Puppy survival thread! All welcome!

[VanGoSunflowers]

Running on from our last one…

I won’t tag people because I will forget someone and then feel awful 😂

Having said all that I can totally relate to @SpanielsGalore in that I’ve hated him at his bitiest. He’s destroyed a pair of my Birkenstocks and had a side of salmon off the kitchen worktop last week. We have to keep everything at shoulder height or right at the back of units now 🙄

Sorry, didn't respond on the other thread @LandSharksAnonymous but it sounds as though Eris had a very successful coffee shop visit yesterday and another great walk this morning!

Hello and welcome @Houndymumma and @BobLobla .

Thanks for the new thread!
Its so reassuring to hear other people’s tales of sitting crying on counter-tops (I’m so sorry, those moments are so awful, but it’s a relief to hear that it is not just me, and that it might actually get better). Our pup is most definitely at her worst when she is over tired so naps times are sacred. It’s so hard though, and boring, because even when she’s asleep, if I get up and try to do something constructive or just for me, she wakes up and follows. So frustrating!

Any ideas on how I can help her to self settle? Gnawing on a cows/ pigs ear helps, but I am keeping those for the evenings.

I am also very impressed by @VanGoSunflowers ability to get Pablo to settle while
you are eating. We haven’t mastered that yet and spend our mealtimes being jumped up at. Sometimes she will go in the crate with a kong, but not always.

@Struckbylightning you’re definitely not alone, moments of joy, combined with a lot of moments of utter frustration & exhaustion. At least I don’t feel alone when I hear others feel the same way. 15 years since I had a puppy and it’s a bit of a shock after two old geriatrics 😬

@Struckbylightning We used a play pen in the early days when we ate. The pen was in the same room and we would give M a licky mat spread with mashed kibble and frozen. This kept him occupied. He did whinge a bit for the first few minutes but quickly got used to being there. The family was under strict instructions to ignore him. He would nap after his mat was finished.
I can’t remember when we got rid of the pen, but he still has a licky mat at tea time (not when we’re having other meals). We have always ignored him when we’re eating and he now either lies on his bed or under the table. He would be quite capable of getting stuff off the table, but he has never tried.
I do remember him trying to get close to the table when he was younger but we pushed him off with an elbow and didn’t interact (verbally or eye contact).

@Nella68 We’re doing this at mealtimes atm. Still at the sometimes whining stage! 😩 but getting better and we need to be able to eat without puppy chaos.

@Struckbylightning
With my pup I found that if I sat at the table, she would almost immediately lie at my feet. So I started using the word "settle" at that time. I'd bring my drink, laptop, book or whatever and that became her cue. At night the cue is "sleepytime" and she'll just wander off and lie down under the table or in the corner. She was never crated and I think that helped her to be less clingy, she always had freedom to roam two rooms and because we had gates up she could always hear where I was in the house.

Brie has never pestered us when we eat. I feed her first, then tell her to settle and she lies under the table. She will sometimes get leftovers as a reward for being quiet. They can be trained to behave at mealtimes, but I do think it also partly depends on the dog. Brie has always been a calm pup, and from what @VanGoSunflowers says, I suspect Pablo is also quite placid. I do know of much older pups that still bark and pester for food at mealtimes.

@Houndymumma I think consistency is key in whatever method you try. I didn’t ever put Midge in his pen when I had breakfast/ lunch and he didn’t bother me. I think he found the family having tea more exciting (he was v tired and bitey at that time too).
He was in the same room next to us so I didn’t feel bad with letting him whinge. It was a stage that didn’t last long.

Welcome newcomers 👋
@BobLobla your post made me laugh - and I can completely relate to the cow pat obsession 😂 (Pablo, not me - to add)

On the topic of meal times, I think it all depends on why they are bothering you - is it for food or attention? As most of you know, Pabs is a typical Lab and is food obsessed. Meal times used to be very difficult and @Struckbylightning, like with you - we had him jumping up at us, biting us and jumping up at the table. Putting him in the other room and closing over the gate just made him bark or whine. If I’m not having something I can share with him, I’ll bring tiny bits of cheese over to the table and reward him for sitting on the floor, which then progressed to lying on the floor. He does it performatively now - makes a point on lying on the floor next to me and staring at me until he gets his tiny bits of food - literally like this 😂

To get him to lie in that stance, I ask him to lie down and then hold the treat in front of his nose and lead it to the side so it makes him lie in a more relaxed stance rather than like a sphinx if you see what I mean. However, I’m making it up as I go along so I could be talking out of my arse. It also worked today while we were out and eating lunch - he lay under the table the whole time.

To add to the above, even though he is my first puppy so I have no base for comparison, I do suspect Pablo is probably fairly placid as @Aubrielle says. He can certainly have his moments but I have found him very easy to train.

@VanGoSunflowers that’s what we do with Midge when we’re out in a c or restaurant. He’s still being fed 3 times a day so we take his settle blanket and kibble and drip feed him. We can have quite a lengthy meal if we spread out the kibble.

So jealous reading about all these calm puppies 😭😭😭

Brie has 4 meals but I'm afraid I'm very strict. It's bowl only, never fed at the table, no titbits. Because we used to have 3 giant dogs and 3 cats together, I'm a stickler for routine with the feeding. It was the only way I could hope to feed them all together. I like them to have good manners around food.

@BobLobla Don't forget though that mine is only a week shy of 5 months old, there’s plenty of time for him to join yours on the terrorist watch list when he hits adolescence 😂

And mine's just a big lazy arse @BobLobla Not everyone wants that in a dog.

Also - if my mind wanders and I forget to give him a bit of cheese or whatever, he will be quick to ‘remind’ me by sitting up and pawing at me!
The ideal would obviously be for him not to beg for food at all, but for the moment, I will take him lying down on the floor next to my feet over jumping up at the table 😂 I will try progress further when he is older but, being a Lab, I can’t see me getting much better than where we are now!

The only thing I routinely do for his meal times @Aubrielle is to get him to sit and stay while I put his bowl down, then wait for eye contact before releasing him to eat his meal - don’t get me wrong, he’s never sat waiting for more than literally one second because he knows as soon as he looks up at me I will release him but it at least stops him leaping all over me while trying to put his bowl down 😂

OMG @VanGoSunflowers where has your little puppy gone?? 😵 he looks so grown up!

I always give Rory a bit of our food in his bowl that’s suitable for dogs, meat, veg etc then if he comes looking for more I tell him, “Nope this is my dinner”. He seems to accept that but I do always save him the last bit because I’m soft!

Sit to wait for the food bowl is good manners @VanGoSunflowers . Ours have all sat and waited.
However, lately Brie mostly just loafs around in the other room while I dish her food, put the feeding mat and bowl on the floor and when I tell her it's ready, she'll slowly wander in and eat but really take her time. She is very odd.

Someone’s manic moment happened a bit early today (6-7).

Every time I find myself thinking ‘isn’t she perfect’ she does her demon child impression. This morning it was shredding two (small and cheap) dog beds after I separated her from the adults - she kept landsharking in their faces and was ignoring Hen’s warning grumbles. And Hen is an old woman who shouldn’t have to put up with dickhead puppies

I do feel for Eris though. They’re so good with her that when they say no or aren’t interested she just doesn’t understand because they rarely say no. But she has a play date with Satan today so that’ll cheer her up! Hope no one else experienced the early puppy menace behaviour

@LandSharksAnonymous I laughed out loud at Eris' play date with Satan. 😂 I hope it goes well. Sounds like you have another K on your hands. She ignored N's grumbles. Probably because she'd had 6 weeks of P letting her get away with it.
I'd like to say she's improved with age, but we both know I'd be lying. 😂

@Aubrielle I'm with you regards not feeding from the table.
K used to try to climb onto my lap whist I was eating. I repeatedly told her 'no' and put her front paws back down on the floor. She got the message eventually and now sleeps under my chair while I eat.
They get titbits whilst I am cooking though - they'll queue up for a slice of cucumber or piece of carrot peel.

@VanGoSunflowers Pablo looks so big already. Look at these long legs!

I'm glad my confession of hating P puppy has helped people. 😁

@SpanielsGalore
Same here. Titbits when I'm cooking or prepping - she is always polite - she will stand or sit behind me. She loves a bit of carrot or apple, but cheese is her obsession. But no titbits once we sit down to eat, she will just settle at our feet and only move when we get up to clear the table. Then she sometimes gets a tiny bit of leftover veg or pasta.
In other ways she's a hooligan (digs up the garden, attacks the sofa cushions, bites the lead) but around food she is an angel.

@LandSharksAnonymous I hope the play date goes well and that Satan's wicked ways don't rub off on Eris (this morning's antics were clearly an aberration, I refuse to believe she is anything but perfect...😉).

@SpanielsGalore @Aubrielle Satan takes no shit from anyone - she’s too old and crusty to let puppies bother her. She did a wonderful job training Twatsog so I imagine that Eris will return to me a changed girl. 😁That being said, Satan will probably be delighted to have a play mate that isn’t 3x her size…so maybe it’ll take a while for Eris to be told off

We’re the same on food at the table. It’s a big no. But they get a treat at the end of the meal, as a reward for not being to scroungy. But I’ve never given them anything to entertain them with whilst I eat - they need to learn my food time is not their food time. Tubby little piglets that they are!

Yes I agree, with my previous dogs it was important they learnt not to bother us when we were eating. Even though there was always a pair of mournful sad eyes watching.

It would be much better if Pablo didn’t bother me at all while I am eating, so I am trying to build up to it by spacing out the treats I do give him while I am eating otherwise he wouldn’t leave me alone! It was the only way I could think of to eat in peace, saying ‘off’ to him 50 times during every meal wasn’t working and that’s not conducive to a calm meal 😂
Putting him in the living room incited indignant barking and howling - also not conducive to a quiet meal so I went with the ‘lie on the floor quietly while I eat and you can have some cheese’ option 😂

@SpanielsGalore I know, he’s almost too big to lie comfortably on my chest anymore 😭
doesn’t stop him from trying though 😂

We had a bit of a strange one yesterday.
So, in the field over from me, sometimes when I walk Pablo there is a group of dog walkers standing in the middle of the field with their dogs. My Nextdoor neighbour told me about them when I first got my puppy, they meet twice a day at the same time. Now, I hadn’t gone and introduced myself because I was trying to keep walks as distraction free as possible while training recall and other bits in the field. I’m also a bit anti-social so that’s another reason 😂

Plus, literally every time I see them they are stood in a circle chatting and all dogs (bar one) are on leads or extendable leads and the one that isn’t is getting a ball thrown for them (he is a border collie) and seems very possessive of said ball. One of the others was quite snappy but I was told he wouldn’t hurt another dog…

When I walked P down there yesterday morning, he decided to run over to them for the first time. Whether that’s a new found confidence or whether it’s because he plays with Ruby the Spaniel in that field sometimes I don’t know, but it is what it is and he’s obviously getting braver!

Anyway, I walked over to them and was greeted by comments such as ‘we’ve seen you walking around with him, we wondered if you were going to come and join us’ giving me the times of the walks, saying I need to ‘get up earlier’ to join them, told I should come down later on that day and the old ‘your dog needs to be socialised’ stuff.

Now I am a bit torn here, on the one hand, I don’t particularly like the idea of standing in the middle of a field for an hour, and I didn’t appreciate the vibe I was getting from one of them in particular - but on the other, would it be good for P if I joined them occasionally? I’m thinking, it may be good for him to get used to other dogs’ behaviour and I could use it as an opportunity to train him around other dogs? My instinct is saying avoid them - don’t go down at the times they are there but I just want to make sure that’s not my anti social side talking!