Rehoming puppy

[Hellin301]

Please help me.

My puppy is 8 weeks (golden retriever) and I’ve came home today after family were minding him. He was calm enough with them but perhaps overly tired. I was just sitting on the floor beside him - not playing. He came running over and bit the side of my chest; hard. I was in a lot of pain and shouted at him to leave. I wouldn’t have shouted at him if it wasn’t really bloody painful. He wouldn’t listen, I then went to stand up and he grabbed my arm. Again, biting very hard. Harder than he has done before.

I’m covered in bites, which are actually bleeding. I have been working on telling him to leave which he can do, with shoes and clothes but for some reason if he gets a hold of an arm, foot, hand or another body part he will bite very hard and refuses to listen when I tell him to leave.

Someone please help me as that biting is beyond what should be tolerated. I can’t have a puppy that is actively and in my opinion aggressively chewing me to bits. I wouldn’t be so worried if I thought it was play but I actually thought it was aggression as he was growling so loudly.

If this is going to continue to happen I think I need to hold my hands up and say I’m not the right owner for him which will break my heart

My old girl only stopped sleeping on my bed when she could no longer get herself up without struggling, aged 14
(from the on she was treated to a 2 seater sofa with scatter cushions instead)

@Retrievemysanity

Oh my life, some of the responses on here If someone posted that they were really struggling with their 8 week old baby you’d get lots of sympathetic nods and encouragement not jumped on telling you you should have researched having kids better or that you’ll mess the kid up for life if you keep it!

OP, I have a 17 week old golden pup. We went with a golden because of the breed characteristics, good with kids, gentle, nice with small animals etc OMG, the horrific biting never came up in anything I read. Mine still bites but she is clearly teething (has lost a few) and it’s more manageable as we’ve got to know her triggers and how to deal with her. My oldest is terrified of her though and that’s very sad.

I would say, you’ll get a lot of advice and it can be overwhelming and some of it conflicting so don’t try to follow everything. Personally we found the yelping made it worse. Walk out of the room every time it happens, be consistent, yak chews and pizzles are a life saver as is the puppy pen where you can put pup with a kong or lickimat. We invested in a pup buggy to take her out before her vaccinations and that was great. We got so many compliments about her when out that it made me feel better about her and improved our relationship.

At 8 weeks, my golden was up every 2 hours for the toilet in the night and the tiredness we had made coping with the biting much harder. This does improve quite quickly so hang on in there and pm me if you need to chat or join the puppy survival thread!

Lots of helpful advice on this forum when people ask for it in a way that doesn’t offend lots of people.

If someone was struggling with a baby, people would also have taken offence if the OP had titled her thread “putting My 8 week old daughter up for adoption” because she’s been misbehaving.

It was a ridiculous title, and for someone who was going on about how much research she’d done, she was spouting a lot of bollocks about aggression and dominance

@Derbee sorry but I totally disagree. If someone said that I would take from that that they are really struggling, sleep deprived, possibly some form of pnd and would benefit from kindness and reassurance. Tbf, I came across some stuff about dominance when I was reading about pups (and a lot countering this too). You only have to look at this thread to see people saying spray her with water or that this is out of character for the breed etc so there’s a lot of info out there that isn’t the current mainstream view.

I also disagree. If someone posted that they were so overwhelmed with their 12 week old baby they were considering putting them up for adoption I'd hope they'd be treated with compassion. Some of the replies here have been disgusting

@Retrievemysanity some of the ‘advice’ such as spraying with water’ just shows how many people have dogs, who are thoroughly unsuitable owners. It doesn’t justify the OP being a potentially unsuitable owner too.

I’m maybe more riled by these rehoming threads than some are, because I’m a foster carer who spends my life picking up the pieces of these poor dogs that are treated as totally expendable when they don’t act exactly like the owners wanted or expected them to.

Puppies bite. It’s annoying and painful. They don’t sleep. It’s tiring. But to do a WEEK and be talking about rehoming really gets a lot of people cross.

There is an awful lot of smug, self-righteousness in The Doghouse, and this thread really highlights it. Fgs, just because someone doesnt ask in the right way, or gets muddled with some misinformation that doesnt deserve the bullying and pile on the OP got.
As a PP mentioned, the fact that some of these people claim to be professionals, vets etc is downright disturbing.

Compassion and kindness are free, its a huge learning curve getting your first dog as an adult, everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes.

@Derbee I can understand it riling you given what you do. However, some of these harsher responses have been so unnecessary. Do you not think those sort of responses would be more likely to make the OP’s pooch end up like those you care for? You never know exactly what having a pup is like until you get one and not all pups are the same.

IMO, a forum like this should be exactly the sort of place for someone to vent anonymously and get it out of their system. My DH said similar about rehoming after a couple of days of particularly bad biting, daughter with SEN crying and terrified etc. It really doesn’t make him a bad owner/person he just couldn’t see the wood for the trees at that time.

My point about the ‘bad’ advice was because you were criticising the OP for her research but that sort of thing does come up when you look. I think if the OP was a truly bad owner, she wouldn’t be asking for help, all the harsh responses do mean she’s less likely to ask for help on here in the future.

This will happen constantly til your puppy is at least 4 months old often far longer. There is a reason they are called land sharks! All puppies bite and it's something that can be a hard slog to train out but is just part of the territory. You don't need to tolerate being chewed to bits though. Put puppy in a crate or pen or simply hold away from you or tuck under arm if necessary- it's an 8 week puppy not a lion. You need to reach them to redirect to a toy but that can take a good few weeks of consistency. Welcome to puppy ownership!

It was a ridiculous title
And the OP began with 'Please help me'.

Really, it wasn't hard to understand. As a PP has said, compassion costs nothing. I don't know what it is about The Doghouse. I'm on seven or so dog pages on FB - some breed, some gundog training, a breeder's training page, a canine health group - and I never encounter the kind of downright nastiness when someone seeks advice that I sometimes see here. If someone posts saying, 'My spaniel pulls like a train, he's 8 months old, have I left it too late?' the replies are not, 'Well you're an idiot, didn't you know better, why did you get a dog?' but 'Okay M8, this can be fixed, back to basics'. If anyone is unpleasant, it's one person only out of all the replies, and they usually get a mild bollocking from other posters ('Christ, who pissed on your chips? How is that sort of attitude going to help anyone?'). And yes, some of the posters are involved in rescue.

I've been under a Doghouse pile-on under a previous name. I am robust and bloody-minded and came off MN for a couple of years after that because it was an unpleasant experience that I didn't want to repeat. For anyone who is stressed, exhausted and desperately worried that they've made the wrong call in getting their longed-for puppy - well, I can see why OP has not been back.

It's 100% counterproductive.

Because of Covid restrictions, we won't be getting our puppy any time soon. She will be at least 11 or 12 weeks old by the time we bring her home, all going well.

I think 8 weeks is incredibly early, they still need their mum.

I know this is all a bit Captain Hindsight, but really hope things improve for you. I spent time with a bitey 13 week old puppy to get an idea of how I would cope before making any kind of commitment to buy a puppy. Months before.

It takes courage to post openly on a forum that you are having struggles at the moment. No one is perfect.

In case OP is still here - I've found our puppy goes for my feet more than anyone else's; I think it's because he loves me so much I have found that having a dressing gown cord available to distract is good and then praising him when he bites that instead is very good; he now sometimes goes to get the cord himself....

(I have told him NO multiple times even though I know perfectly well that positive reinforcement is far far better....it's not easy to be perfect....)

PS we got ours at 8 weeks too

PPS the facebook DTAS group is very good (but strict)

I have noticed only a few have suggested chatting to the breeder. We have been told we can phone at any time if we have any problems by the breeder. Surely this goes without saying? Better chatting to them first rather than approaching a dog behaviourist/trainer.

Sometimes I honestly don't know who would ever be allowed to have a dog as far as a lot of the posters on this site are concerned. God forbid you ever express any sort of stress or concern over your choice or ask for advice. You've obviously not done your research and make people sick.

OP, I got my puppy at 7w and 4 days. He was absolutly fine and showed no signs at all of not being ready.

That 1/2 of madness and aggressive biting, usually around 6pm came to us as a surprise too but learn that it was normal and with discipline would disappear. It did.

Good luck.

@dontdisturbmenow

OP, I got my puppy at 7w and 4 days. He was absolutly fine and showed no signs at all of not being ready.

That 1/2 of madness and aggressive biting, usually around 6pm came to us as a surprise too but learn that it was normal and with discipline would disappear. It did.

Good luck.

Totally illegal to get a puppy that young.

OP, you said you’re not coming back, but in case you do, ignore advice like this

Totally illegal to get a puppy that young
It's only been illegal since 2018 (possibly 2017, can't recall exactly). It used to be entirely normal when I was a kid for puppies to go to their new homes at 6 weeks - pretty much as soon as they were mostly weaned. Puppies benefit from more time with their litter, and prior to the law change a lot of breeders did keep them 8-ish weeks.

8 weeks seems sensible: it lets the new owners start the puppy on their own vet's vaccination schedule and still get them out and about when they have month or so left before the socialisation window closes.

I know that breeders of some toy breeds do things differently, but I don't know the ins and outs of that.

@dontdisturbmenow

OP, I got my puppy at 7w and 4 days. He was absolutly fine and showed no signs at all of not being ready.

That 1/2 of madness and aggressive biting, usually around 6pm came to us as a surprise too but learn that it was normal and with discipline would disappear. It did.

Good luck.

Getting a puppy that young is now illegal in the UK.

The fact that he was fine is because you were lucky, nothing more.

OP please ignore some of the nasty comments. I stopped posting or reading here when I was struggling as it made everything a lot worse and I'd feel like a failure unworthy of having a dog. Even how I'd got her (from a friend's dog) turned out to be wrong and even though I couldn't change it, every thread related to her bad breeding.

The best thing I did was to find some pup training classes and a couple of nice nonjudgmental older neighbours who had had many dogs and were knowledge and kindly. Just their gentle reassurance that this was normal pup behaviour and would pass was enough.

Our puppy is now 6 months and I now have waves of love for her and feel like we're a team. We've cracked some training (recall, leave, toilet training, night time, nice lead walking), are getting there with some (greeting people and dogs, dropping socks!) and are currently failing at others (settling in her bed in the day, tired velocoraptor behaviour)

But She's lovely and forgives my many mistakes just as I forgive hers.

Op, it sounds as if you need to go back to basics, puppies can be little monsters but are worth the effort.

Get a couple of good tug ropes/toys and play with him, if she bites you say ‘no biting’ firmly and walk away.

When playing put toys in her mouth instead of your hand etc and walk away if she bites you.

Play lots of short bursts of training with treats (it will give him focus and tire him out) - sit, down, roll over, stay, come - he won’t get it all at once but it’s fun trying and will give him direction.

Give him age appropriate chews/dentastix/ice cubes/frozen flannel

Give him quiet time in a crate

Play other games, chasing bubbles, rolling a ball, short outings being carried to see traffic, people etc.

Unfortunately puppies take a lot of time and effort, maybe get a trainer to offer advice. Good luck, I remember those sharp teeth and our 15 month old can still be a challenge given half a chance.