Puppy Survival Thread - May

[Doje]

Starting May off! If someone could link I'd appreciate it....

@MonaChopsis we had a couple of nights with sushipup in our room near the beginning but she was a nightmare roaming around busy as anything and would not settle. I brought her up onto the bed thinking that might settle her but she was a complete fidget all night. After some exhausting nights we popped her into her pen in the kitchen in the evening, she settled immediately, and she and we had a fantastic night's sleep! I think our bed was an exciting novelty, whereas she had a similar pen set up at the breeders house and she recogised it as bed and time to sleep. I think they are all different and whatever works for you is good!

We have a problem here with turquoisepup always scratching at the cupboards. Any cupboard. Or the dishwasher or the fridge. She never gets anything for these efforts although does sometimes lick inside the dishwasher. It’s really frustrating. I think she is attention seeking. We worry that she will scratch the cupboard so tell her no then find something else for her to do or take her outside or something. But I am not sure if we should just ignore the behaviour. But ignoring doesn’t seem to stop it. We go out the room and she carries on. Frantically scratching them. My poor gloss cupboards will have scratch marks all over them.
Any ideas? She definitely isn’t hungry or thirsty as she is well fed.

Hi everyone! Been a while since I checked in.
Plantpup’s barking is becoming increasingly problematic. It’s mostly inside the house (sometimes outside if someone catches her by surprise), but almost always inside and almost always when she’s tired. She will try to settle to sleep on the sofa or similar, then wake up seemingly because of a noise (but not one I’ve been able to hear) and bark like crazy. I then have to settle her again just to repeat 5mins later. It’s also becoming an issue with strangers in unavoidable situations like outside our front door when they’re outside they’re own house across the road. Has anyone else had this problem and managed to fix it? I’m losing my mind slightly

Barking has been a bit of a problem over the past couple of weeks for us too @Plantlover23.
It's mainly in the evenings so tiredness is definitely a factor. He does this woofing and panting and running around; I have no idea what's disturbed him and made him bark so I don't really understand what to do about it. However, it didn't seem like he was enjoying it (like he does with the zoomies), in fact it seemed to me that he was feeling stressed, so I tried some different things yesterday which seemed to help:
Firstly we had a really calm day to ensure that his stress levels were low; nothing new or exciting and very slow, sniffy walks.
In the evening I gave him 100% attention at the first sign of him becoming barky - so TV off for me and a bit of easy training with treats the first time. Then back to the sofa with a chew. Then TV off and out for a brief slow sniffy walk the next time he became agitated. And repeated until bedtime.
At the moment it's all peaceful here, but I plan to adopt the "nip it in the bud" approach to barking for a while - no telling off, just redirecting. It seems to me that the more I let him run around and bark, then the more he does it.

Mines a barker...slightly different because it’s not a new thing and he barks at waaaay more stuff than that.

(Totally unsocialised rescue just for context)

But for milder stuff like that, I’ve got some commands that are incompatible with barking - touch is my main one.

So I go, wheesht and then touch, then get him to do other things because then his attention is on me.

Obviously it doesn’t deal with why he’s barking, but it’s better than him winding himself up.

I’m working on settling indoors and desensitising him to people walking past, but that’s longterm.

@Turquoisesol can you use a barrier so puppy can’t get to the cupboards in short term? Just so he doesn’t get used to practising that behaviour maybe? Some kind of room divider thing? I think preventing it sometimes is the best thing and then they don’t form a habit. If not is there something else he can’t do at the same time that you can distract him too instead and then reward heavily with treats so that new behaviour/activity is his go to instead?

Thanks @QueenOfToast and @ilovesushi... Tried sleeping in bed with M-Pup last night and it was great... Loads of room for both of us and again she settled like a dream. She's been much calmer today as well, really good on her default settle in both car and kitchen which is great seeing as she's only been here a week!! So feeling very positive all round.

Now just have to figure out how to stop her being a bitey nightmare with DD

AwesomePup is here. We picked him up at 5:30. He's been home an hour and a half. He's already made friends with next doors dog through the fence (she normally barks at us, but she just looked at him and her tail started wagging like crazy). And he's had a pee and a poo outside (one pee inside as well) and had a snooze by my feet in the living room. He really stinks though!!! We might need to give him his first bath tomorrow, I'm not sure how long I can put up with the smell!!!

Thanks mrsherculepoirot it is difficult to block this area off as we currently have her in the kitchen and no other access to anywhere else. I did wonder if we may be better just letting her in to lounge now to stop the cupboard scratching. We probably should try and find another activity for her but not sure what. We just provide lots of chewing things at the moment. We don’t like to play tug of war with her as she gets over stimulated by this. Hmmm maybe need more puzzle toys

@MsAwesomeDragon our puppy stank when we collected him too, it’s fading now... or we’re just going nose blind 😂.

I agree I though I puppy a bit stinky when she arrived here. Think we are just nose blind now 😬

@Turquoisesol use your recycling box to make puzzles! My kids love making puzzles for PoirotPup at the weekends! This is one. There is loads of kibble hidden in there!

Thanks we will definitely do this 👍 is the bits or recycling just popped inside the box? Not glued or sellotaped or anything ?

Ours were stinky too. Either we've gotten used to it or they dont smell or they're our own stink 🤔

@Turquoisesol

Thanks we will definitely do this 👍 is the bits or recycling just popped inside the box? Not glued or sellotaped or anything ?

Yes - we’ve only really used cardboard. First of all just put kibble inside toilet roll tube/egg box, then stick toilet roll tubes into the egg box with stuff in etc. now just keep loads of cardboard, egg boxes, boxes that toothpaste come in anything really. Amazing visit us a lot so those boxes and the paper inside. Just chucking some kibble in to start. Now my kids hide the kibble in bits and fold it over and spend ages making it. They sometimes just chucking kibble into the big box with loads of random paper and cardboard. I mean it’s messy but he loves shredding the cardboard and it is good fun!

Love the recycling puzzle! We just put our rubbish out yesterday, but this is something we will definitely do. She loves to play with paper bags and old toilet rolls. She will go nuts with a whole box full and hidden kibble too!

I like it more when the weather is nice so we can do it in the garden. The kids LOVE creating them too. I think we’ve got some plastic bottles this week so might put some kibble in those too for him to shake out!

That looks like loads of fun. I'll definitely be doing that in a few weeks with little AwesomePup. I thought he did very well with sleeping last night. We had him in his crate next to my bed, and he needed to go outside twice for a wee, but settled straight back to sleep again.

So far this morning dd has cried twice about things he's done. She couldn't get him to stop biting her shoe laces, so she cried (he hasn't hurt her, I did check). And then she put her bowl of cereal down on the sofa 🤦 and he knocked it over, so she cried again. So we've decided she's not quite old enough to supervise him without an adult as well (I only left her for a couple of minutes while I went to the loo), and he's going to have to go into his playpen while she's eating.

Awww @MsAwesomeDragon he’ll stop biting her shoes when he gets used to her and she’s not as exciting! Billy always goes on his crate when we’re eating with a likimat to keep him occupied.

• in his crate not on it 😂

Shoelaces are like puppy crack to PoirotPup- we just wear socks and or slippers but not shoes with laces inside with him....

I found explaining to mine that he is used to playing by biting (bitey fightey!) with his siblings that he thinks it’s just a game and that it’s because he loves them and just wants to play. And that we need to teach him how to play our games. And that he doesn’t have hands so he can only explore with his mouth! Poor DD I think it can be a shock for them that puppies are like cuddly teddies in a way, even if you’ve tried to prepare them!!!

Dd is getting better with him. She's learning to distract him with a squeaky toy when he tries to go for her feet/trousers.

I'm surprised by how relaxed he is tbh. I was expecting him to cry at least a bit, but he hasn't cried at all during the day. We did discover that our garden was not as puppy proofed as we thought - he could squeeze through the bars of the gate!!!! I didn't realise quite how small he was. We've fixed that with zip ties and a guinea pig run for now, which will hopefully keep him contained until he grows too big to fit through the gaps lol.

That’ll be about 2 weeks - labs grow so fast! I was looking at a pic from when we got him 7 weeks ago and he looks like he has doubled in size! Good news about your DD... I think they get quite savvy quite quickly kids!

We've got a patch of long grass/weeds in our garden. This is for the guinea pigs (they are indoor guinea pigs but we cut the grass for them as a treat). Are there any common garden weeds that would be a problem if he eats them? And he seems to have a thing for eating small stones. I'm taking them off him, and have swept the patio as much as I can, but will it harm him if I (or dd) miss one and he manages to swallow it? Sorry for all the questions but here's a photo of him feeling all proud of himself for pooing outside.