Puppy and a Christmas tree

[m0therofdragons]

Thinking to Christmas when puppy will be 6 months old. He’s very good but still a puppy. We usually have an 8 foot real tree. How on earth do we stop him destroying it?

Block it off - restricting access is the only realistic way to do this. Oh, and maybe give the glass baubles a miss this year.

I had this worry years ago, I thought the tree would get destroyed but she barely gave it a second glance after the initial 'wtf is that thing' sniff. She had her own toys so really didn't bother with it.
The cat however....... constantly removing her from the inside of it. If I couldn't see her guaranteed she was just gripping on to the trunk of the tree, just chilling and chewing the branches 🤦

See, our cats just used to sleep behind it. The cocker pup gets a bit excited. I might start by putting it up naked and see how he reacts.

We were just having the same chat - I don't think she will be that interested in the tree but she has a thing about lights 🎄

I was thinking of ditching the tree this year and putting a wall tree decoration but I'll have a think about how we might block one off.

We had ours in a playpen when ours was a puppy. Like this:

I'm intrigued why putting it up when naked would help!

We have the same dilemma with our cocker pup, I think we will just put it in the lounge and the door closed unless we are supervising.

I'd overlooked the little issue that we have this joy to come this year...

We'll only be letting our puppy in the same room when we are there to supervise. You just have to keep your eyes open, and make sure any breakable or precious ornaments are well out of reach. The youngest puppy we ever had with a tree was five months old, and the tree survived.

Ours really wasn't bothered by the Christmas tree. He sniffed it but otherwise jut ignored it.

Now the cats, on the other hand

Ours was 6 months on his first Christmas and I barely think he noticed the tree.,

I was worried too when Ddog was a pup. He was 6 months old first Xmas.
Bare a passing curiosity he wasn't interested at all.

I had a small artificial tree the first year when our border collie was 7 months old. He did go up to it, but then left it alone. We don’t have a large lounge and he likes to play ball inside. My worry with a real tree was that he would want to pee up against it. We are going with a larger artificial one this year.

Like many PP our terrier was about 6 months and she encountered her first real Christmas tree and pretty much just ignored it from day one. We were very worried over nothing. The cat, on the other hand...

We kept ours away from it for his first Christmas but that was because he was only about 12 weeks old. The next year we put it up with him sat watching me and apart from a quick sniff he ignored it completely.

Mine reached out his mouth to take the lowest ball off, got told off - repeat x 25. Then he learned to leave it alone! When we got to MIL’s for Christmas Day he didn’t even go near hers. I didn’t put the presents under the tree though - he thought boxes on the floor were for playing with/tearing up.

I'm intrigued why putting it up when naked would help!
😂😂 is it some kind of Wicca thing? When the moon is waxing may be best, like planting herbs.

We avoid any chocolate ornaments, bags of coins etc. Also echo , no unsupervised access especially when there were presents underneath.
Adult labs - many of the pressies are theirs and they love ripping them open.

We had ours in the lounge with the door closed so Ddog could only get to it supervised. He wasn’t actually very interested but even now we only put chocolate near the top

Ddog1 doesn't try to mess with the tree but he does seem to get high from inhaling its Christmassy odour. He walks very slowly up to it, then inches carefully into the branches and stands there, swaying very gently, as if to inaudible trance music, until someone removes him.

Ddog2 has a long and waggy tail which is prone to knocking stuff over, so the tree will be in an area of the house that they don't have access to. I can't face 2020 ending with a Christmas Eve vet visit.

@DotTheCaddy - the tree would be naked, not the person putting it up.