Puppy Survival Thread - December

[Hellin301]

Day 5 of new puppy and I’m wondering what possessed me to go through all this he’s a little devil at times, most of the time actually with odd moments of cuteness

I have a food question. Pugpup is 15 weeks, he is still on 4 meals a day but we probably need to go to 3. Do you all just feed him 3 times or do your pups have snacks in between, do you calculate their dry/wet food amount and deduct some for snacks?

He seems starving for half hour to an hour before his food quite often even 4 times a day. I am going by the food guide on Wainwrights dry food (loks like a reasonable amount of protein in it) and it says for 2-6 months if 5-12kg at adult weight then its 95-160g of food a day. He is on 120kg a day which is pretty much right for his adult weight plus he has training treats when training on top and maybe a dental stick. The training treats are only 1 cal each though. He looks a nice size, not fat on him but I am very conscious that pugs are greedy and have health issues if over weight.

@Literaryseed is he weeing every time?

Thanks everyone.

Yes @PugInTheHouse he's going out and weeing every time.

In that case it's probably just that then so probably nothing you can do. Pugpup only needed to wee once at 8/9 weeks now if its before 5am we know he doesnt need to get up, after 5 I always take him (rare it's that early) but I think if he's gone 6 hrs its a possibility.

What made it easier for us is that our vet advised for him not to go in the garden as we have a fox problem so before his 2nd vaccination he had just one pee pad at the back door so we could keep the main light off, stick him on the pad then take him straight back up. Going outside is bound to wake them more.

This is not ideal though as now he is brilliant at going for a wee on the pad but not outside but if there was any chance he was at risk I wasn't going to take that chance. We now have the battle to get him weeing outside. We can catch poos as its more obvious he needs to go but not wees as he'll just dash off for a wee. I need to step it up but my theory is that it will come in time especially as he reduces number of feeds/gets bigger and needs less wees in a day

Well, with my previous dog we dropped to 3 feeds at 9 weeks and it was much easier to manage his routine when we did. I'm going to drop Orangapup today, she's quite a big puppy and I think it's easier for them to sleep at night if they dont need to poo!

Thanks pug. Yes, no problem him waking and taking him out, it's getting him back settled in his crate that's the problem. DH was up for an hour at 12 with him and I was up for 40 mins at 3. Then he's up for the day at 6am.

HooliePup got taken out 1.30am and 4.30am. she did a pee both times. Must still need two trips out through the night. She leaks as I lift her out crate though. Will keep going with it. Thankfully she isn't crying so much and I slept in my own bed last night - felt like luxury!

Think she leaks with the excitement when she sees me. DH will take his turn taking her out on Friday and Saturday nights this week. Forgot how exhausting it is being up through the night 😂

Welcome Literary, beautiful puppy you have!! It's tough isn't it? We are shattered. It's full on with toileting.

@Literaryseed

Morning everyone!

Just wondering how many times your pups would wake at 9 weeks? Literarypup is still up at least 2/3 times in the night which wouldn't be so bad if he'd go back to sleep straight away but sometimes he's up for an hour. Any tips? He's in his crate downstairs. We tried sleeping next to him and sleeping with him in our room (crated) but it didn't help.

Cute puppy! Is he a working cocker? At 9 weeks mine still barely slept, she'd go down for an hour or two and then need out. It's all a blur but we must have been out 4 or 5 times a night at least. For the first few weeks one of us slept downstairs with her so if she wouldn't settle after a trip out she'd come onto the couch to sleep and that sorted her. It hasn't done us any harm, she now settles in her crate at 10pm and sleeps downstairs away from us. We were worried about getting into 'bad habits' but we didn't at all, she just got more confident. It doesn't sound like you're going to be able to avoid him needing out, I just assumed their wee tiny bladders couldn't hold it at that age.

4 meals seems to suit us quite well, breakfast is kibble and then he feeds when he gets home after both walks (wet) and then a final feed around 630/700pm.

@Literaryseed yes sorry I just meant I am guessing him not settling is because he is quite awake after being outside, especially if he likes being in the garden so is excited. Maybe try a heat pad so its cosy for him going back?

Thanks everyone. Yes I think we'll try a heat bad. Our house can be chilly at night and just persevere. I'm sure it'll get easier as he gets older!

Hello puppy people and welcome all the new pups. Puppypup is five months tomorrow! I can't believe we've had him three months already.

Biting seems to have settled a lot. For a while he was fixated on getting hold of my arm whenever I sat down and that seems to have stopped now. He's losing teeth currently and have actually found a couple.

We're working on walking to heel which is going really well - bought a two point harness so we can have him in training mode and mucking about mode. Recall is coming on but there's no way I can let him off the long lead - he is either really over excited when he sees another dog or gets nervous - both of which mean he is likely to bolt. I am trying to find enclosed places to take him to do a bit more practice.

Mainly now I am worried about:
Clinginess - @PoleToPole I found your post further up really reassuring and useful. I have been taking puppypup out to put the bins out and do other little jobs so might try your 'end of the driveway' trick. I found for the first couple of months that he was so attached to me he was an utter pain for DD and DH to be with - he just would not settle at all when I wasn't in his eyeline - but as they form their own bonds with him it's getting gradually easier. But we are nowhere near leaving him alone in the house - we've never managed to get him not the crate during the day and so he wouldn't be safe apart from anything else. So need to work on this whole area!

Socialisation - all my puppy classes were cancelled and I am finding it so hard to know how best to get him to get used to other dogs. We do short greetings on lead when we're out which is fine but in parks it can be difficult - we either get the badly trained over-bouncy dogs with no recall coming up which freak puppypup out, or we get a nicely behaved dog whose owner asks permission and then the dog looks bemused as puppypup yelps, runs round in circles and basically doesn't know what to do with himself.

What a couple of days...! Working, homeschooling x 2 and a pup is not what I had signed up for! We so carefully planned having a puppy once the kids were both in school, and then a bloody global pandemic comes around!

We're finally allowed out after both vaccinations, and it feels good! Although now we have to add 'loose lead walking' onto the To Do List....

Training was better today. We worked on recall, really only the start of it so using a toy and calling him or running away and calling come. He was doing quite well. We went out on the lead and the trainer just gave us some tips to help us with him trying to run to everyone he sees. We will keep at it.

@Puppypuppypuppy pugpup is terribly clingy to me, he won't go to sleep if he can't see me, in the daytime if he's asleep I can't leave the room as he instantly wakes up which is then a nightmare if I am trying to work as well as meaning he is then grumpy and bitey.

I am starting to leave him for really short times. We use 'in your bed' to get him in the crate and then shut the door. So far he is barking every time, I popped upstairs to change my jeans and he barked and sounded like he was getting into a real state. As I got back in the hallway he stopped, not sure of its because he could hear me or if he naturally stopped.

We are now using the crate when we are eating as he is jumping up so much. He takes a dental stick in but we let him out when he's done and will try to extend it. I have ordered a lickimat and will use the snufflemat too to try to leave him in there longer.

Happypup is like that too @PugInTheHouse. He prefers company to sleep during the day and has always been like that and if you move an inch, he wakes up!

we can't get trainers here but we've decided that the only other command that would be useful for him to learn is stop. We have to be very careful with him because he's so fast and he easily runs too far away. His recall is good and he will come back to us so what I do at the moment is the minute he's running too far, I call him back but the issue we have at the moment is that he needs to see us clearly as he can't always locate where the whistle noise comes from. There's a couple off lead walks we take him on where there are paths running through them with vehicles/bikes on so I want to be able to give him the stop command if he's ahead of us rather than constantly getting him to come back (it would also be useful if he was about to run into trouble!).

he's been really good with the whistle training and hand signals but i need to look up the best way of doing it this weekend then start giving it a go. We're not going to train left/right as I don't think he will ever work so we don't think it's useful for him/us.

the other thing we really need to work on is wait/stay. He can do it indoors but it's not great outdoors and we need to keep practising that.

@HappyThursdays it is really tiring as I cant even get a coffee now, I used to be able to move round the room as long as he could see me but now he is barking and crying even if I am looking straight at him.

Haha that sounds as if it is tiring because I can't get a coffee, I just mean I feel really tied to sitting next to him all day.

@HappyThursdays I am also amazed at how good most of the pups are with recall. I just can't ever imagine pugpup being any good at this. He is so determined to run off and see people. He is doing well at some things but its getting me down a bit about others. Hes easy to manage as hes so small but I really need to get him to improve in the recall areas and also weeing outside! He constantly looks like he wants to but he seems so confused of all the smells.

i think recall is life long training and it's one of the commands dogs famously abandon when they hit teenage years so even though Happypup's is ok now, I'm under no illusions that in a month's time it might have gone out of the window and quite frankly that is terrifying!

if you've not read the book Total Recall by Pippa Mathison, it's very good

@PugInTheHouse Mine has always been like that too, as soon as you move she's awake, no matter how soundly she was sleeping. It's starting to gradually improve though, she'll open an eye and see I'm not doing anything exciting and go back to sleep. Unless the fridge door opens, then she's there like a shot. Can you just let him follow you about? Maybe try that flitting game from the Fb group DTAS? Although I'm sure someone on here wasn't an advocate of that.

Well, we've run into another issue. Pup is now scared of cars driving past either and tries to chase them or whines and hides depending on her mood. It's totally our fault actually, once we were able to take her further than the street we started driving to parks etc for good walks and she's probably not had enough exposure to normal driving noise. At least we've realised now and can start to build it up.

@ashmts he is in the crate for daytime naps too so maybe I will just leave the door open and let him follow me then he can just go back in when he wants. He is asleep at my feet now but will instantly get up and follow me if I get up whereas before in the crate he'd just look to see where I was then go back to sleep. I am just wary of not putting him for naps in the crate at all in the day time in case it ruins night time and also I dont want him to just associate the crate with me leaving him. I am probably overthinking it all lol.

Pugpup is fine with noise as we pavement walked him for the first week as he needs so little exercise really. Parks will be a nightmare as he loves people and dogs haha!

if it's any consolation @PugInTheHouse, we don't crate and he still wakes up and follows me whatever I'm doing! He can look completely fast asleep and i'll tip toe off to the loo and within 3 steps, his spidey senses have picked it up and he's come with me!

@HappyThursdays I probably just need to relax over it all. I am a bit paranoid about not spoiling him too much as he is literally treated like a human baby by my family so just trying to keep some sort of structure haha! He is keeping my feet warm right now so can't complain!