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 😂

@Lavenderdog Pablo is a big fan of cheese 😂 so I’m glad @Aubrielle has said crack on with it 😂
I have a little bag of mini baby bels in the fridge and always take one out on a walk with me - much easier to keep in your pocket and then I just rip little chunks off it. He would ignore an entire rabble of dogs and people if I have cheese in my hand 😂

@LandSharksAnonymous I'm with your Dad. Honestly. You'd think your Mum would know better than trying to get anything done with a puppy around after all these years. 😂 I was just saying to DS this morning, knowing K was coming home was the incentive I needed to get the decorating finished.

@Flowerfusion I know nothing about cheese. But just wanted to say I find licky mats useful for distractions whilst grooming. I have sunction ones, so I stick them to the cupboard doors and it keeps the dogs standing still for me. I usually use frozen yoghurt and tuna.

@Lavenderdog Glad things have got better on the biting front.

@LandSharksAnonymous here’s a photo. Might take a short while to be approved by mods. Getting bigger by the day!

She's gorgeous @Houndymumma ❤

She looks velvety soft, and those ears... oh my gosh🤗

@Houndymumma look at those ears!!! 😍

Keeps stepping on the ears at the moment. She needs to grow into them. 😃

@Houndymumma oh gosh, I hadn’t thought about stepping on them!

@Aubrielle, you and I have a really thing for soft, fluffy, ears (and puppy smells).😁

@SpanielsGalore you would have thought she would tbh! But I think she’s deliberately blocked out all those years of puppy raising. She proactively offered to help with the latest litter…and no one who has ever raised puppies before does that. I’m already dreading my next one and it won’t be for another 2.5 years at the absolute earliest!

Oh we do @LandSharksAnonymous .
Brie's ears are the colour of milky coffee and oh so soft and fluffy. But she no longer smells like a puppy, and I'm so jealous of you with Eris just now. If only you could bottle that warm puppy smell and send it to me.

@Houndymumma Stepping on her ears...? Oh bless her, she's adorable.
Do you get sick of people mentioning their ears or are you used to it? The thought has just occurred to me on our walk, as I was told for the eleventy millionth time "you could put a saddle on that!" 🙄

Yes we do, and also being asked is he called Fred. Or we get ‘Oh you don’t see many of those’ or ‘they’re bigger than you think’ and also ‘is it a sausage dog?’ 😂 However I did have one old lady come up and get very excited because I had a ‘Columbo’ dog as he had a Basset. She said she’d never seen one in real life before and she was a huge fan of the Columbo TV show 😃

‘is it a sausage dog.’ 😂😂people are very odd! They are very unusual though - I never see any Bassetts. They must be fairly close to being on the RBR (or am I talking nonsense - I do do that!)

But then I shouldn’t be surprised by the publics incredible ability to confuse dog breeds, I’ve asked before if my Goldies are Pyreneans! And how anyone can confuse the two (PMDs are glorious, as @Aubrielle knows, and Goldies are pointless) is beyond me! And someone once asked if my mums cocker was a springer

@LandSharksAnonymous People always think P is a springer, because she's liver and white. Then they'll argue with me and tell me I am wrong.
I also get asked if she is related to N. No, they're different breeds.

@SpanielsGalore the ‘argue with the owner’ is always my favourite bit! The sheer arrogance 😂How anyone can think P is a Springer…honestly. She’s very clearly a St. Bernard.

😂😂 God help me when she wants picking up! 😂

Yes the sausage dog comment is always a bit strange. Especially when my fully grown last two weighed 34kg each. There’s not that many Bassets around compared to more usual breeds, although they had a meet up in Norfolk at Holkham beach this weekend where 309 hounds attended.

@LandSharksAnonymous The mistaking breeds thing reminds me of a thread on here from maybe last year where OP’s dog was accused of being an XL bully… and OP’s dog was a springer.

We had a similar thing happen last year on a rainy walk with puppy Brie. I was chased along the road by a very overexcited woman who was new to our village and who is completely besotted with Pyreneans. She had watched Belle & Sebastian as a child and bought the complete series on DVD, but she'd never actually met one. We see her quite often now, and she is completely smitten with Brie.

We get the same as you - "you don't see many of these around nowadays". And, inevitably polar bear/you could ride that/how d'you keep it so clean?

Only on mumsnet 🙄 Anything bigger than a Lab on here is always an unmuzzled Bully. It's quite surreal. I've also seen a Staffy described as a giant breed on two separate threads lately, which is bizarre. Seems that all dogs bigger than a pug are officially huge now.

Love the thought of 309 Bassets in one place! @Houndymumma

Just had a nosy at KC registrations @LandSharksAnonymous
Bassets are at 284 registrations last year so you're right, they are pretty rare.

I confess I've just had a big shock when I looked at PMD though. 64 😱WTF?
I had no idea. It used to be around 400 a year. Genuinely shocked.
Does not bode well for finding a pup - only 2 litters registered in the first half of this year 😞

Yes to Cheese! I haven’t tried cheese with Merry yet, but our old girl was crazy about the stuff. As soon as the grater came out of the cupboard, she’d be there. It was known as the Cheese Tax and was compulsory. This wasn’t for training or feeding, it was just for being a wonderful dog. We also had to leave a bit in the pot when we ate a yoghurt. She also demanded the last bit of tea as well.

@Struckbylightning Rory finished off a huge pot of Greek yoghurt the other day, it was all over his nose, in his eyebrows, on his ears 😂 he had a great time licking the last bits, his whole head was in there!

We also have to pay cheese tax.

We do yoghurt pot face too but she's white so it's not really that obvious. She also sometimes gets a Mackies ice cream carton to lick.

@Houndymumma oh I love Holkham! Did you go, or is it not for you (lots of dogs in one place can be a bit…mad).

@Aubrielle so few?! God! There are probably more Goldie registrations in one week in November then there are PMD and Basset registrations across the year. That’s bonkers.

@brushingboots well you know these springers are shifty looking things…very easy to confuse the two to the untrained eye. Although, given how stunning spaniels are and how rather unattractive XL Bullies are (I’m sorry but some dogs are ugly), it’s quite the insult!

Well, I had a lovely day with Merry yesterday, she did all the right things at all the right times, came to work with me, only 2 hours, and was very (mostly) good. We had a nice walk, training sessions, play sessions and I was really starting to think we had turned a corner.

Then we got home from the evening walk, I went upstairs to get into my PJ’s and she went absolutely nuts! So I took her into the garden to stop her bouncing off the walls (me only half dressed!) and she Zoomed for what felt like hours. At one point she ran inside and shat on the rug. That was a first. I did wonder if the being a good girl all day had been such a strain that she suddenly had to release the inner demon…

@Struckbylightning you are probably right, my pup is more likely to get the zoomies if we’ve been busy going out and about. I see it as a stress reliever.
He’s about 19 months now and yesterday he had a vet visit followed by a walk where he was ambushed by a very exuberant off lead springer. He was on lead so I just wanted to extract him and go home. He went absolutely crazy after the dog had gone, redirecting on to me: mouthing, jumping and it took ages for him to calm down. He hasn’t done that for months. I think the dog was one stress too much!

That's very interesting @Nella68 because we've noticed that Brie's lead biting/jumping/hand biting seems to indicate her being overstimulated by dogs and people. She seems to get an adrenaline spike and then ends up panting and overtired.

It's definitely a stress thing. So probably the same with Merry @Struckbylightning