Puppy Survival Thread - June/July

[MrsHerculePoirot]

Discussion of all things puppy...

Old thread here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/the_doghouse/4234193-puppy-survival-thread-may?msgid=108567452

Spudpup is going into his fear phase I think - he was shy with our lovely neighbour last night and refused to go anywhere near my FiL today, even for hotdog sausage. However, fortunately both were patient and he came around in time - he’s been sitting on FiL in the garden.

Not much sign of DS getting any braver with him, although he does keep asking where Spudpup is, or asking me ‘what he’s saying’ when he sniffs things or makes noise. The trouble is he winds Spudpup up - often deliberately - then goes all scared when Spudpup reacts by being excitable. 🤷‍♀️ So we’re still keeping them mostly apart for the time being.

WolfPup has discovered his hormones. God help me

Thanks @GingerAndTheBiscuits we have that, off amazon from last time B had the runs. It's sooo good!

Touch wood no more runny poos since this morning. Hoping for no 3:30am wake ups (shit on the floor!)

We tried life pup with sardines today jeez death pumps tonight

@Wolfcub

WolfPup has discovered his hormones. God help me

Does that mean he's humping things? AwesomePup has one toy that he humped every night before bed for a while. We hid that toy and he hasn't humped anything else since. It was a bit weird.

@lifelongfrugaleer I hear you on the death pumps. We tried sprats yesterday and good grief if the smell of the actual fish didn't put me off then the smell of the dog later in the day would certainly do so. He really stank!!!!

Re the biting in the early days. It does get better - hang in there. Things we did that sometimes helped were scattering kibble in the grass for him to get nose down and sniff out. Giving him cardboard boxes and letting him go crazy ripping those up rather than us. Lickimats definitely. Carrots - whole carrot sometimes frozen, or broccoli stalk also sometimes.

We also got everyone out of the room except one person who pottered boringly in the kitchen and he often fell asleep.

Failing that we stood behind a stair gate with a stiff drink and chucked treats/kibble at home/around the room 🤣🤣🤣

We haven’t had any humping yet - I did wonder if PoirotPup was broken… 🤣🤣🤣

H was a big humper til we got him neutered, started the first day we got him home! He used to literally walk along humping the air! B hasn't done it yet thankfully.

Pup due to arrive in 12 days, I'm feeling nervous and very excited

Little pup at 10 weeks (2 weeks at home) cries so badly whenever you leave the room! I’m following the DTAS advice to build a confident bond and avoiding cry out but I’m just wondering if this is normal (I imagine it is, 10 weeks is so young in the grand scheme of things) or she’s going to be particularly prone to separation anxiety.

The only other issue we have is her and the cat constantly chasing each other / fighting (hopefully play fighting). We try to keep them separate as much as we can but the cat won’t leave her alone / go upstairs / on his cat tree and it makes it so hard to get anything done because she can’t just follow me about in case she encounters the cat but won’t stay in a room on her own. I spend all day just sitting in the lounge or outside with her!

She also turns her nose up at pretty much everything we offer that’s not either a ‘proper’ meat like chicken or sausage, or the cat’s biscuits

Life pup humps a cushion and his bed. He likes soft fluffy things to hump

Day one of holiday over (after 4 hours sleep). Nordpup was crying so much in the utility last night that I relented and let her sleep in the kitchen/living room (where ds was asleep on the sofa). Thank goodness woke up to neither ds or furniture eaten!

The most stressful element of all of this is certainly youngest ds and his fear. Unfortunately it appears to be getting worse (I'd say almost full on phobia territory ).

@Spudlet I totally empathise. At least your ds is interacting with the puppy though which is encouraging . I really don't know what we are going to do...I even looked into some sort of therapy to help ds but I really don't know here to start.

@Nordstrom look up "kids around dogs" website they have some good advice for children with phobias. I think you can contact them too and find a local trainer that will come and work with you and your son and the pup. How old is your son? I'm sure it will get easier when puppy calms down.

I have the opposite problem a child with no fear despite being nipped a few times, I'd have thought that would make her more cautious but no!

Nordstrom that sounds so hard. I know if that happened to us I would be completely questioning whether or not we had made the right decision. The problem is pups are just so bitey and unpredictable. It is understandable that a young child would become frightened. After 6 -12 months I am sure you will have a lovely pup and things will have settled down. Which doesn’t help much in the meantime, it’s just getting past this bit.

Well we tried putting him to bed earlier with a Kong, thinking he might be overtired, which seemed to work last night. However it just seems to have delayed his witching (two)hours until this morning... He's been biting and howling for 2 hours from 7am! He's calmed down now, but I'm getting worried about the poor neighbours.

@Returnoftheowl oh no - I hate it when that happens. I have done much pre-empting neighbour grovelling when I got the pup, helps that we have a good relationship. I just explained he is a young pup who will grow out of it and let us know if he bothers you. If it gets really bad I will drop round some wine to help their sleep but so far no complaint!

Sorry if you have already shared this and I didn't see, have you done ~3 days of writing his schedule to see what his routine is throughout the day (toilet type, play, train, sleep, eat, witching hour)? I think lack of sleep is really about day time sleep and this will help look for those patterns.

For witching hour I think it's a balance between exercise such as a flirt pole to burn that excess energy and then calm feeds/activities (scattering, kong, scent work) to settle the pup during the dreaded 2 hours. They can't bark is there is a flirtpole/kong in their mouth .

Also morning is also classic witching hour for pups too so not abnormal. I have two frozen kongs in the freezer each day for morning (I am too tired to interact) and evening witching hour.

@Nordstrom that is hard with DS. I think therapy is a very smart choice if it is really treading onto phobia level and would likely help a lot and keep you going until pup grows into a wonderful dog. I have a very different phobia but often wished that it was dealt with young.

Good nights sleep last night as I literally slept against her crate.

We had a visit to a tea room yesterday and met a horse. The vision of her lying sedately on her vetbed under the picnic table observing the surroundings was some way from the reality however :-).

A short trip in the car today with just me to go sit on a bench in the high street for a while.

I'm attempting to teach her the names of her toys this week

@ashmts hope you are well and your poor pup has recovered

@tizwozliz lol I have also been trying to teach names of toys. She def knows ball and "squirrel" which is her favourite toy.... I think she has also grasped "teddy"

Happypup will be 1 next week. He continues to be a delight. However he got a grass seed stuck in his nose and ended up being operated on as an emergency and was incredibly ill for a week (nose started pouring blood and he collapsed - he was rushed in immediately!). He was inside for a week, didn't even want to go out for a walk and only went out for a trot round the block to do a poo! Once he recovered, it's like he's forgotten everything he's learned - went back to pulling on the lead really badly which we had trained months and months for him not to do! Also his impulse control disappeared poor dog. So we are back to square one a bit with him but just relieved he is feeling better overall.

We are signing up to do a 1-2-1 training course for him. His recall is fantastic but we need to work on him not going too far away still and walking 'nicely'. We had sorted this out pre illness but post illness it has all disappeared and he's back to darting off like a lunatic!

hope all the other pups coming up to 1 are doing ok!

@HappyThursdays that sounds very frightening glad he is recovering now though.

@HappyThursdays Bless him! Grass seeds really are the work of the devil. Dear old Spuddog had one stuck in his ear shortly before he died (unrelated I hasten to add) - it was in there for an hour at absolute most and caused an infection in just that time. And it cost £250 for an emergency vets trip to get the fekking thing out. I hate the damn things.

We have had a torrid day here, but mostly due to DS rather than Spudpup! I think DS is struggling with the transition from school to holidays and having Spudpup is exacerbating that. Thank you ASD. However, as Spudpup is getting a bit more used to his lead, I was able to have them in the garden together with DS doing some ‘training’ (basically stuffing Spudpup with Primula cheese, but that’s fine). I’m hoping that this will help DS to feel more in control. We tried to fence part of the garden off for DS but Spudpup was through in an instant, so we need to reinforce the ramparts!

Spudpup also now has enough bounce to make it onto the sofa, which caused a degree of DS consternation, but happily Spudpup only wanted to make off with the cushions (). Spudpup has now been banished back into the kitchen and is flat out asleep on the floor.

I’m exhausted, I’ve been up since 5.30am, I ran 16 miles yesterday because I’m training for a marathon, DS is being incredibly hard work, and DH is also struggling. I feel like I could cry at the drop of a hat, tbh. I know Spudpup will be worth it in the end, but bloody hell this is hard work… and we haven’t managed to do any car practice today or yesterday. I feel utterly useless.

I think wolfpup is starting to
Work up to resource guarding the sofa. He can jump on it really easily which he does during witching hours. He's removed swiftly but as he's already bitey and foul at this time it's a recipe for him being a growly bitey aggro little sod

Is the growling more just because you are handling him/moving him off the sofa when he doesn’t want to be rather than guarding it maybe? Obvs I’m not there and you’d know better!

Can you just block access to it during the witching hours in the meantime somehow? That way you can just prevent the situation in the first place - as he gets older the witching hours will calm down/lessen so it might not be forever? Just a thought but my first go to is prevent the behaviour in the first place then think about what I want to see instead and try and train that. Sometimes prevent is just enough on its own.

@Wolfcub we had to put pup on a lead during witching hour so that she couldn't jump on sofa as we had same thing growling if we told her to get off or tried to move her. She is technically not allowed on sofa anyway but she tries her luck!! She did calm down on the lead and lay down in her bed and fell asleep so over tired makes them like it.