Puppy survival thread! July/August! Roll up!

[Juiceey]

Here we go, hero puppy owners.

We've just got back from the vet where I was shocked to discover he now weights 4kg. Little lump! He's 19 weeks old tomorrow. Wonder how big he'll get? On a miniature poodle group I'm in the adults are anywhere between 6-12kg. I hope he's small as easier to carry about!

@Juiceey I have been building up from 5 to 20 mins in the last 2 weeks but know I should really be leaving him for longer now. I will be back at work soon 😬

Pups have free run of downstairs. Their crate is in the kitchen diner and they have a big bed in the lounge which they snooze on during the day and early evening.
Then they sleep 11-6.30in their crate

Although last night pup2 was brave and tried to jump up for a cuddle on the sofa!

Loving following this thread still - gorgeous pups you all have!

Tomorrow is finally pup day for us - can't wait and terrified all at once!

For the first couple of months we hardly let ours in the lounge as the sofa and rug excited him too much. Now we let him in there when we are there but he still needs to be supervised. Generally we are only there in the evenings after dinner and he has now learnt that this means he can come up on the sofa and sleep next to us (hes taken the best seat on the sofa as his spot though!)

Our pup is contained by baby gate with in the kitchen / dinner but we have a sofa in there so the family hang out in there most of the day during the summer. Pup has worked out how to open the baby gate if we don’t latch it fully, and her crate for quiet rest time is in the lounge. But she just goes straight into her crate hasn’t been allowed anywhere else in the house her. I read the training guide on the face book dog training group which advises that you keep the lounge for lounging i.e quiet rest zone for all the family so puppies tend not to cope with that until they learn to settle well. I liked that idea so we will keep her out till the winter months as we tend to also have an open fire then too which will be another challenge to manage with her that I’d rather do when she’s more trained. The kids still have far too much small plastic stuff to let her loose anywhere else at the moment!

DH has the last two evenings been working on loose lead walking to reduce her pulling and I took her out this morning and although not perfect it was a lot better...which gives me hope we are going in the right direction again!

I've decided to move OwlPup's crate to the front room once DS is back at school. It'll mean I can get on with my life in the kitchen/back room whilst he's napping. I feel like he's completely taken over my space in the house and I want it back now. 😆

I'm in a rage today. I feel like I'm the only one thinking of dog stuff. Cool stany loving everyone's shoes in case they get chewed, asking DH to walk him and then ending up going myself then I'm the one polka pup bites the most too - it's like a kick in the teeth. Also just had blazing row about school uniform. I bought it a few weeks back and it doesn't fit but it's my fault because "I " left it to the last minute apparently. I've orders shoes, been in person for blazer and PE stuff to the proper uniform shop and also sorted the younger one whilst also sorting through old stuff and segregating it for charity. I'm raging. Not puppy but added to puppy stress and he can bloody get to f#*k. I'm off to cuddle the puppy 🤬

Gah @polkadotpjs, I'd be raging too. I have to do everything because I'm single, but if I had a DH and still had to everything, I'd be very resentful indeed. Enjoy puppy cuddles.

@polkadotpjs I share school uniform fury. We can only get uniform from one shop and they’re incompetent verging on rude. They seem surprised every August that so many dc want uniform (there’s 1000 pupils ffs and you’re the only place that sells the very specific uniform!). Can’t try anything on so got home and dd tried it all only to find the pe hoodie doesn’t have logo embroidered or printing on the back. Dh has gone to return it because I think he could tell I was broken! They had 5 pairs of pe joggers in the whole shop but “might have more next week” when I’ll be back working full time ffs. I hate it!

Dd2&3 left out aqua beads on the floor so dragonpup tried to eat them dc will need to learn grr

I can understand the rage feeling. I really feel like the only one putting effort in and even when the teens get involved it’s all hyper and then they wonder why the pups go bonkers!

I wfh so I’m here all day, toilet training, feeding, behaviour training, socialising them, supervising play and treats and that’s just during the day!
Evenings are me following everyone around “shut the doors” “keep pups in one room”

I can be in the middle of dinner and get “Mum/gazing he did a wee, aren’t you training them not to?”

I AM but, I can’t cook dinner, watch pups, open doors and do the pee pee dance all at the same time, are you going to clear it up? Which results in dragging the mop full of piss... ugh

If only the humans in this house were as well behaved as the pups!

Oh my god yes I hear you both. He doesn't want to do it but raged at me ! And he works in his office and yelled "get that dog out of here". THAT dog that he really really wanted. It's ludicrous. And I said yesterday "do you want to go for a walk with pup" meaning us two or ideally all of us. "Well it's a stupid question as it's not about wanting to go. He has to have a walk!" was the reply.
He does no kids shopping or if he does he buys three of things and NEVER returns the non fitting. Oh and has to ask me what they need before he goes. Ditto food shopping. "Write me a list". No!!! I want someone else to think

I think I need to move my post to AIBU 😆. On a true puppy note how is toilet training going elsewhere? Hit and miss here as in if we take him out he'll sometimes do something but sometimes not. Then merrily squats and pees or curls out a stealth poo in a hiding place. I never shout when he's gone inside , just mutter inwardly but wonder when it'll get better as he does 10 hours overnight no bother

@polkadotpjs I feel your pain. I've had similar until quite recently although fortunately we have no young dc any more, which makes things easier at least. It's weirdly got slightly easier since Mucky and I aren't as close (!) as we were, because he pretty much takes as much notice of other people now, but before he would only really listen to me so it was up to me to sort him out, apparently. Dh is just waking up to what I've been doing - eg. Mucky does yet another poo on the lawn. Dh says 'you're joking, not another one? He only just did one on his walk' and I say 'I've been telling you for ages, he poos his own body weight each day pretty much!' This is news because I have cleaned up all the poo from day one. No one else has noticed.

@polkadotpjs toilet training is all good here and we haven't had any accidents for a long time. Also Mucky made me squeal in delight as he cocked his leg to wee for the first time yesterday - so cute. He does it on walks when he is sort of marking his territory. He did it again today and nearly fell over, sort of lost his balance, which I'm afraid I laughed at a lot. This is my life now...laughing at how my pup wees!

OwlPup's been pretty solid on the toileting front since about 12 weeks. Last accident inside was around 13 weeks I think. But it's quite easy here as we're in the room with patio doors. So he just sits by the door, and unless I'm in the kitchen I'll see him. He's got quite an obvious poo/wee whine too so if I don't notice him, he'll have a bit of a whine.

I feel really luckily the pup hasn’t pooed once inside and sat by the back door whined from day one for a wee. We’ve been a bit lazy though leaving the back door open a lot so walks in and out when she feels like it but does go wee when we indicate it’s time to go before crate time. But yes I’ve picked up 5 poos today already...but pleased they are all normal now as we had to keep doing boiled chicken and rice in the early weeks as she had a lot of diarrhoea issues in first 2-3wks with us (age 8-11wks).

@OwlInAnOakTree we have a similar set up so I'm a little worried about how the onset of bad weather will affect things when we have the door shut all the time. Mucky just strolls in and out as he wants at the moment. He also quite likes rain, so recently when it was rainy he just signalled he wanted to go out and then sat around on the soaking wet lawn. Mind you, I am pleased now I've found a way of persuading him to go out for a late night wee - I chuck a few dog biscuits outside and he sniffs around for them and does a wee while he's at it. I think I read somewhere that the sniffing somehow prompts the weeing.

Toileting is pretty good until it rains as dragonpup is not a fan of the rain and seems a little scared of his own poo. He does a circle sniffing then jumps sideways a bit before pooing with a very worried facial expression. Mostly it’s been outside with a few wees on the hard floor. He mostly tells us but yesterday, when it was raining, came and weed in front of dh and I - I assume he thought we’d be super proud to both witness the thing we keep praising him for might go easy on the wee praise!

We are still only 11 weeks old so toilet training is still in progress (read, if I’m watching it’s all good but if I dare to take a shower or answer an email no one else manages to read them)

Can anyone help with resource guarding? Pup1 is the biggest and full of fear where pup2 is a lot smaller, not the runt, brothers from the same litter. Pup2 started to warn pup1 from eating from his bowl, low growl that pup1 listened to.

All fine but this evening I gave them both a deer stick that I needed to take off them when it got too chewy and small in case they chocked and pup2 growled at me and then snapped when I went in again to take it away?

I haven’t looked into guarding so I do need to. I needed to remove it for his safety.

Around his normal feeds he is fine with me it seems to just be the good, high end treats? Not sure what to do?

@GazingAndGrazing have you had a look at the Facebook group: dog training advice and support? They have units on resource guarding and littermate syndrome which might be relevant to your pups. It's a great resource if you haven't already looked at it.

[quote OwlInAnOakTree]@GazingAndGrazing have you had a look at the Facebook group: dog training advice and support? They have units on resource guarding and littermate syndrome which might be relevant to your pups. It's a great resource if you haven't already looked at it. [/quote]
Thank you, I’ll check them out, I’m on so many pages I don’t know who is what anymore

Hi everyone, we are new puppy owners! We have got a border collie who our children have named Roley Sir Woofington 3rd! Sound pretty tame when looking at his family tree but pretty embarrassing when registering him at the vets!

He is 8 weeks on Saturday and seems to have settle really well into our hectic household! ❤️

@iusedtohavechickens

Hi everyone, we are new puppy owners! We have got a border collie who our children have named Roley Sir Woofington 3rd! Sound pretty tame when looking at his family tree but pretty embarrassing when registering him at the vets!

He is 8 weeks on Saturday and seems to have settle really well into our hectic household! ❤️

Oh my, how love;y, good luck and welcome on board from us as newbies

Aww @iusedtohavechickens he's a cutie. Here's our collie, he has tan eyebrows like yours. We took him up to a local dairy farm today that has an ice cream shop. They usually have sheep in the next field so thought it was a good opportunity to expose him to livestock. Turns out the lambs in this field had escaped the day before and run off to find their mums in a different field, so they'd been moved somewhere else. So, no sheep, but he did meet a beautiful cow though.

Great name @iusedtohavechickens! He is lush.

Chocpup has been good so far on the toileting, he goes to the back door and yips to go out. He didn’t like it yesterday when it was really windy, he went down the alley at the side of the house to try and do a quiet poo but it’s basically a wind tunnel so he got a big gust up his bum and leapt a foot mid poo! He was going on the grass but when it’s rainy he prefers the patio so he can nip back in quickly.

@GazingAndGrazing The trainer we saw yesterday said we should throw treats down before taking his chews away to stop him feeling like our approaching him signals the end of something he enjoys. We try and do this when he chews crap in the garden as well to stop him getting defensive.

I feel the uniform rage, thanks for the school uniform reminder earlier in the thread, I just did an emergency next order this evening as I am so behind on school prep.