Puppy Survival Thread - for old and new pups

[Riverlee]

Thought I’d start a new thread as the old one is at its limit, for new and older pups.

please come and share your tales of success, woes, concerns and questions, and of course, photographs.

Seems to. She's sleeping in the crate in DD2's bedroom, but we've got it in the lounge so that we can teach 'go to bed'. We're hoping that having a specific place will allow her to be calmer with our other dog, too.

The trainer said wear a lead all the time on your belt and when you feel them pulling take them out. But it's just not practical. I do have kids and I can't spend the whole time attending to the puppy. Obviously my fault taking on too much at once but I'm exhausted.

Totally normal. Exhaustingly and frustratingly normal 😬

Much respect for dealing with a pup and a new house!

That isn't going to help you with the problem you have. You know she knows to go out. She doesn't feel comfortable peeing outside, and she feels more comfortable peeing inside. That's your problem.

Have you tried restricting which part of the garden she can go in to wee? I wonder if you go back to taking her to the same spot every 10 minutes until she wees, it might catch a wee outside that you could praise? You'd have to restrict her inside to a small area that can cope with wee accidents also, though. Advice I've seen is crate - outside - if wee, inside; if no wee, crate - rinse and repeat until wee is had.

Shouldn’t have read this thread- puppy ready in 7 weeks and now I’m terrified!

Welcome @PaddingtonsHat

Well we had our first big mishap yesterday and I'm paying for it in lost sleep. Hazel went missing and we found her in our pantry, eating dog food. She was wadding like she was pregnant and about to give birth. We skipped her afternoon meal and evening meal, then I gave her a ½ meal quite late.

She's been out 3 times already tonight, with big piles of poo each time. I think her tummy must be sore, too, because she's quite unsettled.

I have a cake to decorate tomorrow so I could really do without it!

@Lougle oh no!!! I hope you get some sleep. Poor Hazel, couldn't help herself and paying for it later 🙈

Yes, I opted for empathy rather than criticism but I'm fairly knackered! She's just done a more normal poo, so I think she's cleared through.

Oh @Lougle that is such a Labrador thing to do!

Been there, done that. Except it was two adult dogs- who chomped through the best part of two 15kg bags of kibble overnight 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ I didn’t even think that was physically possible, nor did I believe they could do that so quietly….

They were both absolutely fine after a couple of days of bad bellies, but I was less happy that the best part of £100 of food had gone in one night 🤨

Oh my friend's lab did that. Except he got his head stuck in the dog proof food bin lid.... Fluffpup is so lacking in brain cells I don't think she realises she could raid her treats/food.

I'm so relieved that my little delinquent keeps good company 😁To be fair, she was shut in a walk in pantry and must have thought she would never be found, so her survival instinct kicked in. Or at least, that's the story I'm choosing to believe.

She's doing really well with choosing to lie on the bed when she's in the lounge, and she did some very nice loose lead walking this morning, even working out that she only got a treat if she was right next to me, with her bum tucked in behind her.

And I must thank you @Lougle for the much needed laugh at that memory reminder. My old girl is now looking very much her age, and doesn’t get up to much mischief now. Sometimes I feel sad looking at Feelypup remembering Feelydogsnr that age- it feels like a different lifetime ago. She was a million times easier than this little hooligan 🤣🤣🤣

Agree about them needing to learn about bite inhibition through using their mouths. Our lab (2.5 years) has the softest most gentle mouth when taking treats. I thought that was just natural for the breed, but we looked after another lab a while ago and she had no clue about being gentle with her mouth. Her owner never lets her carry sticks around and seems to prevent a lot of natural mouthing behaviour. As a result she is unintentionally toothy. Someone posted a great video on here ages ago about puppies learning to use their mouths. Helped give me confidence about handling the bitey stage.

Oh @Lougle ! I shouldn't laugh 🙈 I hope Hazel feels better today. Unluckypup is pretty unimpressed with kibble so the bag sits in the kitchen without ever attracting attention, but yesterday she snaffled a protein bar that someone had dropped in the field. I wasn't there but my partner said she went loopy and it took him an hour and a half to get her back on the lead 😬

She just turned 11 months. We went on a sighthound walk this morning and there was a lovely exuberant younger puppy who made me realise Unluckypup has calmed down a bit now. Here she is actually relaxing in the pub afterwards rather than desperately trying to say hi to everyone.

What kibble should I buy? I feel so unprepared for this puppy despite reading training book and watching YouTube videos.
I feel I don't know what I'm letting myself in for as it's been so long since I last had a puppy (20yrs) and back in the day you just got on with it. I really don't remember that there was much 'advice' out there. Not sure whether that's good or bad as this thread has terrified me 🙄

@Lougle and @userxx thank you.

Today when things escalated I used time-out in his crate for 5 minutes each time and then opening the door and sitting down quietly near the crate. This definitely helped him settle as, when I opened the door he came to me and sat nicely after that, although he got very excited again quite quickly and he fell asleep almost as soon as I put him back in his bed so I wonder if he just needed to rest and maybe I've overtired him with too much stimulation.

Earlier I wanted to take him out in the puppy bag for a walk down the street in the sunshine but he was having none of it so instead I attached his lead and stood by him just outside the back door. We spent about 5 minutes there until he stopped chewing it and then I took a step and let him come to me, and then another step and so forth until we'd done a circuit of the patio table. Does that sound ok as a bit of training? As well as that I did 5 minutes of 'sit' and 'lie down' which he's very good at and knows he gets a treat.

Also I need to stop googling, I don't think it helps!

Grace got her first rinse off with the sprayer after a muddy walk this morning. She was not impressed!

Also not very impressed with her new drying coat.

I've made it all better with homemade liver treats.

@tizwozliz that face!!!

@FeargalLandSharkey that sounds perfect! Remember the words of my favourite trainer (Kate Olsen): "Train the dog you have, not the dog you want, and not the dog you had a day, an hour, or even 5 minutes ago."

It's so much better to spend 5 minutes waiting patiently for good behaviour then doing 10 steps around the patio table, than spending time dragging, or being dragged, outside the house. You can build on that.

@tizwozliz what a cutie.

@cockapup that is so exciting! At least you will be going into it with your eyes wide open. I didn't find these threads until a few weeks or months in and they were such a life saver.

You need the same food as the breeder. Our breeder gave us a bag of the kibble.

We were also given a 2kg bag of food.

@cockapup don’t be terrified, honestly. I think it’s realistic to brace yourself for the fact that it could be tricky, but until you meet your dog and get to know them you won’t know what they will be like with sleeping, crate etc.
we have not had any issues with sleep for example, she goes in her crate and sleeps through and has done right from the start. Our first few weekends were really hard because of the change in routine, but now we are 4 weeks in, we have found our groove. She’s comfy in the crate now even with noises etc so this weekend we’ve put her into crate for naps which means she has had less disturbed sleep and we have managed to get things done as well.

We’ve done some training this evening. she’s super smart. We did ‘place’ so now she will sit on a towel when she hears the command, then we have done some impulse control stuff like wait and stay; she gets wait and is working on stay, I could turn my back for 2 seconds and she stayed on her bed.