Puppy Survival Thread - for old and new pups heading into winter

[Lougle]

A thread to continue our journey with our puppies as we head into winter.

If you're new to having a puppy, jump straight in.

I have a normal dog bed next to my desk when I'm working and he snoozes in there. He also likes to sleep on the sofa, so I let him be- I'm not always in same room as him, but he will definitely come and find me when he wakes up! He really only sleeps in his crate at night, and when he is in an overstimulated zoom frenzy.

Right now he’s watching me work from a scratty towel!

@FeargalLandSharkey you need a safe room I think, or a pen. I don’t have one either. I am trialling a kind of ‘covers over = sleep” vs ‘covers off = quiet space” thinking potential for her going in there with doors open at some point. Problem is she’s so incredibly nosy greedy that she’s never going to turn down a visit to the kitchen

Thank you both. It's been quite stressful this morning as he's barked and cried every time I've tried the crate and as soon as I gave up trying he fell asleep on the floor. I don't think it's separation anxiety because I tried leaving the room whilst he was out of the crate and awake and he was fine. Its tge crate and the ONLY thing that was different was attaching a new bowl to the vars yesterday and he really didn't like the screw bit at all.

I don't know what to do except spen the rest of the day trying to make his crate a safe and comfy place to be putting his favourite toys in and hiding treats for him to find in games.

Benji didn't settle at all last night in his crate. It was his first night with us so I was unsure of how long to let him whine. We were right next to him on sofas but he didn't stop.

In the end we relented and let him out and he slept really well on the settee with us. He woke at 6am which I thought was good. He does go in and out of crate during day as we leave door open.

We will try again tonight but may decide to just let him sleep upstairs with us. Does anyone else do this?

My pup sleeps upstairs in his crate, and when he can be safely out of that he will sleep in a dog bed in my room.

@FeargalLandSharkey when you say leave him, do you just mean to other rooms in the house. I just potter around and he follows me and more often now, he realises that is boring and so just stays in one room. As long as he is asleep/chilled, I trust him not to do anything too awful.

What do you do with puppy teeth? Hiddenpup is teething and in the last few days I've found two of her molars on the carpet. Both appeared after particularly ferocious savaging of her favourite toys.

I'm fascinated by them. I should just bin them. I haven't kept the DC baby teeth as it really creeped me out when my mum presented me with a tin of baby teeth belonging to me and my sister, and I didn't want my DC to go through that 🙃

Yes I'm in the house but another room , not for ages hut getting on with things etc.
When I'm in my own house I'll have the whole place for him and me all the time and I can set it up like that. I just hope I haven't set him up for anxiety!

Oh god my mum tried to give me my baby teeth too! Teeth give me the heebies, I threw all my dc ones away.

Pup’s poos are solid on the morning, but by the afternoon/evening they are really loose. Any ideas? Treats are small cubes of chicken and JR rabbit pate from the pet shop. I don’t think he’s getting excessive amounts.

@FoxRedPuppy we found that the JR pate gave RiverPup softer poos. When we didn’t use it, he had better poos.

Also, if you overfeed a dog, they can have soft poos.

Lastly, changing the dog food can help. We changed our dog food to Butternut box food, plus kibble and it’s made a difference.(I can send a referral code)

I just bought a pen, we need a safe zone. I’ve been musing it for ages but I think if we leave it any longer, she won’t go in it. We’re going to set it up in the hall so she has a ‘room’ of her own and let’s see. I don’t think she’ll go in it much tbh but I think a space where she can decompress, have her kong and her toys… 🤞

I’ve also heard bank from Millie’s about the food and will order a trial bag tomorrow. Her poo is still very soft but not like the runs any more thankfully.

Thanks @Riverlee. We put him on Symply, which scores 72% on the all about dog food website. He was on Royal Canin before.

So maybe it’s the pate. I’ll stick to the chicken and kibble then.

Im a bit fed up today. Life is very stressful and he peed inside 3 times and I didn’t notice the signs. Actually once I was on a meeting and couldn’t get to the door. I just wish I could have a day off from puppy/kids/work/adulting!

I still can barely leave the house, except for dog walks. I’m feeling so restricted. Anyway, just a moan.

@thenewaveragebear1983 your post confused me at first, as I wondered why a pen was relevant to puppies. Then I realised you didn’t mean pen as in biro, but pen as in playpen/crate!

I need the collective puppy parents on this thread best advice you have. I am today at the very end of my tether (granted because of the last 6 weeks of puppy ownership it has become remarkably short). Every time Pineapplepup goes in the garden (and she is 14 wks old so that is a lot obviously) she has started barking and will not stop once she starts. Barking at nothingness. And it’s soooooo loud, twice my Apple Watch has given me a warning that my hearing is at risk because of the decibel level, I can’t believe how loud she is and it must be driving my neighbours mental. Nothing short of picking her up and bringing her inside works and most of the time she is continuing the barking inside. It cannot continue, my head hurts and I have to work (you know, to pay for the puppy), I had to abandon a work call this afternoon because of the bloody barking!
I have no idea how to fix this, google tells me it’s boredom but I really don’t think that’s it. She has toys galore, of all types, chews, a snuffle mat, a regular walk (okay so walking is a work in progress but it’s only been a week and a bit!) and she gets a lot of attention from.

yes, Schnauzers are known for being chatty, but this is unbearable. She just started barking at Ant and Dec on I’m a celeb!

I feel like I’m almost broken with this pup, I want my life back!

Maybe it’s an age thing- Maggie has also been barking a lot this week and she’s also 14 weeks . First she barked for a solid ten minutes at a pigs ear (it was on the floor, then I put it on the shelf and she barked at the shelf). We bought her a taggy ball and she had a good old woof at that. She’s also been a bit more woofy at things going past, or if she hears the door. To be honest I’ve not really done much except distract her with some kibble scattered and shushed her a bit.

😂 @Riverlee , she’s writing her memoirs!

@Pineapplemonkey unfortunately I've no advice on the barking other than to say Chimipup has also found his voice in the last couple of weeks too - at puppy class he's deafening (wants to play with the other puppies) and at home he barks indoors if we've put him in timeout. We just ignore him, wait for a suitable moment of silence after he's been in a little while and let him out. He does seem more barky at the moment though.

@thenewaveragebear1983 getting a pen was one of the best decisions we made. A quiet space for him to go when we're eating or he needs some downtime. We started giving him his meals in there too (butternut box on a licky mat to make it last slightly longer....)

Yep, another one here who has found his bark at 16 weeks.

Oh my goodness! Another Cavi owner. I have a 16 month KCCS.

We lost our three old Cavis recently So decided to get a working cocker after 16 years of Cavi ownership. He's a 11 week old hooligan.Very clever but oh my god, the landshark nipping is horrendous!

Hazel still wakes overnight for pee and poo. I'm trying to remind myself it won't last forever.

Our older one (2.5) was up 3 times last night - shattered this morning. She's out with the dog walker this morning and pup and I have got a hoopers class this afternoon so it's quite a lazy day for me luckily.

Pup is now 20.8kg, getting hard to tell the two apart at first glance. I think I'll need to start putting them in contrasting collar colours.

I've got Pooch and Mutt Advent Calendars arriving today. Pups new favourite toy is a silicon IKEA oven glove, I might get her one for Christmas. She does an excellent platypus impression with it.

@Pineapplemonkey "Barking at nothingness". Yes there seems to be alot of nothingness to bark at round these parts too - I have no advice, just nodding along to that (although, to be fair to PineapplePup, she's got a point there about Ant and Dec!). The thing that's keeping me a bit saner is thinking about it like when human babies are very young and crying - trying to work out what kind of cry is it. But now Bertie has begun barking sometimes I think he's just enjoying the sound of his own voice 😁

@TheSproutOfWrath the thing is, despite my own experience thus far, SproutPups gorgeous Spaniel eyes are sooooo misleading and he's a picture of innocent cuteness.

@Lougle is it changing as she gets older though? Like moving toward very early morning? I've been keeping a poo and pee diary this last week or so and I notice that we go til somewhere between 04:30 and 5ish in the morning but will have a pee and poo very late at night. When I say 'we' I mean Bertie, obvs, we're not completely fused!!
I'm sort of resigned to a winter of very challenging nighttime garden visits and wondering whether to invest in a cheap but warm coat (for me) that is solely for that purpose as Bertie sometimes has a bit of a dig whilst he's preparing to go his paws and face can get dirty.

I think the rule of thumb for how long between toilet visits is one hour per month of life plus one hour. So at 3 months, they can go 4 hours. At 4 months, they can go 5 hours etc.