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.

@BleakGarden I'm so glad the behaviourist helped, and I'm so jealous of your dog guard. Is it a Travall? I so want one but I can't afford it so it has to wait. For a minute I saw your big dog and thought 'Man her puppy has grown!!"

@FoxRedPuppy Charlie only sleeps if we leave him alone in the daytime. We have sliding glass doors between our second living area and kitchen (now the dog's room, where he sleeps at night with husband) and when I KNOW he's tired I shut the door. He whines for literally a few seconds but then takes himself off to sleep.

I think I’m going to leave the crate upstairs so he has more peace.

This morning pup pood on my bedroom carpet! He’d just been outside, scoffed his breakfast, I was still downstairs, mere feet from the back door and he bombed upstairs and when I came up there was a turd! WTF!

im trying to be more positive today. I need to get him used to being left, even if just for 30 mins so I can pop out and regain my sanity.

Please can I join? Here's my two 5 month old boys..Walter and Red

Oh they're very sweet @Ihateboris . How do you find training them both, having two of them?

Well we tried keeping Hazel up and feeding her at 8pm last night instead of 17.30pm. No difference whatsoever. Still woke at 02.30 and awake for the day at 6am.

They have to be trained separately or they just play/fight!

@Lougle yes it's travall! We just had the guard at the back initially, but when pup arrived I bought the divider. It's also handy for one dog and shopping bags!

What a morning!! Got my gear ready for a walk, put my coat on and called the dogs in the garden. Pup saunters up and spits out half a flower bulb. I head off to find a deep hole in the ground exactly where daffodils were growing. So mad dash to the vet for a vomit. She's home now, a bit wobbly and begrudgingly ate her carbidote. I need to call back to pay because they were so hectic in there but we're in the 2 week warm up for the new insurance so I definitely can't claim anything.

I guess I need to dig up all the bulbs, we haven't been in the house long so I don't know what's where.

I was trying to have a week off wine but I might crack tonight

Oh no @BleakGarden just what you need! I don’t think I can manage a week without wine at the moment!

@Ihateboris Lovely dogs

@Riverlee ...thank you. I also have their mum, so quite a handful

We would like to join in please, this is Willow and we picked her up today. Just over 8 weeks and 11kgs, so we need to get to her training as soon as she has fully settled 😅

Oh @BleakGarden what a day indeed. Sorry that your insurance won't cover it. It's a pity 'accidents' don't cover 'accidentally ate the wrong thing'.

@Withershins what a beautiful big boy! Hazel is 16 weeks and not yet 10kg 😁

Hazel had a fab walk today. I take DD2 horse riding and they take the horse out on the country lanes. Last week she got quite wound up because DD2 walked ahead on the horse. But this week she seemed to get it and happily followed behind. I used the harness and long line but she walked quite close to me a lot of the time, so much more like loose lead walking. An off-lead Hungarian Vizsla approached us and they had polite sniffing of each other's muzzles but then she moved on happily. She did some lovely sitting while cars passed. She happily responded to 'swap' and swapped a small rock for a couple of pieces of kibble. Finally, she did a poo!!! We've been finding that she waits until she's home, so that was a real victory.

I've been evaluating her behaviour around toileting. She's started to run away when we want to take her to the toilet, and she has run away in the garden a few times when we want her to come in. I've chatted with DD2 and we're going to treat it as a challenge to make it more exciting to come with us than to stay and we're going to crack out the kibble. Otherwise we'll get frustrated and think she's being stubborn, when really she just isn't motivated to go for boring pees and poos.

I love seeing all these gorgeous pups on here, makes me feel uplifted thinking how it could all turn out. I really appreciated the support posts @Lougle and that video makes so much sense, I just need to concentrate on this early training to hopefully bond more with puppy, instead of feeling overwhelmed by the biting, chewing, toilet regression and worry about her being hurt or eating something she shouldn’t. I’ll keep coming back to read posts, it feels like a safe space to admit how hard it is even though we all just want what’s best for these lovely dogs.

Just popping in to say hi! We have an older pup, two and a half, but I love seeing what everyone is up to.

@Lougle that sounds like a great walk! Freddie is getting better at not jumping all over people we meet, he turns to me now and is mostly under control. But other dogs 🤣. He is so small, but he fears up and bats them around the head in excitement. More work needed!

@FoxRedPuppy bless him! They're all a work in progress, aren't they? We will make it out the other side. We have our penultimate puppy class tomorrow. We're going to sign up for the Bronze training class.

Maggie had two deliveries today- a lovely 10m lead for recall training, and a starter pack from Millie’s wolf heart.

I’m going to introduce 25% of mwh for a few days, then switch to 50/50. Only because her tummy wasn’t great last week so I still feel she might be a bit delicate, plus I have 17 days worth of raw left in my freezer which will really last over a month if we switch to 50:50. So I think she’ll be on 50/50 for a while before we switch over completely. I find the mixed feeding so stressful!

She’s developed a really weird habit of being scared of her harness and refusing to walk. She likes walks, she’s not had a scary incident or anything that I am aware of. The only thing is I attached her ID tag- could it be the jingling is freaking her out??? If so- how do I deal with that as they are a legal requirement?!

@thenewaveragebear1983 could you get something similar to this?

Just Google slide on dog tag.

Struggling with a 10 month lab doodle. He s a Knob

He looks confident @Deedeedoe 😁

Anyone have advice to counteract barking and jumping up? We use sit as much as possible to get him to stop but it's really increasing.

Pineapple pup has rewarded me with a false sense of security today, I think it may be a prelude to carnage tomorrow.

Granted she woke at 6.15 this morning but I took her out, she did a pee and a poo and then I put her back in her crate and she slept for another hour. She then ate most of her breakfast, had a play in the garden and with her toys and by 9 was back in her crate and she slept until 12.30. We then went out for a walk where she did pretty well, minimal barking at people and walked all the way home (sometimes I have to carry her for the last bit 🙄), napped a bit, ate most of her lunch, jumped on my lap for a cuddle (has never done that before), pottered around with her toys, did a licky mat with peanut butter, napped, went outside multiple times for toilet trips. We had a bit of garden barking but it was unusually minimal, after work she snuggled up on my lap for another nap, ate all her dinner, played some fetch (well she gets the fetch bit, it’s the giving the ball back to me that’s a struggle, she brings it back, just doesn’t want to actually let go!), watched me cook and eat dinner and has been napping on the sofa ever since and is about to go in her crate for the night. We’ve had just one tiny wee on the carpet and minimal biting today.

Whilst part of me feels hopeful of light at the end of the tunnel based on today, I’m already worrying she will be a nightmare tomorrow and I have to keep in mind she’s only 14wks!

I think I deserved a positive day, the last 6 and a half weeks have been beyond hard. If only I could leave her on her own so I could leave the house, that’s the next dream……….

We have a 14 week old labrador pup. Love her but she is definitely hard work. Took her to a 1 to1 training session which was great and feel like I might see a tiny glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. So glad I found this thread!

@Pineapplemonkey dream puppy! Let's hope it's the start of a new era for you.

@Smil3 welcome to the thread. We have an almost 17 week chocolate lab.

@Whyisitsosohard is it 'jumping up and barking' or 'jumping up' and 'barking'? Have you identified the trigger? The usual advice is giving a mutually exclusive behaviour as a command. For example, if you teach them 'go to bed' they can't be running along the floor to their bed and jumping. Similarly, they can't be eating something and barking.

If it's general barking, you could try having kibble available and every time you hear any noise of any sort, whether your puppy has responded or not, you mark and treat. So, a car door slams in the distance? Treat a door knocks 5 doors down the street? Treat. A dog barks in the distance? Treat. The idea is that the puppy starts to build a positive association with the noises rather than barking at them.

https://positivepartnersdogtraining.com/how-to-stop-problem-barking/