Top tips you wish someone had told you sooner!

[hairycabbage]

Ddog is 11 months and doing really well. She's part collie so needs lots of mental stimulation as well as physical exercise but is also a fussy eater. Game changer for us was sprinkling her food in a towel, rolling it up and letting her unravel before eating it- takes her a good 20 minutes and she eats the lot! I wish we'd known sooner.

Other (probably really obvious to experienced owners!) is to take the lead off when they are travelling in the car- when unsupervised she chews through the lead (not the harness securing her to the car yet thankfully!)

Are there any other obvious-to-experienced-owners tips that anyone would like to share?

A great tip I was given., when DDog is eating something she loves give her a bit more by hand., while she's eating. Add to it.

Lots of dogs see a hand coming towards their mouth and assume something will be taken away.

Ddog learnt as a puppy that a hand coming near her mouth was a good thing, ie potentially more yummy food. This small thing now means I can take anything out of her mouth should I need to (hazards whilst out etc) and she doesn't mind at all.

That walking a dog just makes them fitter.

As soon as I stopped listening to that and took the advice of a breed specific trainer on how to tire my dog everything became so much easier.

To take the poo bags off the roll and open them before a walk. Game changer - especially when you have two dogs 🤣

Mental stimulation is just as important as physical stimulation.

Never assume you have enough poo bags.

Game changer for us was sprinkling her food in a towel, rolling it up and letting her unravel before eating it- takes her a good 20 minutes and she eats the lot!

It's called contrafreeloading and applies to almost all animals (except cats!): they prefer food they have had to work for than food given freely.

For me, the biggest revelation was that they are puppies for such a short space of time so find the humour in everything they do. It's too easy to worry that they will never grow out of x. They almost always will. Enjoy it, take videos. One day you will miss the pesky puppy version of your dog. Focus on developing a great relationship with them, rather than just rushing to teach them x, y, z. The most important thing they can learn when young is that you are the most amazing person ever. Formal training can then happen at any age and even some socialisation can still happen when they are older, if they have been brought up to encourage optimism (i.e. new things almost always result in something good).

Absolutely agree with @SirSniffsAlot - I worried a lot about doing things ‘right’ and that’d we’d mess up training if we didn’t do it instantly but actually the stronger our bond got the easier it is to train him.

This 👆

If you let your puppy play with a football then soon it will be big enough to bite and burst all footballs and you will not be able to take ddog to most parks ever again!!!