Puppy Survival Thread - May

[Doje]

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

@MsAwesomeDragon 🤣 that made me laugh, pups are smarter than I thought.
Frank has settled in well, he still sleeps a lot and more so yesterday after his 1st vaccine.
He's mastered sit and getting good with down. Can take a treat gently and can mouth a lot gentler now.
He has a thing for stealing slippers and shoes though.
He's just under 9 weeks so do you think we should stick to down and gently before adding more training?

Slippers are a tease for our pup too, she tries to get them off your feet so I've given up wearing them for now... hopefully she'll have grown out of it by winter!

Our puppy was 10.5 weeks when we got her so it might be different with such a young one, but my main focus was making sure she knew to toilet in the garden which she was doing to be fair and "sit". I'd say lots of training to ensure your pup reliably looks at you when you say it's name and then think about what else is most important for you eg "off" if you don't want pup jumping up at you or on furniture! Increase duration of "sit" and "down" ensure pup can do them anywhere with distractions and then add in other things x

@Aria20 we are trying with his name but that seems to be slow going, more miss than hit. He has 1-2 accident a day, how long did it take you to be accident free?
Haha I should really be more firm with the slipper stealing but it's so cute seeing him sneak and run off with them.

Hello everyone, hoping I might be able to join this thread!

We’re picking up our puppy in a couple of weeks when she’ll be 8 weeks old. We’ve never had a dog before and it all seems quite overwhelming! I’ve been spending hours watching puppy training videos and trying to think of everyone I know with a dog so she can be socialised.

Having a ready through this thread and it already seem so helpful!

@Jloco hi, what breed are you getting?
I found it a bit overwhelming but worth it and fell in love with him quickly.

“we are trying with his name but that seems to be slow going, more miss than hit.”

In a nice supportive way - cause it’s writing and it’s hard to do tone....lol

How? Like how can teaching a name be a miss?

The only thing I’m looking for when teaching a name is a response, any response - because it’s not a command. So tbh, it usually takes a day at most.

Do you mean coming to his name rather than just his name?

@tabulahrasa I wonder if it's getting eye contact when saying the name? I am trying to train to this but have only done practice with treats.

Well yesterday was a bit of a shit show here...
Fractious dc (and us parents!) restless puppy. I was quite impatient with her at points.Dinner time was a debacle. Eating pizza at the table and puppy keeps jumping at dad (delicious smelling pepperoni, why wouldn't she!). I put her outside with a chew toy but then let her back in after a few mins and she was behaving nicely. However ds decided he wasn't happy about this so went off to the living room and sat on the floor with his pizza. Door left open, puppy zooms in, steals the pizza and runs away to gobble it up! The poor thing was demented with wanting more and cried so much she cried herself to sleep .

I feel terrible for not thinking ahead with meal time distractions for her and her tummy seemed a bit dodgy this morning, I presume due to the pizza she ate! Just a fail of a day

Dd not dad

@thewalkers she was that bit older when she came so she was pretty quick to be honest only had a handful of accidents in the first week.

With the name, every time you say it and pup turns their head treat and fuss. Just do it every couple of mins randomly in the day and they'll soon get it. They don't have to come to you, or even look you in the eye at first, just turn their head in your direction is a start

@Nordstrom today is a new day!

Yesterday I had rows with DH over the pup digging in the garden I'm doing my best to stop her and I distract her away if she starts but she can be determined! Yesterday was his fault as he put her in the garden when we were eating dinner so she was unsupervised and saw her opportunity to dig!

It gets relentless redirecting them from forbidden activities like digging and biting. It’s hard not to just give up and let them dig !

@tabulahrasa as in eye contact, with treats he will look but it's hit and miss without treats.

@thewalkers if he looks with treats then that's good, just build up how long you maintain eye contact before giving the treat x

@Aria20 will try that, he does sometimes look without treats but not often.

[quote thewalkers]@tabulahrasa as in eye contact, with treats he will look but it's hit and miss without treats. [/quote]
So you’re doing more of a look at me... which yep is harder.

I do those separately.

A name, I just want them to (eventually) know that noise means them...

So once they know it, yes, they do tend to look at you when they say it, but that’s not really my aim, just that they know I’m talking to them rather than just talking, lol.

Name - I literally do, name - treat... whatever their response is, the point is that I make that sound, they get a treat. Once they’ve started looking expectantly for the treat then I pretty much use it as their name, so I’ll say it before a command like sit, when I want to play or give them a fuss... occasionally still reinforcing it, but less often.

Maintaining eye contact I train as a different command, because, well, it is a set thing I’m after then... a name I pretty much just want - hey that’s me!

@thewalkers I agree with @tabulahrasa, eye contact is a more advanced command. In the nicest way possible I think you might be expecting too much. He's not even 9 weeks old yet. I only survived puppyhood by picking my battles. First few weeks were focusing on sleep training, toilet training, and not biting. And I know what you're saying about the slipper stealing being cute but really crack down on that or you could be setting yourself up for a load of issues.

Ashpup is doing well after her recent accident. Back to daycare today for a half day trial. She's still not 100% herself but she's doing okay.

@ashmts glad to hear ashpup is getting better and back in daycare!

Glad to hear ashpup is on the mend x

Glad to hear ashpup is on the mend - hope you and DH are recovering from the stress too @ashmts !

@ashmts, jumping in here but I'm wondering what you did to try and reduce biting?

I wouldn’t expect eye contact when you say his name either, just an alert and a head turn in recognition that he’s listening. We didn’t even give a treat, we just said his name and he seemed for figure out it was him 😂.

In the first couple of weeks he learned sit, down, here, off, leave, fetch, obviously toilet training. I think that’s it.

Thanks everyone, she coped well with her half day but she was exhausted coming home. The daycare owner says he can see what we mean and that she isn't quite herself. It's nice to get that validation cos our family keep saying she's fine and we're being worriers.

@duvetdrama We tried various things. I read to distract with a toy but it just didn't work, she wouldn't be distracted. Tried the high-pitched yelping but that didn't really do anything. We got a room divider and stepped over it when she started biting so we could get away from her without having to shut her out the room or in her crate and turned out back for a few seconds. I wore UGG boots constantly so it didn't hurt when she bit my legs and feet (it was November though!) and I could step over the room divider without shouting or panicking. The other thing I tried that may or may not have had any impact was really hamming up how much it hurt. So if she nipped my hand I gave a long 'owwww' and cradled my hand and acted all upset. She's a wee sweetie and that stopped her biting and she'd often put a paw on me as if to check I was okay. She also started daycare round about the time she stopped biting (14 weeks or so) so I'll never know how much of it was down to us and how much might have been her learning manners from the older dogs.

@ashmts I think that as they get older, they do start to understand that they can hurt us and not want to do it. At first Billy couldn’t give a shit how much his biting was hurting us and bit constantly but now, if we say owww and look upset, he’ll stop and seem to look at us with concern. He nipped DH tonight by accident then they were playing tug and DH said owww and held his hand and Billy immediately stopped and cocked his head at him. It wasn’t his fault though so he got a cuddle for stopping.

I'm glad ashpup is recovering.

AwesomePup is allowed out for walks today. We've been on our first walk on the field out the back off our house. We were out about 20 minutes, half of that was him sniffing absolutely everything and the other half was him bounding gleefully around the field but coming back to check in regularly. I even dropped the lead to let him have a but more freedom and he was brilliant (never went further than about 5m from me)

Ds slammed a door and woke wolfpup up this morning when he was having his long nap in his crate. He now won't go in his crate. Won't settle and has discovered his bark. Urgh