Talk to me about poodles!

[Toblerone345]

My family always had dogs growing up but I've never had one myself, and now I've finally moved into a house with a garden I'm looking to get a dog. My boyfriend (who lives with me) has slight allergies so I'm looking into small to medium sized low-shedding breeds including Toy Poodles and Miniature Poodles, though of course we need to spend time around Poodles before buying one to make sure they don't set his allergies off.

I think poodles are adorable and I've read that they're very intelligent and easy to train, but I've also read that they can suffer from separation anxiety and can be destructive or snappy. For clarity, I work full time from home (this is unrelated to Covid so unless I change jobs I should be working from home for the forseeable future) but I'm worried that we won't even be able to leave the dog alone for 3-4 hours if we go out on the weekend. Please could you tell me about your Poodle experiences?

@VanellopeVonSchweetz99 - how exciting! Ours was our first ever dog and he made everything so easy. Not what I was expecting from puppy owning.

@VanellopeVonSchweetz99 Ah that's so exciting! I'm a bit jealous. Do you know when you'll get to take him home? When you get your Poodle you should tell us how it's going and hopefully provide some adorable photos!

@Juiceey He's so cute!! I love the teddy bear style.

@MissShapesMissStakes Please could you tell me more about how you found the puppy stage? I didn't think it would be a problem for me (hard work, obviously, but manageable) as I work from home and would plan to take a couple of weeks of annual leave to help settle the puppy in, but some friends and family I've spoken to have said they think it might be too much for me even working from home.

@Toblerone345 I think I found it easier than I expected because I had read a lot of the 'puppy blues' threads on here first.
I found the fact that we were tied to the house in the first few weeks before vaccines were done the hardest.

I had a 6 and 9 year old and home Ed so we had to miss a couple of their groups if I couldn't get someone else to sit with pup. Which we all found hard. But it was only for the weeks before he could come with us. And actually a couple of times I took him in and just didn't put him on the floor. Although that wasn't easy.

Also just taking him out as a puppy to come to the groups with us was tricky at first. But then once he was old enough to be left (can't remember but a few months old by then) it was easier as we'd only be out the house for 2 hours at the most anyway.

He didn't bite much at all, never chewed or destroyed anything. We got bells that go on the door to the garden so he quickly learnt to ring them if he wanted to go out. I did find toileting a pain because it meant standing out in the cold and rain waiting for him to 'go' every half an hour to start with. And we got him at the start of winter so that wasn't well timed! But he did toilet train quite fast really. Spotting the signs he needed to go also helped a lot.

The main thing I was most worried about was lack of sleep at night. My youngest child still doesn't sleep through so I've had nine years of broken sleep. But from night 1 he just slept in his crate and didn't have any night time accidents.

It's hard being in puppy-time, they are cute for a reason! But it passes.

@MissShapesMissStakes That sounds easier than I expected, especially the sleeping through the night thing. I remember having one specific dog as a child and it seemed like the house was full of puppy pads for years!

It wasn't what I expected but the chances of it are tiny I'm sure. We picked him up at 10 weeks and he was the last to go so I wonder if he's got more used to sleeping without his siblings. Or it was just luck. Certainly nothing we did!

Puppy pads are no good. Confuse pup and terrible for the environment. It's toilet outside and get praise or toilet inside and get nothing.

@MissShapesMissStakes I'm glad your pup was relatively easy, however it came to be. Good to know about puppy pads - I feel vindicated in my hatred of them now (though to be honest my reasoning is just that I think it looks gross to have a room covered in puppy pads!)