Puppy survival thread. Oct/Nov fireworks!

[sandwiches77]

New thread...

@WomblingKnobhead totally agree about the DTAS group. Also Steve Mann’s book where he talks about focusing on mutually exclusive behaviours and thinking about what you want to do instead…I found that really useful and totally made sense in my head!

@TerrierOrTerror using the DTAS advice I think you’d prevent first eg lead and scatter feed so that pup doesn’t practice the unwanted behaviour. Then as you say gradually decrease the distance. I’ve seen advice on training pup to bring a toy to greet you or visitor but I haven’t looked at how you’d do that!!! It did really help when friends and family totally ignored jumping - I know it was hard for them when he was little and cute. I explained we had to do it so he didn’t knock over small children or old people and we really needed their help to do it… I think it helped them be stronger 🤣

We are doing good with jumping up out of the house and when people stop, but moving targets or visitors into the house are a different matter. So embarrassing!
Can I just say.... Hairy cow ears. Get them. They bought me 3 whole hours of freedom tonight. Not a peep out of the pup while she was home alone. Chewed for half an hour and then went to sleep. But they smell the worst out of anything we have had plus beef makes her farts noxious. Luckily she is in daycare tomorrow 😊

@Returnoftheowl that sounds scary. I think we have all been there... I certainly have. Several times. Watching my pup high tail it after an older dog toward the open gate.... And praying older dog has better recall than mine. Or similar. It doesn't matter so much in woods and fields. Awful near roads. No more walking off lead near roads for us! And doubling down on the recall. Now using a whistle and that Total Recall book someone recommended up thread. It is really good.

Cow ears…. the farts !! I remember us all sitting with our jumpers up over our heads to avoid being gassed…

@DottyHarmer you are 100% correct. But on fine balance, it's still worth it because I get to go out out.... important because there is no Mr or Mrs angryperson to feel resentful about do the dog sitting.

I used to leave Dog with a pass the parcel (except he was the only player). So a cereal box, etc etc down to an egg box with some treats in. He used to get so excited when I brandished a “parcel” and shot into his bed in anticipation - allowing me to sneak out without his mournful face staring at me, willing me never, ever to leave him even for a second…

I'm now on the way to the vets with puppy... He's got an upset stomach that doesn't seem to be getting better. He seems fine in himself otherwise.

Cardboard box murder v popular in my house too. Loves a sniffy rip it up but never thought about it for leaving him 🤦‍♀️

Agree on all beef chews. Tails, bladder twists, trachea. All have made FawkesPup have the arse of doom.

Hesitate to say this (seems to bring on the opposite of what I'm celebrating) but toxic bottom gas not a huge issue here. The dog seems OK as well 😆

We had a very successful walk today. The pup did brilliantly with not wanting to greet everyone we passed. The only negative was that he got scared of a huge lorry rumbling by. He's fine with cars and buses and motorcycles, etc. But I don't think he'd ever seen such an enormous and loud vehicle. He calmed down quite quickly though.

@Returnoftheowl hope your pup is ok now?

@GuyFawkesDay beef chews stink as do the resulting toxic fumes.... I'm actually wondering if pup has a bit of a sensitivity to beef as I've noticed when she has beef wet food or beef paste on lickimat she has stinky wind, softer poop and is itchy after. So going to try avoiding anything beef related for few weeks to see if it's the culprit!

Interesting as FawkesPup (also a spanner) is exactly the same.

Since I stopped beef chews he was better and got a trachea at weekend and he was disgusting to be near and had sloppy poo afterwards. Though paddywhack seems to be ok?!!

I'm moving him onto the game based flavour of his food which is beef and chicken free so here's hoping!

We also had a lovely walk today. Billy did fantastic loose lead walking for chopped up cocktail sausages. He managed 60 (of my) steps between treats and heeled all the way to the field. We went through 2 fields and the park and he recalled when we saw another dog straight away. He’s a monkey for running a short distance away and then looking at me to recall him knowing that he’ll get a treat! When we got to the pavement to walk home he stopped dead and refused to walk because he wanted to go back across the fields 😂.

He’s such a pampered pooch that I game him some raw off cuts of chicken when making fajitas for tea and he cried at me until I cooked them for him. He’s been a spoiled pup today!

@GuyFawkesDay yes paddy whack seems ok here too! Maybe it's processed differently?! Annoying as the wet food tins I buy are a pack of 6 - 4 chicken and turkey flavour, 2 beef flavour so will be wasting 2 tins as they don't seem to sell them individually. Might have to change wet food brands

Sounds lovely @LadyCatStark

FawkesPup is doing well on his walking too but not up to that yet. He is coming to my left side by habit now and putting himself into loose lead walk (mainly as he knows it gets him treats 🤣) so making progress. He's learned his hand signals for sit, lie down, stand and drop too. Not that he drops his contraband. Apparently revolting old chocolate wrappers found in hedges are better than treats. Weirdo.

He ran off today in our park. Round the corner onto the private drive. Out of sight and everything. Panic stations but he can flying back to the whistle so disaster averted. For now. My blood pressure went up rather rapidly

DH thinks we should have called pup Henry (the hoover) because he slides his snout along the ground sucking up crap like masks, bags, tissues, chewing gum, takeaway crap 🤢

He has had solid poo since swapping to Millie Wolfheart hooray

Ada has improved and doesn't pick up every single bit of litter anymore. If we go for an evening walk though we avoid going down one street where the litter is really bad and it's too hard to spot stuff in the dark

@WomblingKnobhead ours should have been Orinoco or Uncle Bulgaria. Little sod can find any piece of disgusting and pick it up 🤣 tbh he is better as he does now understand "leave" but he does still horrify me with part rotten plastic bags, empty fab packets etc from inside the brambly scrub area he loves (the rabbits live in there). He's a scuzzer but I do love him.

He's also developing the best comedy spaniel hairdo. He looks like Mr T

Hahaha his hair do!

@Aria20 he's got show cocker fluffy chops coming along too, bless him. Absolutely comedy hairdo at the moment.

He slept in his crate. In the kitchen. I am gobsmacked. I slept in the study and put his cover on the crate and it was like a parrot in a cage, went straight to sleep! He woke and whined and I pretended to be asleep with snoring etc and he self settled. I reckon a few nights and we will have it cracked. I am beyond happy right now. I will do one more night downstairs and then set up Alexa to be a baby monitor and see how things go. Hurray!!

I do wonder if it's just age, Ada has now spent a couple of nights on her bed under the stairs and has slept 10.30 until 7 ish on her own. At the moment she's still needing a bit of help settling, so she's managed to go off to sleep on her own once, but other night's we've left her and had to go back down and sit with her for 5 mins. I think I'm more confident now that we'll get there in time.

Plan is to carry on leaving her, if she's gets out of her bed and hasn't gone back in 5 mins one of us will sit with her until she's asleep. We know she can go to sleep on her own as she does it in the day, we just need to get that bedtime routine sorted. She goes straight to bed when we get the bedtime biscuits out after last wees.

We've been to the vet for flea treatment today, she now weighs 21kg so growth has slowed right down as expected.

Dates for the next stage of our gundog course released next week, need to decide if we want to continue or not. Not even halfway through the current one so it's hard to know whether it's worth continuing. She certainly doesn't seem to have a retriever instinct or any sort of great desire to carry something in her mouth (unless it's something she shouldn't have!)

Well I think pup had lulled me into false hope that teenage loon phase was over... this morning mil knocked on the window and pup ran launched herself not just up on the sofa to look out the window but actually on the window ledge and I swear if the window was open she'd have been out!! Then when I let mil in she jumped up at her like crazy and she hasn't done that in ages back to training!!

On the plus now she's over her season we can get back to recall training and she's stopped being fussy, she ate dry kibble twice today... I put it in a big cardboard box wrapped in bits of newspaper so she had to snuffle them out.

My mum also came to visit today and Billy did an excited wee. He’s never done that before but we haven’t had a huge amount of visitors as we live a little way from our families and tend to meet up with friends out and about. My brother brought him a couple of toys that their dogs don’t like and he loved them so I think that contributed to the excitement. Is there anything that can be done about excited weeing? On the plus side he didn’t do any jumping up at all which is really good 🥰.

Love the hair do @GuyFawkesDay 😂