being bad.. just being a puppy and we do get our sleep.. just full on and I didnt really listen to advice I was given/read about how tough it would be.. feels like it will never end

Well at least I'm going in with my eyes open. 10 sleeps until my dog watch begins. I hope you all find your even keel soon x

I read threads here and articles elsewhere for months before getting DartyPup about how hard it is but the v early mornings have been tough - even my newborn humans were never awake for the day as early!! Dc1 at a week old was sleeping from midnight-4am then a feed (bf) then 4-8am.
I think my puppy waking before 6:30am every day is karma biting my smug mama arse.

I just had my first un-enjoyable trip to the dog. We’ve been going twice a day and it’s been great but today there was Dog X and her Owner Y. X hogged every dog’s ball, slobbered over my jacket, walked over my puppy and is possessive of water and food apparently so none of the rest of us could give our dogs water or treats. Meanwhile Owner X held forth on how it was wrong of me to have DartyPup on a harness, unwise of me to have my bag open (I was getting something out ...), how I should toilet train DartyPup differently and how I apparently hadn’t shut the gate correctly.

@DuchessDarty my human kids have never slept. Youngest still gets me up at 6:15 every morning . His sister used to star at at 5am. Religiously.

If puppy does the same I'll survive. If it's worse then god help me.

I see unsolicited advice from a certain brand of puppy parent is as bad as the sort from that sort of human parent!

Yep gotta love the unsolicited puppy/parenting advice @MsMarvellous especially when it starts with an outline of what you’re doing wrong

Another puppy blues household here too, we’ve had pup 10 days now, I’ve taken 2 weeks off work and then DH has the next 2 weeks. It’s been sooo hard, harder than I’d imagined, pretty much housebound during the day on a rotating cycle of sleeping pup and crazy awake bitey pup, when she’s awake she wants constant attention and the weather hasn’t helped. She loves the garden and will play on her own there but it’s been pouring so no outside, hardly any toilet training and I’m just chasing around until her next sleep.

I can relate to everyone’s comments. 10 week old puppy here and he’s very hard work. I had my last puppy 11 years ago and I think I forgot how hard it is. The constant cleaning up, biting, watching everywhere for chewing, wee and poo. It’s exhausting. Plus I’m getting up every 2 hours through the night, as others recommended on here, to stop puppy pooing in crate....which still isn’t working!! The blasted rain isn’t helping as puppy doesn’t seem to like weeing on wet grass. My carpet is much nicer!

Yes I'm finding it really hard too. DH and DD adore him and DS likes him well enough but although they all "help" the buck definitely stops with me and I'm finding it exhausting (showering last thing ready for enforced early ups every day in particular) and finding the biting upsetting (he literally attacks me part way through every walk). Luckily he's very very cute looking and good in other ways e.g. doesn't cry at all during the night, eats enough, plays well, toiletting improving etc This thread is really helpful, thank you everyone

we left puppy with a dog sitter today while we went to my grandmother’s funeral. came home to the news that he has eaten a sock. he’s pooed 4 times this evening but no sock yet... if it doesn’t appear shortly we will have to have a trip to the vet.

Eaten a whole sock? Hopefully it belonged to the smallest feet in the family and not the largest?!

We have always had our shoes lined up in the hall. We stupidly have not yet changed this practice, and so one DartyPup’s current favourite activities is to grab a shoe and zoom off with it. I was grumpy this evening when I could only find one and it took over 5 minutes to find the missing shoe.

The other day I was sitting on the carpet having a nice play with DartyPup when I spotted a stealth poo under the pedals on our piano. I now nervously do a recce for canine crap in every covert corner of the house. I was rather traumatised when I saw something suspicious in the same place under the piano today, but it turned out to be a big piece of brown Lego.

Sophy hope the sock appears soon naturally. If it happens again I would phone the vets straight away for advice as they may try and make them sick straight away to bring it up. Much better then an operation for a stuck one speaks from experience

And I should say if you haven't already I would get their advice and any sign of not wanting to eat or vomiting then phone as an emergency.

Anyone else struggling with toilet training in the rain? It’s been so difficult this week, really wanted to start making headway but we’re really not anywhere just trying to encourage wees on the puppy pads but she goes so quick sometimes it’s impossible to catch her

definately! we have put a pad by the door and our boy has been using but had got to the stage when he was starting to ask to go out and rung the bells a couple of times.. Summer!

Wet weather definitely affecting toilet training here too. Puppy gets distracted by the rain, grass to wet to sniff around on and little puddles (and worse!) indoors as a result. DS heard its going to be warmer next week. I hope so. Broken nights, constant cleaning, whiffy carpets are not nice! It’ll be good to let puppy in garden and get back to some proper toilet training.

Puppy also using the bells here too, so cute! But yes wet weather has disrupted our toilet training. She’s fine going out if it’s drizzling but not heavy rain.

The big issue we have with potty training right now is that she’s saving her weeks for outside 75% of the time but not her poos. She likes to save those for our floors. Part of the problem I think is that unlike with weed, she doesn’t like poo-ing in front of any of us. So tends to save them for the few times she’s out of my sight range.

Any advice on specifically getting a puppy to poo outside and within sight range of a human?!

So glad it's not just us who are struggling with the rain! I try to keep him out in the garden as long as he will tolerate but he holds it until we get back in and then pees on the towel I use to dry his paws. I use a puppy pad at night but in the daytime he just tries to rip it to bits. We had just got to the point of him starting to ask to go out... So frustrating.

What is the bells?

The bells are a toilet training tool @3teens2cats

They are bells on a long piece of cord that you attach to the handle on your back door. Every time you let them into the garden the bells will jingle creating an association for your puppy with going outside to wee/poo. The puppy then knows that if they ring the bells themselves - by touching them - that’s a sign to you that they want to go out to dig up your plants relieve themselves.

ADOGO® Dog Puppy Potty Training DoorBells - Length Adjustable Dog House Toilet Training Bells www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01D2IFBNC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_YaMaDb4ERKD6V?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

I have never heard of that, how cool!

Yes really cool! DartyPup has pressed the bells twice today - putting her paw on them - and then when let put home straight to do a wee. I then make a huge fuss of praising her! To be fair the bells don’t make much of a noise so you do need to be nearby so you can see you pup do it, but it’s great! So worth doing given the bells are cheap.

no sign of any sock here. hugely doubting the dog sitter’s story of sock eating tbh! can’t even work out where he would have got a sock from.

Out of sheer desperation and wanting to salvage what’s left of our smelly carpet, I’ve opened the pack of puppy pads. Reading on here, it seems as though most of you are having success with crate training, regular garden visits and even bells. But, I’m starting to feel so defeated. So, opened the puppy pads and put them in strategic places. Now they’re being chewed up and so I’ve picked them up as I’m worried puppy will swallow the plastic backing. Any suggestions?