Puppy survival thread. Oct/Nov fireworks!

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@LadyCatStark mine has grown out of excited wees, she did them frequently until about 6 months. The only thing you can do is meet outside so it doesn't go on your floors!

Ah the never ending allure of cigarette butts etc to pups! Our setter pup is being very good but at 10 weeks it's mostly the calm before the storm.

@LadyCatStark FawkesPup does excited wees. Only for certain people. He likes to get his willy out too for them 😱😱😱😱

We definitely haven't got the excited greeting sorted. He's basically like a mad pogo spaniel. I can get him to do it for us in the house but visitors he LOVES and goes mad for.

We have finally had a non bitey no teething few days. It's been flipping bliss.

Oh no @Aria20 Billy seems to be growing into them!

@GuyFawkesDay, my Mum’s dogs are bouncy spaniels so she was very complementary on his calmness apart from the excite wee! I guess I better just keep and eye in it and hope it was the arrival of new toys and humans at the same time was too exciting for him!

Jumping up is still our biggest challenge. He does really well now when passing by people, including joggers. But when someone greets him his default response is to jump. And he does it to us when he thinks we aren’t paying him sufficient attention!

I’ve discovered that if we miss a day of loose lead walking, it sets him back. So I am trying to do some every day. And I must say he is doing well with it. Today he was brilliant except when a neighbour happened to be outside and he made a beeline for her. He loves her dog but she was on her own. My pup seemed a bit confused about that!

@bargelights yes mine is same good walking past people now but if someone pays her attention she takes that as a cue to try and jump up!

Merli settles very quickly without any fuss but last night needed two wees and a poo. Not sure how I tackle this, it's not every night

No idea on excited wees sorry

I left him in the house today 10 mins or so and came home to whining and barking. Might have been a response to car on the drive

DH home tonight I've done 10 hr days at work, an hours walk morning and evening and usually cooking etc. I can't wait to see him

Oh gosh @WomblingKnobhead that must have been hard! I walked in at 4pm having left school, stopped at Aldi for quick shop raid, walked in, swapped shoes for boots and went straight out for walk. Thank God for DH who was holding the fort worth putting food away and dealing with kids. Sounds really tough, enjoy having him home xxx

Maybe pup is maturing...took her to watch ds play rugby today and there was a 3 month old puppy that kept jumping on her and nipping her and she was very tolerant and patient with her!

TerrorPup really is growing up (finally!). She's been pretty much an angel this week as I've been working 13+ hour days from home and OH has been away. After her morning walk she's been content to snooze on the sofa or entertain herself with a chew for the vast majority of the day, just a few short play sessions or a sniffy evening walk. She also got high praise from daycare who say how excellent she is with kids (visiting family members). Given she hardly interacted with children until she was 6 months and has had some pretty bad experience with unruly children I'm so chuffed.

Took her out for a long walk this morning and I managed to get her attention on me when she saw another dog about half the time which is a MASSIVE improvement.

I cried daily about her for months, the tears are now probably fortnightly but I feel so close to having the dog owning life I dreamed of. So to all those in the earlier days, it does get easier!

So nice to hear about the other pups being good 🥰

FawkesPup has also been a good boy on his walk this morning he did loads of loose lead walking, and got compliments from a lovely lady out with 2 gorgeous well trained springers, so I was well pleased. He also slept in his crate beautifully and didn't wake me once! Tonight I will baby monitor the Alexa (thank you for that tip!) and hopefully this will be us sorted. Left him for 30 minutes earlier with his tripe bone and the radio and no fuss either. Think he might be growing up too. The days of mopping up constant wee puddles do seem a way off now, and although I miss the cuteness I am really enjoying having a bit of my life back!!!

@GuyFawkesDay - what was the name of the dog tag company you used? Ada's got a new collar today after growing out of her old one and fancied a tag that doesn't jangle.

DH and DS actually came on our walk this afternoon and Billy was a superstar 🥰. He’s now chilling on his bed watching Mary Poppins and loving it 😂 I love this dog so much!

@tizwozliz it's from Flexitags on Etsy. They superb. I got a black metal and then you can have whatever colour silicone slider works for you. I have the large one on his collar to get all the correct details on and then a small one on his harness with just put surname, postcode and my phone number.

Aww that’s so lovely @LadyCatStark. We had a really nice walk in the woods today, partly off lead and partly on the long line. I’m nervous about letting him off the lead, but he was very good, never straying too far from us and quick to return when we called.

He wasn’t perfect by any means. He grabbed the lead and jumped up several times, clearly over excited by the new environment. But he’s coming along so nicely in so many ways.

Haven't posted in a while, but things not great with puppy, its just so exhausting, he is 9 months now.
The main problem is lead pulling, I have now got to a point where I can't physically walk him anymore, now I am going to have to spend a fortune on a trainer to try and resolve it.
He has destroyed so many things in the house in the past few months now I have had to resort to putting most of our possessions he can reach in a box upstairs, which quite honestly I have no space for. The jumping up at the kitchen sides drives me insane, and yes he knows leave it and down but still does it all the time.
He is still weeing every time we get up for the day or come home, so my first job of everyday is mopping up wee!
Right now, all I want to do is sit down and maybe watch some tv, but impossible as he is still on the go!
We have plenty of enrichment stuff, his meals are fed to him in puzzle toys or kongs etc, he never seems to tire out. Of course he doesn't get walked as often as he should because its just to hard at the moment, so working on finding someone local to help.
Lesson learnt, its definitely as hard as people say it is

What breed @Teenminds Has he changed in response to training at all? Vicious cycle with energy and trying. Poor behaviour makes you tired...training takes energy

@Teenminds what is the thing you want to work on first/most?

Can you give him a really stinky long lasting chew to buy you time for a cuppa?

With the pulling we use a double ended lead clipped on back and front of harness - it means the lead is relatively short and he doesn’t yank it suddently, if he pulls he doesn’t really go anywhere as it sort of turns him sideways and It easier to hold. Can you drive somewhere he can just run off lead instead for a bit rather than try and walk on lead?

PoirotPup is 9 months and we have had to up the exercise a bit due to teenagery!

@Teenminds - my dog was a nightmare at 9 months old. I was constantly in tears and dreamed of a kind person with a country estate knocking at the door to offer him a perfect home (of course we would never, ever have rehomed him).

The pulling was terrible. He dislocated my shoulder and tore some muscles. He pulled me over. I used about ten harnesses. No one would take him for a walk.

I got a personal trainer and we went right back to basics. It was a Complete Pain, I must admit, and involved walking up and down, up and down ad infinitum, the road, stopping short every single time he dared to pull. At first we advanced about an inch. It took a good three weeks for the message to get through, but then he was Practically Pawfect!

I think sadly there are no short cuts. You have to reverse the pulling idea they’ve learned. Those dog training shows where a dog is cured of pulling or whatever in one walk: piffle! It’s hard work. But worth it as frankly no one could take Dog out and dogs only get bigger and stronger as they grow up.

With New Dog I shall start the no pulling boot camp straightaway.

He is a Labrador, nothing has changed in terms of training and actually he does really well at impulse control, staying on bed, leaving food until told etc when training, it just goes out the window in every day life, but to be fair he is a lot better than he was for trying to grab food off your plate!
He has made improvements, but it is just still such hard work and I'm so tired.

Any chews I have bought don't last long, I think the longest is probably about 20 mins.

We have a harness with front and back clip, doesn't help, recently bought a Gencon head collar as recommended which helped a bit, but is now broken, silly design
I have another headcollar I was given, but it clips on from under the chin and I don't really like it plus the lead gets caught under his front leg every 2 mins.

Yes @MrsHerculePoirot that's what I have been doing, we have a quiet green space about a 5 min walk away and I have been taking him down there and letting him off with a ball, but even the walk there and back has become unbearable, and yesterday he went mad at a small child on the way back properly growling and barking, so I had to drag him a different way. He also recently is reluctant to come back to be put back on the lead, so I don't think I can do that anymore either.

There is just no joy in it, as much as he is part of the family now and I would never want to rehome, sometimes I'm struggling to see the point, I can't even go out for a nice walk, and that was one of the reasons I got a dog, was to get out more, explore the area, meet some people, but none of that is happening.
Around the house is just a daily nightmare. I think I probably just need a break but that won't happen unfortunately.

Nine months is an awful age. Full hormones kicking in. We had to get Dog done as he was a sex maniac and all training flew out of the window. He was escaping the garden (fully fenced), howling at people’s gates (clearly a female dog inside) and worst fancying humans . Poor old Dog was a changed (half) man after he’s had the chop.

@Teenminds that sounds so exhausting and frustrating. Are these behaviours new or has the pup always been challenging? It could be adolescence kicking in.

For walking on the lead, will he walk without pulling when you’re inside the house or in the garden or other areas with no/low distractions? If so can you do lots of training in those areas? I agree with PPs that it takes time and repetition, and progress can seem incremental (or nonexistent) for a long while. Sending sympathy and strength vibes to you.

Can you get a trainer/behaviourist to work with you one on one for a while? I don’t know what training you might have already done/tried. Can you move from the things he can do in the house out to the garden and then outside front of house of quiet park/field. Would hiring a private field maybe allow off lead exercise and then mix in with small training once you’ve nailed it in garden?

Our lab is 9 months old also - but he doesn’t/hasn’t growled or snapped at anyone. We did the sexier than a squirrel thing for a bit to help our relationship with him and so that we were the most exciting thing out and about. It’s not perfect but he’s pretty good and it definitely helped us build a positive relationship.

We worked on loose lead training first in the house/garden then just on driveway and then on road but for really short bursts a few times a day. Initially a tube of primula was high enough value to help with that. Could going back to basics so lots of opportunities for success help here?

Is there a daycare/dog walker he could go to for a few hours to give you a break?

It sounds hard sorry - just thinking out loud if there are options to help you and give you a break/reduce the stress.

@Teenminds that does sound very extreme! Billy is an 8 month old lab so I don’t know if the worst is yet to come but he’s definitely not that hard work (I don’t mean that in a boastful way).

Pulling has been an issue for us but this week, he’s been amazing and I found I needed to up the value of the reward for heeling. Dog treats just don’t cut it, he wasn’t cheese and cut up cocktail sausages. I started walking 10 steps before treating him and now we are up to 70+.

I’ve also found that we can keep his attention on us when we have his favourite toy, a gundog dummy, so he doesn’t go running towards other dogs (he’s not interested in people). He’d never bark or growl at someone though, I think you’d be best to get a behaviourist to work with you on that.

For long lasting chews, try an ostrich bone or a buffalo horn.