We welcomed our pup last February and have been through some extreme highs and extreme lows and as I sit here now under a 16 month gentle giant of a teen lab who is happily snoring and lovingly snuggling in deep into my lap occasionally contentedly doing the heavy lab sigh and the never not adorable little woofs and whelps when in dream state I sometimes cannot believe we got through the biting, the sleep deprivation (me over worrying, not him who slept brilliantly and through the night very, very early on), the tension between us owners when one wasn't being as consistent as the other, the fox poo eating (and subsequent vomiting), and the ongoing training of lead walking (more success than not lately thanks to cocktail sausage slices) and recall in high excitement environments I look at this dog and think he is the very best of living things.
He has taught me so much about being in the moment, about enjoying playing outside, about being clear and consistent. He is the gentlest, most loving boy whose big loud bark that he very occasionally does really is a big HELLO (I understand now why owners say "he's friendly" when their dogs do this even though in the moment it feels scary and previously as a non dog owner I would have thought, "yeah, right").
If you're deep in puppy blues you do come through it. Key things I've learnt:
- The puppy blues are real
- Setting boundaries and consistently reinforcing them early on really, really helped ( door manners, waiting for food until told, never feeding from the table, for us the now open door crate training was invaluable)
- Your puppy needs more sleep than you think - we 'enforced' naps and pretty much every time he was fast asleep within two minutes
- Exercise is not just running/walking. This morning's sleeping dog was tuckered out by a short street walk, a 'find it' hunt for his breakfast in the garden and two 5 minute focused training sessions and he's having an off lead group walk later this morning with his doggy pals
Would love to hear from Puppy Class of Early 2021 how things are going and what you've learnt - about dog and yourself! This forum helped me loads very early on!