Puppy survival thread September and the pups just want to eat all the leaves!

[cheeseisthebest]

Omg I never start ongoing threads like this!
Back to school for my lot tomorrow. Taken pup for an evening walk tonight, desperately trying to tire him out! He's struggled to nap today as felt too hot.

Wow, I had (intentionally) forgotten that we have adolescence to look forwards to!

We had a great day with sit and down training today, so quite chuffed with that.

Reassuring to hear that many of year have managed to get pups sleeping through the night. We are currently getting up at 3 & 5.30 with puppy - setting the alarm to pre-empt when she was going in her mat. I now have no idea how we move on. Does it make sense to gradually move the 3am get up later and see if she holds, and in doing so, hopefully push wake-up later? Or is that just pointless. Obviously, at some stage that would lead to no get up, but an early rise, but surely that's the aim?! I feel I should know all this, but I just don't.

Can I also ask again about last feeds for a 10 week old. When pup came to us, she was having a Malay feed around 10. We have progressively brought this forward to 8ish and she does not seem starving in the morning. Would it be too early to take this slightly earlier still, do you think?

Hi! We bought her girl home last night after a 10 hour round trip! She didn’t sleep very well so need some tips 🙈

I am SO tired lol

Pic of our gorgeous girl 💖🐾

Forgot photos!

@Jinnybean

Forgot photos!

I don't even have a dog but had to comment on your post!! So adorable, what a face! Hope she brings you lots of joy. Would love a Goldie at some point, such happy dogs.

@Jinnybean She beautiful! What a lovely smile. You'll never be able to say no to her!

Adolescence hit us really, really hard at around 10.5 months. We had major sleep regression, the frustrated greeter thing became even worse and she even regressed with toilet training. The mouthing as well really increased. Her separation anxiety/FOMO went from mild to severe. We had a fairly calm dog in the house and that completely changed, wfh was really difficult again. The switch was so sudden we had her down the vets for a full health check.

I don't think it will go completely any time soon, but consistency has improved it. Calmness during the day has got better again, and working with a behaviourist we have made great progress on separation in just over a month (tiny tiny steps). She now sleeps with us which is our biggest frustration as we did so well lwith nighttime sleeping downstairs and it all ended in one single night. We hope to eventually get her on the landing outside our room, she settles there during the day so hopefully it will become her spot...

Someone asked about moving dinner earlier. I would say we find a later dinner means much better sleep and always have done. As long as she does a poop sometime between 6pm and bedtime eating late will mean we aren't woken by her because she's hungry. TerrorPup doesn't eat until half seven earliest, last night it was closer to 9pm. We don't have a set meal time routine (windows of a couple of hours) as I am trying desperately to preventing the reminding my family dog did.

@bingohandjob we have a 17mth LabX and the bit 8-12mths the lead walking went awful and general monkeyness kicked back in (my poor garden full of holes) it’s felt like everyday it was just consistent training and reward ALL The Time … it really has paid off though. However we have definitely had another blip this week think it’s a mix of kids back to school so house quieter, lots of hair shedding again seasonal or hormones?? Little monkey destroyed the hose pipe yet again, pulled a piece of toast off the counter having not attempted anything like that for months, ran off chewing a shoe …again not done any of that for a year!! But then the monkey behaviour it’s only lasts half hour and then she settles back to the calm dog she’s growing into. I just got lulled into a false sense of security after an easier few months

Argh adolescence sounds awful as I think we got off relatively lightly with puppyhood... anyone known a dog not have a bad teenage period (asks hopefully!!) At 7.5 months we are getting selective hearing and selective recall so I guess it's starting!

My friend had 3 labs and said only one went through a really challenging adolescent phase so you might get lucky

@Equimum Does it make sense to gradually move the 3am get up later and see if she holds, and in doing so, hopefully push wake-up later?

How would you move it? My feelings are it will happen when they are capable

@Jinnybean gorgeous pup

All this talk of adolescence is making me a bit 😲😲🥴

MakeMeCleanTheHouse I get what you mean. My idea was that we would move the 3am to 3.30 and if she is still dry, stick with that, then when that has worked for a little while, try 4. Obviously if it doesn't work, we'll move back to the previous time.

Gorgeous pup Jinnybean

@Jinnybean gorgeous pup - goldies always look so cheerful

Equimum that's exactly what I did from the outspent I planned get ups so that pup was taken out before he woke needing to go and then I gradually moved them by 15 mins at a time, taking being harder to wake up for a wee as a cue that he could go longer. I think I only had to reverse a time change twice.

@Jinnybean she’s so cute!

@Aria20 My cocker is almost 13 months and we haven't really noticed adolescence. She's become a bit more strong-willed, e.g. sometimes we let her out for a bedtime pee and she'll decide she cba and either sit on the doorstep, lie on the grass, or run straight back past us into her crate she's a laugh. We've not yet cracked lead-walking completely though so not sure we'd have noticed regression. I will say, she was a very very difficult puppy so an easy teenager might be our karma? Also she was spayed around 7/8 months so that may have stopped her hormones going wild.

@Equimum We did similar, set alarms a few times a night, then pushed the times back slightly until it was only once a night and eventually she slept through. I think your pup is very young though? She might not be ready for it. We got to a stage where you'd go down at 3am to take her out and she'd refuse to get out the crate. That's when I started setting the alarm later and later. She was 16/17 weeks before she slept through, until then we were up at least once overnight.

@ashmts interesting I wonder if they early spay helped with that?!

Hi all. We brought our baby boy home this morning. It is my first ever dog and he’s just so lovely.

His name is Brodie

Phobophobia Brodie is lovely!
What breed is he?

And welcome to the madness 😂

Oh look at him! What a sweetie.

We had a lovely trip to the dog deli and market and FawkesPup was brilliant. He even did some sit/paw/boop etc whilst we were there just so I could see if he could do it with distractions and he did!! Well proud of the little monster.

Today was a very exciting day for Billy as he received a box full of Fish4Dogs treats in the post for free! We signed up for the deal where you get a free trial for £2 ages ago and now he’s almost 6 months they sent us absolutely loads of packets all free as a surprise! He went crazy for the salmon kibble and did his morning training so enthusiastically. He even learnt a new trick; walk around my legs and sit back between my feet.

Then we went across our usual fields for a walk. We saw the dogs we see every day and every day the man says not to bother putting Billy on his lead and they can play and we have a bit of a chat so today I didn’t put him on his lead and Billy ran up and the man looked really pissed off! FFS I can’t win! He recalled back once but then ran back so he’s staying on his lead in the presence of other dogs now regardless of what the other owner says. I don’t think the man recognised us as we’re we’re with DH and DS.

We walked to the local cafe and sat outside and Billy was brilliant, even though there was a dog at the next table so he redeemed himself a little!

@BaconAndAvocado he’s a standard Dachshund. He’s been quite quiet so far but has just discovered the ball so he’s perked up a bit!

Gorgeous new pups!

I've got my fingers firmly in my ears about the teenage years!

I've got my fingers firmly in my ears about the teenage years!

I've had to mute the DTAS pages on facebook as too depressing, as you only really see the problems there.

@LadyCatStark have you tried the fish4dogs mousse - trainer recommended it as a high value reward and thought it would be good to have an alternative to the liver pate.

Thank-you Wolfcub and ashmts, that's really helpful. I'm not expecting her to sleep through anytime soon (she's 10 weeks), but she's very sleepy at the 3am get up, so I might just try pushing that back 15 minutes and see where we are.

PhoboPhobia what a gorgeous puppy! I hope you really enjoy him.