Puppy Survival Thread: surviving into 2022

[LadyCatStark]

The other thread is full and I can’t see a new one! Hope it’s OK to start one. I’m actually barely surviving puppyhood, actually teenagerhood, this week 🤬😡😭.

Oh my word this little knobhead darling has tested my patience today.

It's a good job o know he can be lovely!

She is evil. Eviiiiil. Just pooed under the table while looking right at me.

Awww - but she’s so cute!!!

@tizwozliz she is so shiny, she needs to be in a doggy shampoo or food advert! She's like a well polished boot!!!

The only time she's been washed is rinsing the chlorine off after doggy swimming, she's an anti shampoo advert :-) We've made it this far without her ever rolling in anything (hope I haven't jinxed myself saying that)

Mine attracts mud, twigs and general grot Ike a magnet. It's the floof. Found a tiny slug on his back leg lastnight 🤢

He gets bathed probably once a month? More if he find 🦊💩 though 🙄

@GuyFawkesDay same once a month ish for proper bath, but regular paw showers...today we went to the farm and I thought I got all the mud off her paws... then discovered dried clumps of mud she wouldn't let me comb out so she had to go in the shower again! We've also had baby slugs on her leg fluff lol and all the twigs, thistles etc that get attached to her when she goes into bushes!

Does yours like the Eden semi moist? Or the fish flavoured one? She seemed to like the chicken one best but I have suspicions about a chicken intolerance as she gets itchy....

What foods are your puppies eating? We started on AVA and he loved it but last couple month he's not seemed interested so thinking of swapping brands. He's on grain free. Thanks.

I am firmly in the "never bathe dogs unless they are covered in cat excrement" camp.

My pup is sulking because I took her outside for five minutes to wee at 4am and it started to drizzle. She has shaken herself all over about ten times since getting back inside.

My puppy is refusing tinned dogfood now. (The breeder had been mixing it in with dry.) The only dry she will nibble at is the Nature's Range puppy starter bag the vet gave us when getting her vaxxed. And she has to be starving and have abandoned all hope of other offers before she'll go near it. Otherwise, she's eating real food, esp chicken, mince and veg. Made her a stew of mince, rice cooked in onion-free chicken stock, carrots, broccoli, butternut squash and a bit of extra very watered down beef stock, and she devours that.

We feed Millie's Wolfheart and all sorts of other bits. I'm currently back researching dog food, we're hopefully going to Denmark at Easter but you can no longer take food containing meat/dairy across, so need to work out what we can feed her over there. Brexit makes things so complicated

ChenPup is on Royal Canin - it’s what his breeder started him on so we’ve kept going with that. He also gets variety of cooked meat added to it and gets a bit of fruit and veg as well (less fruit with the sugar content). I bought some Lilly’s Kitchen tub things recently to see if he’d like that and he wolfed down the lamb hotpot one. He also gets a range of natural chews and dog treats for training.

I thought you'd all like this. It totally describes my life. A friend put it on FB and loads of people commented to say how accurate it was. Made me feel a bit better as DH still moaning on about how the pup follows me about.

Love it! That is exactly my life. I can’t even go to the loo in peace, it’s like the baby and toddler stage all over again - I now find myself peeing in front of a small dog just to get some peace from the scratching at the door to be let in, it’s most disconcerting.

@LegsMiserables haha so true or you think you've crept out of the room without waking them and bam they are right behind you nearly tripping you up when you turn around!

Mines giving me evils as I dared go straight to do food shop after school run instead of taking her for her walk and I've taken so long unpacking she's given up hope of being taken out lol

We use butternut box (but no good for going to EU, what a total pain, I did not realise there was a ban on taking meat and fish in, gaaaaaaahhhhhh!) mixed in with whatever kibble is on offer and has a reasonably high nutritional rating on allaboutdogfood. All kibble is very much considered lesser in this house, so doesn't really matter which one (within limits, she really does not like the excellent quality, Millie's Wolfheart: typical!). Butternut is too expensive to feed to her exclusively at the moment. She also gets quite a lot of tinned fish and some whole eggs, with shells, mixed in/ for lunchtime snacks.

Home cooked is the most popular here, but I found it led to problems with fussiness and refusing actual dog food, and to be honest, I haven't got the capacity to cook for Ddog as well as me and the kids!

@Goawayangryman - what tinned fish do you give her? And do you cook the eggs?

Don't cook the eggs, no. just crack, crush and serve :) Occasionally when the floor already needs a good mop I will give her a whole egg because it amuses me to see her carrying it around in her mouth so gently... she will then take it to a discreet spot and then crunch it and slurp it I am very not houseproud

She has tuna, as it is bone free. I think they can also have sardines, mackerel, etc. Just need to make sure that there aren't any large cooked bones (although they are small and soft so I doubt would splinter etc) and obviously keep an eye on the salt and oil content.

We're staying with family so hopefully should be able to sort something, looks like we'll be able to get orijen over there so I'm sure we can try that beforehand. It's the 8 hour drive after a 12 hour ferry to get there that's the issue. Going to see if she'll eat the lily's kitchen vegan stew which might get us through the drive.

Not too much tuna mind you because of the mercury content.

Thanks @Goawayangryman, that's given me some new ideas to try

Maybe I'm wrong about the tuna - seems to be some debate about whether it's OK to give dogs because of the mercury. OK in small amounts, my research suggests (!) which really is what I do with it anyway. Sardines etc am pretty sure they are good to go, deboned white fish certainly is, salmon same, etc.

Eggs are definitely AOK. Sprats, whole air-dried ones, are always popular here too - good as training treats.

We give sardines mostly, they're low in the food chain so things like mercury and other chemicals that accumulate less of an issue. You can buy boneless but the bendy soft bones in the tinned ones don't worry me and the tins are cheaper. You just have to watch out for what they're packed in.

@Aria20 we’ve just started using Eden semi moist pup approves enough we can now use this for treats too! It’s much softer she really didn’t like hard kibble

@autienotnaughty we also started with Ava and recently swapped to Eden semi moist as really wanted a good we could also do training with and pup seems happy so far,There is a really good comparison dog food website that lets you look and compare food