Puppy Survival Thread - March - April

[PugInTheHouse]

Just starting a new thread before we run out on www.mumsnet.com/Talk/the_doghouse/4141698-Puppy-Survival-Thread-January-February

Welcome to everyone trying to survive the puppy days!

kibble is bulldog puppy royal canin

Wolfworthy kibble and still bitey, 13 weeks!

@Sparkle79 Butternut Box mixed with Step Up to Naturals puppy from Pets at Home, it’s gone within about 30 seconds!

@Sparkle79 Grain-free kibble with wet food topper - Lily's Kitchen but moving over to Barking heads to get away from lentils to reduce trumping. She has reduced in biteyness and is a cuddly angel (sometimes! 6mnth ESS)

Sorry - should say, she's reduced in biteyness as she has matured. I don't know if her food has influenced that.

And we also use Perfect Fit harness.

Hi all

Just found this thread. I have a 11 week old mini dachshund. I don't feel like I'll ever get my life back at the moment!! I was up at 4am with him and he refused to go back into crate. Feel like already have bad habits as he sleeps on me and only when he's well off to sleep will he transfer back into crate.

Aside from that the obvious toilet training is hard. The number 2s seem harder. I can't give him loads of time In the garden as he keeps eating bloody stones so he's probably not relaxed enough to poo out there as I keep scooping him up and taking stuff out of his mouth.

Just here for all the advice and reassurance. I might try a workout this morning in my zombie state and see if I can stop him from constantly chewing my laces.

If anyone has a good example daily routine with a pup this old that would be great

I feed Plantpup butternut box too mixed with the kibble she was on with her breeder still which was Eukanuba. Will probably change this at some point but she seems happy enough and loves butternut has been MUCH less bitey the last couple of weeks (she’s 16 weeks now)

And she also has a Perfect Fit harness! I emailed them to talk about all the sizing etc as it confused me when I first looked at it and they were really helpful

@SippingSipsmith Welcome! Sparklepup was the same with eating stones so we used to take him out on a lead. Is there a place in your garden without stones that you could designate as his toilet? We used to try and get every stone and then realised he was just doing it for attention so we just ignored it and now he doesn't bother. If he does pick up a stone he will just chuck it around a play with it, pounce on it and roll around with it which is very funny to watch.

We didn't get him til 14 weeks but he fell into a routine fairly quickly and it hasn't really changed:

6 - wake up, breakfast, toilet, walk
7 - back to bed
10 - wake up, play, try to do some training and fail miserably so play some more.
11 - bed
12 - wake up, lunch, toilet, walk
1.30 - bed
3.30 - get woken up by kids coming home from school, play, try doing some training and fail, play some more
4.30 - bed
5.30 - wake up, dinner, toilet, settle with a chew
7 - bed
9 - wake up, chew, try to convince us to play while we try to convince him to settle, last toilet at some point usually 9.30ish
10 - bed

Hope that helps! It does get easier

Thanks everyone for the food replies. I might try a few days with just dry and see if he goes back to normal because his biting had got much better but the last couple of days it's like he's forgotten that he's not supposed to say hello by biting us.

I'm going to look at butternut box too because a lot of people seem to do that.

Hi @SippingSipsmith

I think a lot of people will join in and say this was the worst age for them! It was definitely the worst for Plantpup so hang in there.

I’m not sure who it was (possibly @PugInTheHouse) but someone said their trainer advised them that the likelihood of them actually eating the stones is very small, so potentially might be better to just leave him to it with the stones in his mouth rather than teaching him that picking stuff up gets all this attention as that becomes a bit of a nightmare in itself. Obviously if he’s actually swallowing them completely ignore that!

The recommendation with the toilet generally does seem to be to just stay out there as long as you can and to take them out as often as possible. I felt like I lived outside for the first two weeks or so! But it did work and the message got through and we rarely have accidents inside now. Is there a way of keeping him away from the stones on a short lead possibly? Just to put your mind at rest about the stones and so maybe he’ll relax a bit more a go out there. It really is just persistence with the toilet and it draining but all the pups seem to get there in the end

Our routine about that age was pretty much the 1 hour ish awake that’s recommended followed by around 2 hours asleep repeated all day. I had to enforce naps a lot with Plantpup as when she was tired she was a zoomie bitey monster so I would stick to the timings of 1 hour awake really rigidly then put her in her crate for a sleep and it seemed to work pretty well. She went to bed in the evening properly about 10pm at that age and then would wake at 4am pretty convinced it was the morning but that quickly stopped and she sleeps 8pm-6am now

Hang in there, this part was really really hard for me but Plantpup is now 16 weeks and mostly an angel. I’ve been ill and staying at my parents this weekend and she has mostly just politely pottered around the house and snoozed on the sofa, it’s been a dream. So hang in there!

Poor you @Puppypuppypuppy . Happy is a Houdini with harnesses and collars so we also have him in a perfect fit harness and the only other one he can't escape from is the ruffwear one with the front and back clip. He's only wearing a harness with his Id tag when out at the moment as he can slip collars too. We swapped to a martingale collar for a while but you're not supposed to leave those on all the time so I'm just waiting for a new sewn collar with a metal clip to arrive in the sale that I hope will do the trick!

Btw we are at 7.5 months and Happy wakes up at 6ish but we're up not long after anyway for work. He is fast asleep by 7/8pm every evening though

@SippingSipsmith I've got an 11 week old, feel your pain.

But this thread shows me what's ahead and it sounds great!

Hang on in there.

Puppypup has a ruffwear harness - I think it was a bit too loose after he had a proper clip and lost a whole load of floof. Lesson learned anyway,

@Sparkle79 If you decide to go for it and want a code for 50% off, let me know

@SippingSipsmith Another mini dachshund here! He's 6 months old now and 100% better than when we got him at 8 weeks. He is very clingy still during the day but on a night he happily trots into his bed and stays there until the morning. I also used to do the same thing of carrying him to his bed once he fell asleep (I didn't crate train, he sleeps in the kitchen).

Is he actually eating the stones or just picking them up and spitting them out? I've found that pup only ever eats the stuff in the garden if we make a big deal of him having it in his mouth, if we just ignore him he realises he's not getting any attention and just spits it back out.

This is our current routine:

7am - wake up pup and out for a wee, back to bed
8am - pup wakes up for breakfast
8:30-9:30/10am - pup naps on the sofa next to me (this is new, he's only recently been able to get up on the sofa and I've decided to choose my battles and just let him up)
10-12 - general pottering around, playing
12-1 - a small snack like a chew
1-3 - another nap
3 - out for a walk
4-4:30 - dinner

He then just sleeps on and off from then till 10pm when he goes out for a final wee and then to bed. To get him to go through the night I started off by getting up at 3am to let him out for a wee and then increasing this by 15 minutes each day until we got to 7am.

Sorry for the long post!

@Sparkle79 your routine made me laugh, very similar to ours with the training! We do parts of it a few times a day but her attention span/grabbiness for food can hinder it. Also need to add in the various points I’m trying to get her off the couch where there’s a hole in the back she wants to chew at, that’s a major part of our day

Routine here was much the same as others have mentioned. Pugpup could cope with an hour at the very most of awake time during the day. Mostly half hour really. He would have 1-3 hr naps. Evenings he was asleep by 730/8 then wee before bed at 11, woke about 4/5am then back till 7am. Would generally have a walk about 8ish then a really long morning nap. If he was extremely bitey and hectic it was usually when there were all of us around and he wouldn't settle as too much going on so enforced naps were a must for him.

@C4itl thank you - I'll let you know

Okay next question for people with pups over 6 months. His kibble for his weight recommends:
2-6months 200-500g
6-12months 250-450g

He's currently having around 480g so when I drop him to 2 meals, I thought I'd just split the amount by 2 instead of by 3 but is the total daily amount supposed to decrease?

@sparkle79 pugpup is 6 months soon but is already on 2 meals a day as it worked better for him. He probably has more snacks though in between so I actually reduced the amount slightly to allow for this.

I am interested in seeing the responses though as his kibble is 90-165g up to 6 months and he has 120g a day (the weight bracket for adults is 5-10kg in this range so he shld be somewhere in the middle). For 6 months it is saying 130g minimum so I am not sure if I need to increase or if he isn't hungry then just leave it. I'm not really sure I have ever understood the food amounts full and may go onto butternut box at some point soon, I almost did but then realised I had quite a stock of food still.

I'm joining this thread as a newbie! Just got our first puppy on Thursday and feeling a bit overwhelmed. Feel a bit better reading this thread and realising I'm not alone

Hello! Just wanted to share the general updates. Challenge pup is 6.5 months now and has been with me exactly 4 months. Ongoing some improvements and some steps back- he's also on 2 meals a day now but with quite a few snacks and treats and seems notably less food oriented in general although still asks for lots of treats! Sleeps well, does some behaviours well and others less well. Still working on not pulling on lead and impulse control, as well as being able to settle and play better alone some of the time.

Recall has gone disastrously downhill so he is spending a lot of time on leads, long and short while we work on it. He's a good and happy boy and I have to remind myself sometimes to moderate expectations as he is still very young! I have occasional days of puppy blues (usually when he has run away from me or is being very demanding and it feels back to day one!) but far fewer than I did- I can see a future where we both live a good life! He's also going to daycare a couple of days a week and that is helping both of us. He's an absolute delight most of the time but having a bit of time away from him helps me appreciate that more!

Dpup is on one today! 😫 Everything has gone backwards! His biting, lead walking, recall, and he just went settle! I used my emergency Lickimat by 9.30am!

Tell me others have experienced this too and it's not just Dpup! It might be teeth bothering him, but he's only 4.5 months so can't be adolescence!!

Thanks @familychallenge for the (p)update. It's always reassuring to hear calm voices from 'the future'. 6 months seems to be when a lot of them chill out a little - I'm looking forward to hitting that milestone!

Knew my lovely weekend would come crashing down around my ears! GeorgiePup had a seizure this morning. He’s fine, sleeping it off. We adjusted his meds at the weekend and he’s obviously not ready. Shame but I know we can do this

There’s quite a few issues raised by you guys that I’m interested in too, food and harnesses being a couple of them.

Just to reiterate the 6 months thing, GeorgiePup is nearly 6 months and almost unrecognisable from those early land shake days. He’s a fairly chilled dude.

@Doje 4.5-5 months was the worst few weeks by far for us. We are at 5.5 months now and it's massively different. Everything is moving forward in the right direction now whereas at 4.5 months it was all going the other way.

Pugpup wasn't off lead at that point anyway so no tips for that from personal experience, our trainer isn't one to push it early on so we just built up to it slowly. He has been 100% reliable with it every time he's been off (so within a few weeks I have the complete non compliance to start up judging by all the adolescent pups on here so I am bracing myself for that).

The one thing she did say is that with pups who are either really young off lead or are going through adolescence she always tests recall on a short lead just to see how compliant they are feeling that day, so just see if they are willing to come to heel etc. She said if not then don't bother trying that day, even on the long lead, she said often the next day they are fine. Not sure if that may help?