Puppy Survival Thread - January - February

[C4itl]

Continuing on the thread from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/the_doghouse/4105422-Puppy-Survival-Thread-December?pg=28 before we hit the message limit

Hi all! @Doje for chews, ours is still only 13 weeks so I've been quite wary of lots of chews on the market. He does however love a Kong with mashed banana or pate in (I don't fill it all the way yet) and a tea towel soaked in water and frozen. I've just added some pare juice to that as well so will see how that goes down.

Oh and also frozen carrot but I take it off him when it gets smaller.

@ashmts we had Happy's feathers trimmed but have only done it once. His working cocker friends haven't been trimmed yet. Happy has a really short coat that hasn't needed trimming. I think most working cockers have their feathers kept short as they are generally out and about a lot even if they aren't being used for working so the feathers get clogged with mud if too long.

I real wanted to get pup booked in for a puppy groom as part of his socialisation but groomers here seem to be closed unless referred by a vet.

A question for everyone: did anyone else find first walks very scary? I'm freaking out a lot about it all.

If you’re worried about over feeding with Kongs etc I usually just soak some of HummusPup’s kibble and fill the kong with that - often stick a sprat in the middle as it’s smelly so keeps her interested, then seal with a tiny bit of Greek yoghurt or peanut butter and freeze. Then you can use part of their daily food allowance. Our pup isn’t too fussy though and is quite motivated by kibble so might not work if you have a fussier puppy!

Cow ears have been the biggest hit of the natural chews here - they seem to last around an hour and don’t smell too much - unlike the pizzle sticks!

Our pup is 16 weeks now and still a bit of a terror, we do a couple of off-lead walks a day, a few training sessions (lead training, crate games, tricks etc), play and some sniffy games like hiding her dinner round the house/garden and getting her to sniff it out which she loves. So I think we are doing enough to tire her...However she is very resistant to napping in the day, never falls asleep on her own during the day, has to be put in her crate, then protests a bit and usually falls asleep. None of the naps are very long though and I’m struggling to get work done! Any tips from anyone or will she start settling more as she gets a little older and realises nothing exciting is happening. I’ve read about capturing calm, but when she is awake there are no calm moments to capture - crazy sprocker spaniel

Hi, our pup is 20 weeks old now and good in many ways.
The jumping up and biting is REALLY stressful. She doesn’t do it to me. But to husband and kids it’s all the time. This morning she has torn my husbands jumper and he’s gone mad as going in to work.
I told him he needs to train her and he just moans he’s never known a dog as bad as her for biting and jumping up.
She is now started jumping at the kitchen counters all the time too. She’s a lab so is pretty big now.
Anyone have any success stories with this?

Here you are! Just got a bit confused by the new thread and me thought we still had about 300 messages still to go.

Am I allowed to reply to the previous messages on this one? I got some really helpful replies regarding GeorgiePup walking in the rain (or lack of!).

So he will go out very reluctantly, he just plods though and just a bit timid about the whole thing. Watching him more carefully I think it’s because it changes the noise of everything such as the traffic, he is very noise sensitive. He isn’t cold, he’s been out in colder weather and isn’t bothered, it’s definitely the rain.

@MyRabbit79 GeorgiePup has been to the groomers for puppy introduction, she said they could open under animal welfare. He’s a fluffy mess at the moment and wouldn’t go much longer without a cut, it’s growing over his eyes and all sorts poor love. I wonder if you could ring around a few others?

@GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat yes I wondered if it would fall under welfare especially as he's a poo cross so needs grooming to avoid matting. I wanted to go to this particular one as they have great reviews but will try others.

@BlondieJ my retriever is 5 months old now and still bitey but she does it to everyone. To be honest, I’m not sure you can train regarding this as we’ve been trying since she was 9 weeks old with no luck really. I’ve been told it will stop once all the teeth are through around 6 months. In the meantime, lots of chews and sleep! We wear wellies to stop the ankle/feet biting and if she starts on our hands etc we say no and either she goes into her pen or we go behind the baby gates. Another thing we do is throw some kibble so she’s busy searching for that on the floor if the kids need to get something from the room and she needs distracting.

Regarding the jumping up on the kitchen counters, I’ve been trying to teach a settle on a mat at random points and places in the house then when I’m making something quick like a sandwich at lunchtime, I get the mat out so she sees it as a cue to sit on it and gets some kibble. This has been relatively successful. Our house is open plan so we’ve put a babygate across the kitchen part and if she keeps jumping up or if I’m cooking a proper meal then I put her behind that with a kong as I know she will jump up at the counters otherwise. When she jumps up, I say ‘off’ and lure her down with some kibble, ‘good’ when her paws are all on the floor and ‘go to your mat’.

Placemarking in new thread. Challengepup is 20 weeks old and some things are definitely better while we are still working on other (jumping up and general over arousal!). He's a lovely boy but this has been harder work than I expected!

@MyRabbit79 I was worried about first walks but because you build it up slowly (10 minutes then 15 minutes twice a day but only in the street, 20 minutes at the park etc) by the time we got to proper walks we were all more confident with it. I still get nervous if she's off-lead though.

@GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat I noticed the same thing very recently with my pup. It's been so cold recently that it's hardly rained and then one night we went out a walk and it was wet and dark and there was road noise and she went wild. I started trying to desensitise her to the noise by sitting further away and treating but our trainer advised us to avoid roads completely for a week or so cos it sounded like she was over threshold and wouldn't respond as well. I've been playing road noise quietly on Alexa instead. But mine couldn't be described as timid... Bloody mental maybe. Is he happier if you take him somewhere like a park instead of main roads?

@BlondieJ

Hi, our pup is 20 weeks old now and good in many ways. The jumping up and biting is REALLY stressful. She doesn’t do it to me. But to husband and kids it’s all the time. This morning she has torn my husbands jumper and he’s gone mad as going in to work. I told him he needs to train her and he just moans he’s never known a dog as bad as her for biting and jumping up. She is now started jumping at the kitchen counters all the time too. She’s a lab so is pretty big now. Anyone have any success stories with this?

@BlondieJ Ours is 5 months now and very rarely jumps up. We stopped this by simply turning our backs on him. The advice we got given was to add a firm 'No!' too but this only seemed to encourage him (He's a rebel ).

When we used to come in from anywhere, he'd be super excited to see us and would try and jump but again, back turned, ignore until he settled and then say hello to him. We've know taught him to sit and wait when we come in which has helped a lot

Thank you so much for replies!
She had got a lot better over the Christmas holidays with the children, but it seems to have got worse again. Every time one of them walks in to the room she jumps.
I can’t let her off the lead on walks now unless it’s really quiet as I’m worried she will jump as someone.
It’s good to hear other people have these problems, because all my friends who have recently got dogs are not having this problem at all .

@ashmts it’s tricky because we live on a main road. Not super busy but 30mph (so probably closer to 40!) and a narrow path.

To avoid jumping up, we have taught the “touch” command. When we walk into a room, our 11 week old pup comes and touches our hand with his nose as a greeting, and doesn’t jump. Hoping this continues as he gets older, and he will meet guests like this

@ashmts thank you, good to know it's not just me. He's on fifteen minutes at the moment but my partner is doing it and I'm taking on training in house and garden but I need to get involved out of the house too

Hi everyone - I hope you don’t mind me gate crashing the thread. I recently got a Sproodle puppy named Scout, she is 9 weeks old tomorrow. Picture attached 😁

I am finding her incredibly hard work and frustrating myself for feeling that was as I have wanted this forever! I feel like I can’t leave her alone for any stretch of time as firstly, she cries, and secondly I’m reluctant to leave her in her crate crying in case she needs the toilet and then I create a bad habit.

I’m also nervous to have her wandering around whilst I do other things e.g pacing the lounge whilst I work as she seems unable to play calmly with a toy or fall asleep beside me and will be generally chaotic and destructive!

On the plus side we have only had one toilet accident in the last 2 days! She doesn’t like the rain much so persuading her to wee outside has been interesting 😁

Any tips of how you all survived those first few weeks would be much appreciated!

@Plantlover23 solidarity - it is so much harder than we expected. Ours is 13 weeks now and what's helped us in the last two weeks or so is writing a schedule which includes three two-hour naps in his crate. He won't nap of his own accord much so we had to enforce these by putting him in his crate (with some treats to soften the blow) and he now settles after a minute or so.

@GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat Can you carry to the car and then drive to the park? Not sure if you drive, that's just what we've been advised to do until she calms down a bit. I'm hoping the lighter nights and better weather will improve things.

@MyRabbit79 can you go with them? My partner was much more confident with the walks from the beginning so I made him come with me a lot but he works shifts so eventually I just had to do it myself.

@Plantlover23 Hello! Oh goodness what you're feeling is so normal. I was in your position a couple of months ago with a cocker spaniel pup. The good news is it got so much easier once she got out for walks, but the first month or so was really tough, I won't lie. What saved me was totally managing her environment, so a room divider up to protect the sofa and coffee table so she could wander without me worrying she was going to chew anything. She had zero attention span for the first month so I can relate. The room divider also helped me get away from her when she was biting. Stuffed Kongs to to keep her busy. Stuff to chew on (mine likes a wooden root chew and soft toys). A big bed for the floor that isn't her crate so she has somewhere to lie in the daytime and isn't always crated. It's hard but it won't last long!

@Plantlover23 definitely enforced naps! In the first few weeks we were losing our minds when C4pup just wouldn’t calm down. It definitely gets better once they can go for walks

@ashmts yes I do need to start going, I just lost my nerve after the dropped lead incident (mentioned on last thread) which scared the hell out of me. Need to get it together.

Just marking my place on the new thread! FrankinPup is 15 weeks on Sunday and still VERY bitey (only with me though!) Counting down the days until those big boy teeth come through 😂

Marking my place.

DD2 is home from vet school for a few days. Unlike the rest of the family she really interacts with Frenchpup and takes a load off me. Fenchpup loves her which is great as I am really worried about her attatching to me and no one else.

Thank you so much @C4itl @ashmts @MyRabbit79 for your helpful advice! I’ve started doing the forced naps thing today and it really seems to have helped (first day so don’t want to get carried away but started well!) I’m not sure if I’m imagining this but it also seems to help if I don’t encourage TOO much overexcited play e.g things like tug seem to send her manic and bitey very quickly whereas quiet play with a chew toy and training seems to be way more effective at actually getting her ready to sleep and just to generally be more chilled company!

The main problem at the moment I would say is the being left alone thing. I can obviously leave her in her crate when she’s sleeping, but if I ever try leaving the room even just to go to the loo whilst she’s in there just playing or chewing she cries and cries. I’ve tried leaving her with food, leaving her with a Kong, leaving for really short periods, pretending to leave then actually not leaving, only coming back when she’s quiet but nothing seems to be working! I need her to start practising being on her own at least a little as at some point in the future I will be going out to work etc and obviously need to go to the shops and things like that!

@Plantlover23 I haven't really cracked the being left alone thing yet, I've tried putting him the kitchen (where his crate is, but without putting him in his crate) but he cries and quite often does a poo. I'm trying again to train this from scratch by leaving him with a really treat for a few minutes at a time and building up. He's ok if we leave the house for fifteen mins or so but only if he's asleep in his crate.