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

Is anyone else working from home with their pup? I am trying but not very successfully

I can’t get anything done unless HummusPup is asleep, I put her in her crate to nap in a different room as she will not settle if anyone is in the room with her. When she is awake she is full on, she never lies down or settles, if we aren’t actively engaging with her she just hares about looking for things to bite

Rough schedule is:
06:45 - wake up, toilet, breakfast fed via training/games
08:00 - out for a walk, normally we’re out for about 40 minutes, mostly off lead and on grass so not too worried about it being over the 5 minute per month rule as it’s at her pace.
09:00 - back home, nap in crate
11:00 - wake up but we sometimes try and push this for another 15/20 minutes. Toilet, play tug & drop in the garden. Lunch - we play find it in the house or garden and she sniffs out her kibble. Some training. Usually try and give her a natural chew to wind down but she’s lost interest recently maybe due to teething
13:00 - nap
15:00 - out for another walk similar to the morning
16:30 - nap
17:30 - awake for the rest of the evening. Training, short loose lead training walk, dinner via games/toys. Maybe a small lickimat whilst we’re eating. We try and encourage her to settle with a chew around 8pm, but she normally just paces about looking for trouble so we put her to bed around 21:30 as we can see she is very tired but cannot settle down!

I feel guilty putting her in the crate for every sleep but I can’t see any other way around it at the moment. Is this the sort of thing that might just improve with age (she’s 5 months now) ?

If she is settling in her crate for naps I would count that as a win and not be too concerned - grannypup won't nap in the crate in the day but happily trots in at night. She still naps for about an hour in the morning and maybe 2 hours in the afternoon so I think at 5 months your pup is definitely not napping too much

Thanks @grannycake - she probably gets around 14/15 hours sleep a day so short of what is recommended but it’s about as much as I can convince her to have!

I feel guilty her being in the crate but she doesn’t seem to mind - I think I just had visions of her snoozing in my office whilst I worked but it hasn’t really turned out like that. If she can see me or DH then she looks at us like “come on, what we doing now?!”

I am hoping that she settles more with age and I’m sure she will it just feels a bit relentless at the moment! I’m sure when those sharp baby canines finally fall out things will seem better

For those struggling with WFH (or struggling in general with full-time care of a dog), I really can't recommend daycare enough. I can manage WFH and watching her for a morning maximum, otherwise I can't get any meaningful work done. We only do this if DP is post-nights and having a sleep, he'll get up about 12 and take her out and I'll just work harder in the afternoon. I'm WFH today (DP at work) and she's away to daycare. It's better for me and her, she has a great time and I can focus.

It also tires them out and makes the evenings much more calm and enjoyable! I know some people said they've been struggling with that. Pup is approaching 6 months now and she's so easy to be around now but only when she's had enough time outside. It was pouring here on Saturday and we weren't out for as long as usual and I definitely noticed a difference in her energy levels, she was much more restless. Pouring today too but that's another bonus of daycare, I don't need to walk her in it, he does

I rented a secure dog field at the weekend and let pup off lead for the first time without DP being around. She was amazing. We went to practise recall and I couldn't even really do it cos she was at my heel most of the time. I'm still a bit nervous to do it somewhere that's not fenced in but I guess I have to take the plunge some time. She did spot a crow the other day and took off at 100mph which gave me a heart attack, but she ran back about 5 seconds later. It's just a worry.

I will have a look into daycare thanks @ashmts - I guess playing with other dogs tires them out! I think we just need to build her confidence with other dogs beforehand because she’s a bit scared at the moment. But once we can finally see people in the garden again we’ll be able to start doing that.

We’re having some ups and downs with recall too - it was pretty good but getting worse. Those secure fields you can hire are great - at least pup can have a good run around safely. The only thing I find is that recall is perfect there as there aren’t many distractions, but in the real world it seems to go to pot, so we are still using a longline most of the time

I feel guilty her being in the crate but she doesn’t seem to mind - I think I just had visions of her snoozing in my office whilst I worked but it hasn’t really turned out like that. If she can see me or DH then she looks at us like “come on, what we doing now?!” grin

@SpreadHummusNotHate I could have written this. We have to put Sparklepup in his crate for naps and he's also around 5 months. He will lie down where we all are but as soon as anyone gets up he will wake up to follow them. And if we're in different rooms he just can't pick a room so just flits between us. The only way we can get him to totally switch off and sleep is in the crate and covered up.

Ours is calmer now she's older, but we did a lot of things like snuffle mats, treats in toilet rolls type things to tire her out while we worked from home with her. Also 10 minutes of basic training used to make her really tired.

Our vet said to choose doggy day care carefully when they are little, make sure its one where they are used to puppies - otherwise they can charge around like loons all day and can get cruciate issues or just become really wired. Most day cares will have a puppy bit where they'll try and enforce a nap!

Two days a week I'm working and homeschooling two children! It's loads tougher than I thought it would be. But then I though we would be able to leave pup for a couple of hours by now and I'm not sure that would have happened!

My schedule is:-
7-9 Work peacefully whilst DH has pup and kids
9-10.30 Homeschool and work peacefully while dog naps.
10.30 - 12.30 Abandon all hope of work. Homeschool whilst being bitten by puppy / trips outside to see of he needs a wee (he doesn't, he just wants to eat twigs). Pup gets a 20 minute hoon around whilst the kids are on bikes.
12.30-2pm. Work and lunch.
2-4 Work abandoned again. Homeschooling, more biting, more trips outside. Maybe a bit of loose lead practice.
4-5 Work whilst pup naps.
5pm Give up and make dinner.

Thankfully I have very understanding employers! I also work 2-3 hours on a Sunday to get ahead of the game, and will do a couple more hours on my days off if I need to.

I'll definitely look into puppy daycare!

@Doje sorry but that did make me laugh. Mine is similar except I also abandon any hope of homeschool by 10.30am. It's probably for the best that they can go back to school soon.

@Doje you must be exhausted! At least there’s an end in sight to the homeschooling now though!!

@Sparkle79 nice to know it’s not just us, we also have to cover the crate, I put the radio on then leave the room and creep about as quietly as possible so we don’t wake the
puppy

@MaryIsA we’ve been doing sniffy/enrichment type games, searching for kibble etc since she was about 9 weeks old in the hope of tiring her and I think it does but she never seems tired unless we pop her in the crate. Maybe when she hits 6 months we’ll start giving her more chances to find her “off switch” outside of the crate?

She hasn’t eaten from a bowl since the first week we’ve had her and whilst I love watching her sniffing around the garden for her lunch and I enjoy training her, it will be lovely when we can just stick her breakfast in a bowl and enjoy a cup of tea in the morning!

@SpreadHummusNotHate ha! Me too with the creeping around. Never thought I'd be so bothered but when he's asleep I savoir every second

Puppypup is just six months and is a lot easier now to wfh with him - it's actually better when it's just me and him as he seems to understand that when I sit with my laptop he won't get as much attention. I nearly lost the plot a few times in the first few weeks including one meeting where pup launched himself at me and knocked the laptop off the floor which looked most alarming for others on the call. I did lots of snuffle and lickimats for him and our house was full of half chewed carboard boxes too for a while.

I would quite like to look into some sort of daycare option if only to give him some opportunity to socialise with other dogs but am not sure how to start with assessing.

Petal is ok with working from home as long as we don’t move! She is pretty good at snoozing nearby or chewing on something. A rabbits ear gives us a decent spell of peace.
Thankfully my livelier child is at school and other one gets on pretty well without too much input but half term was a nightmare with lively child waking her up every time he came leaping into the kitchen, me having to intervene to distract her from biting him, then going through the weeing/digging routine outside just to rinse and repeat next time ds wanted another drink or snack or whatever!

We did actually do quite a bit of him having to stand still and ignore the biting which paid off and she’s been better (nowhere near perfect) the last few days.
It’s so windy here at the moment and she’s obsessed with chasing leaves which is cute in the garden but a pain on the lead!

Well we are still doing pretty good, Doberwow is sleeping 9-3, she's a bit difficult then to settle but does after a while (an hour last night 😭). Then my day starts at 6.30am. Any tips for getting her to settle again more swiftly?

She's good during the day whilst I'm working, play sleep, play sleep. Very relaxed.

Trainer said to not try to much training yet, she's only 8.5 weeks. Although we are trying to stop the jumping up with "off" then fussing when all feet on the ground. Also teaching her to respond to her name.

Should we be doing any more training at the moment?

Wees and poos are getting there, she's not telling us, but we seem to be catching some outside. Any tips?

@Doberwow
For training if I had the first few weeks again I’d do more on getting her used to collar and lead etc. and then practise lead walking in house and garden

Thanks @Petalpup

@doberwow we did sit, paw, hi-five, spin, that sort of stuff from 8 weeks, also wait for treats so he wasn't snapping at us. We just kept calling him by his name and he picked that up quite quickly. We didn't do any of the harder stuff till we worked with the trainer.

One thing we didn't teach him was to lie down but we are working on that now, he's not too keen lol.

Thanks @PugInTheHouse , how long do you recommend for"training" throughout the day?

@Doberwow to be honest I have no idea, we didn't really have a set amount of time, every time he was given a treat we would ask him to sit, in that first week it took about a day for him to learn it properly and paw took a couple of day, the others were probably the following week and he just learnt them within a few minutes of us teaching him.

Now we just keep using the commands regularly and do a little bit of practice of the 'tricks' each day just for fun.

Thanks @PugInTheHouse

@Doberwow we didn't have pup until 14 weeks so I can't tell you what we did at that age but echo getting used to lead.

How many kongs/chew type things do your pups have a day, and how many food based games do you play each day?

SparklePup has 3 meals a day and they're all either in his Maze, Cushion, rolled up towel, water bottle, that type if thing, never from a bowl.

He has a dental chew every day and one kong with soft cheese or peanut butter.

We tend to give him kibble as treats for training and playing games.

Interested to hear what others do.

@Sparkle79 she's not the slightest bit interested in her kong 😂 !

She has various chews and toys including a dental stick a day.

Why do you not feed from a bowl?

@Doberwow 2 reasons, firstly it is supposed to be mentally stimulating because they have to work for their food (we have a collie cross) and secondly (most importantly) it means we can eat in peace because it takes him between 10-15mins depending on the method!

Slow feeder and licky mat ordered! 😂

Sorry to ask so much (15 years since we had a pup).

What's the wet towel method? How do you do that?