Puppy Survival Thread - May

[Doje]

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

My adult dogs will happily go to 8.30 before going out for a pee, so it doesn't have to be 15 years of early starts

For my 11 week old pup we are currently in a system of one of us stays up until 11.45 pm for her late night pee (she is usually asleep in her crate, but nevertheless we pick her up, pop her on the grass and in her drowsy state she nevertheless manages to pe- afterwards we put her back in her crate). Then the other person (who was not on late night pee duty) goes downstairs by 06.45 to let her out for a pee. She's manages fine with this.

limit that sounds like a great system, and I would happily go with that. But DH wanted to go to bed earlier than that, which means puppy gets last wee at 10:30 ish, so needs to get up about 5:30 ish and by then it's light and he's been asleep for hours so he's ready for the day to begin. I'm sure he'll sleep longer as he gets older and his bladder gets bigger.

Just had a really good puppy play date, my 3 plus 3 pugs came over and they were all amazing.

PoirotPup goes for last wee usually around 11-11.30 although I reckon wd could move this forwards. He then goes into his crate for bed but whines to be let out of crate between 4-5 but is not getting out and sleeping on an armchair until about 6 which is ok.

We’ve ordered a massive lovely dog bed so I’m hoping he’ll like that. We rent at the moment else is probably let him have free roam of downstairs at night now. I have just bought some free standing gates to see if we can partition off the tv bit at night and use the gate across the back door in the day when it’s hot but he’s just dicking about in the garden when he shouldn’t be 🤣 and I want the door open!

@GooodMythicalMorning

Just had a really good puppy play date, my 3 plus 3 pugs came over and they were all amazing.

Wow! 6 dogs!!

She’s here! We have a puppy!

She’s sleeping a lot. I feel like this is going to bite me in the ass tonight 🤣

Peeing on demand is trying isn’t it? 🤣

But man she’s adorable.

@ILikePizzaAndWine

She’s here! We have a puppy!

She’s sleeping a lot. I feel like this is going to bite me in the ass tonight 🤣

Peeing on demand is trying isn’t it? 🤣

But man she’s adorable.

Congratulations!!! We've had AwesomePup a week now and I can hardly remember what life was like without him. Young puppies are supposed to sleep a lot, so don't worry too much about how much she's sleeping now. AwesomePup can cope with about an hour of awake time before he needs another nap, lol.

@ILikePizzaAndWine we’re going to need a picture...

Like @MsAwesomeDragon’s puppy, ours can also manage about an hour up before he needs another hour nap, unless he’s out and he still sleeps from 11-6.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by peeing on demand? I don’t think our 11 week old puppy will be able to do that for a while as he doesn’t understand the cue word yet. We just take him our every half an hour ish although he has now started to sit by the door to ask to go out if he needs to. I find that if I take him out and he doesn’t go, it helps to walk around the garden myself as that gets him following me, which gets him sniffing, which results in a wee! I’d love to know what criteria he uses to decide when he’s sniffed out the right patch for his wee 😂 pooing requires extra long sniffing too 🙈.

@MsAwesomeDragon congratulations!!! That’s nice to hear you can’t imagine life without him 💖💖

Now it’s bedtime she is not sleepy 🙄🤣

I thank God that they sleep a lot - otherwise it would end me!

@LadyCatStark thank you for replying! Maybe I misunderstood the meaning of peeing on demand, it’s more what you said, taking out on the hour where in the garden you want her to go. If she doesn’t go do you just take her again a bit sooner than an hour?

Here she is snoozing earlier 💖

Awww she’s lovely. What breed is she?

He’s usually does go if I do the walking round the garden thing or if he doesn’t I encourage him to have a drink and stay outside for a bit. I’ve got a lot more lax about it now, 3 weeks in, as I can tell when he needs to go because he starts sniffing the floor or now is starting to ask to go out.

Congratulations @ILikePizzaAndWine she's beautiful. How was your first night.

We're off to pick up Nordpup this morning eek! Am a bit miffed that my last potential decent night of sleep was terrible

Can I join please! We picked up our 8 week old Lhasa apso on Friday he's such a good boy doing wee's an poos outside and sleeping 11-6! I think I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed though is this normal x

@Turquoisesol did you end up going to the BBQ? We went to one yesterday and Billy had the best time running around with our friends’ puppies, getting lots of fuss and a bit of my burger. He slept in til 7am this morning 😵

@ILikePizzaAndWine your pup is gorgeous 💖 The general rule for toileting I followed and I know a lot of others did as it is what a lot of trainers recommend is that you take them out: after eating/drinking, playing, waking up and every half an hour in between that. I felt like I virtually lived outside for a few weeks but Plantpup learnt very quickly and had very few indoor accidents. If we went out and she didn’t go I left it 10mins or so and tried again

@rnulanmoo completely normal! Almost all of us who are on this thread with older pups now had puppy blues for a while in the early days and felt overwhelmed/stressed/sleep deprived etc. In the first week of having Plantpup I cried on multiple occasions as she just would not settle and zoomed continuously around my house biting ankles. It’s completely normal to feel overwhelmed and it passes!

@Plantlover23 thank you for the reassurance! I'm not even sure why I'm feeling this way as he is being so good at the minute. I have also had a few episodes of crying I feel crazy! Kids are made up with him he's been so good the 6am wake up is a shock to the system but only an hour earlier than I'm up on weekdays! How old is your pup? X

@rnulanmoo she’s 7 months old! Which is a whole different set of problems of teenagerhood 😂 But gone are the days of sleepless nights, biting etc and she’s lovely 95% of the time

Ladycatstark yes we did go to the barbeque. She did really well. We potted in and out the garden taking her for little walks occasionally when she needed a break. She did get overtired and bitey after about 2.5 hours so she took her home then. It was a success as far as I was concerned. She struggled with the smell of the sausages and whined a bit wanting them. But we just gave her her usual food and few treats. Not sure if that was mean of us !

Would anyone mind sharing their feeding schedule for their puppy's please? Wondering if mine is ok which is currently 6am ( hoping to move this back to 7-7:30 in the coming week) 1pm then 6-6:30? How does this sound what is everyone else doing? He's 8 weeks old

I’d still be giving 4 feeds for about another month tbh.

I try and space meals evenlyish, so about 9 and 9 for breakfast and dinner, just lunch about 3 and if it was 2 meals then 12 and 6.

AwesomePup is 9 weeks. We feed him 6am, 12, 5pm and 9:30pm currently because that's roughly when the breeders were getting the pups. We're going to stick with 4 feeds for a few more weeks, then hopefully phase out the last feed.

We've kept him on the food the breeders started him on as well, but might change him onto raw food in a few weeks. What food does everyone else feed their pups?

At that age we did 7, 11, 3 and 7.

Now we do 7, 1, 7 at 4 months.

@MsAwesomeDragon we used the kibble given by breeder to start but have moved to half kibble and half butternut box. I used the allaboutdogfood website to look at the nutritional value. We will change the kibble once we run out of the MASSIVE bag I got and the one the vet additionally gave us… I’d potentially like to do raw, but haven’t looked into it and don’t know if you can mix at all or not? Also we are currently renting what feels like the worlds smallest house with the worlds smallest fridge freezer so think we need to wait until our renovations are done (now with extra fridge freezer planned 🤣🤣🤣)

I survived the first night 🥴. She is very cute and very feisty!

She will sleep in front of the crate...but not inside it. She did quite a few overnight poos on the rug!

What are thoughts on puppy pads? She has been using them with the breeder but I'm trying to go cold turkey and aim for outside as much as possible. However I'm wondering whether to use them overnight (she was weeing hourly last night) or if that will just confuse her?

I'm not using puppy pads at all, but I do have some vet bed (very absorbent fleece) in his crate. He hasn't had any accidents in there at all tbh, so it's only been necessary when he knocked his water bowl over. My friend swears by the puppy pads though. Her puppy is 12 weeks now and she's got half the kitchen carpeted in puppy pads, and hasn't really started expecting him to go outside to toilet.

AwesomePup is getting very good at letting us know when he needs to go out. He's not had any accidents inside for 2 days now. Does anyone use the bells for pups to ask to go outside? I'm thinking about getting some because dd1 is going to be looking after him while I'm at work and it might be easier for her not to have to watch him so carefully, just listen for the bells.