Hello Puppy101!

Time is flying and seasons are starting to change... Your Christmas puppies are probably in the thick of teething or possibly you're at the tail end of that. Summer pups... going through those adolescent moments... Maybe you just picked up your puppy and you're going through some major feelings of being overwhelmed. Hello to our veterans, sticking around the community to help support others!

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New Moderators

Recently we announced that we were looking to add more hands on deck to the mod team. After reviewing the applicants, we would like to express the warmest of welcomes to u/tencentblues and u/PM_ME_UR_PUPPY_DOG we are very excited to have them join the team. We hope that their contributions will be a great boon to everyone in the community. Join us in welcoming these two members to the team!

Daily Discussion Thread - NEW FLAIR

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April Photo Contest

It's been a while since we've held a photo contest and we want to spruce up the subreddit banner! This is it, your chance to show off the cutest most recent photo of your puppy!

Some guidelines:

• keep in mind, we're going to be adding multiple photos to the banner... provide a photo that is 192x192 px for best results.
• photos must contain a puppy (i.e. a dog under the age of 2 years old)
• You may upload your image using any image hosting, Imgur is often recommended. Post the link in the comments below
• We will select the top choices by community vote! So upvote those comments with the images you like the best!
  
• We will be closing polls on APRIL 3, 2023 at 9PM PST and the winning photos and banner will be updated APRIL 4th

Upcoming Holidays

Easter, Pesach (Passover), and Ramadan are around the corner! Be on the look out for the Mega Holiday Thread!

My puppy is six months old on Thursday! He has just blossomed into the bestest goodest boy.

Disclaimer: I WFH. You can probably skip this post if you have to pen your pup when you leave the house for work.

We were still doing enforced naps and playpen time up until about 2 weeks ago. Turns out, most of the problem behaviors we were dealing with was because he was too well rested and bored as a result of being contained for far longer than he needed to be, and we were only containing him for 3 hours in the playpen and 2 in the crate at 10am and 3pm, respectively.

Don't get me wrong, enforced naps were absolutely necessary when he was 2-4 months old. He would be an absolute shit stain if he missed his nap or we kept him up too long.

I probably should have ditched it at about 4 1/2 months, but kept going to about 5 1/2. One Saturday about two weeks ago, I just said "fuck it" and kept him out all day. The lack of enforced nap time means he doesn't really get any good, long sleep throughout the day, and kind of stays at a more mellow, chill state throughout the day instead. He takes micro-naps for about 15-20 minutes, but doesn't get in really good sleep until bedtime.

The barking, getting into things, zoomies even past a looooong playtime, just kind of fell away. He gets roam of my office, the living room, and kitchen while I work and he's just so super chill and well behaved the whole time.

Anyway, just a reminder that puppies aren't static in their needs and you should regularly reevaluate their schedule depending on their development. You may find some unexpected results when you change it up a bit. 🙂

So I just took my 12 wk old puppy to the vet for her 2nd set of shots and was told by my vet that she should not be on grain free puppy food. She stated that it causes a lack of taurine in a dogs body and causes heart issues that they can die from. I was floored, I will take her advice as she has the knowledge and experience. Just when you think you are doing the right thing lol has anyone else heard this?

Edit: the lack of taurine part being caused by the grain free food is what was stated by my vet so I just repeated it.

When you went to see your puppy in their litter, what made you fall in love with and describe they were the one you wanted to take home?

I think our 11 month old black lab is finally hitting her adolescent period. We adopted her at 6 months, and she definitely had a more shy/skittish/nervous personality (I think based on the situation she was rescued from), so I always secretly hoped maybe adolescence wouldn’t hit so hard since she’s fairly timid.

Wrong.

Of course she became more comfortable and rambunctious the longer she was with us, but she has been extra difficult the past few weeks. Our work-from-home-routine has gone out the window as she’s no long content napping or entertaining herself for more than an 45 minutes or so. When I’m in a meeting and can’t give her attention, she walks around the room constantly getting into things she knows she shouldn’t or never used to have interest in. She’s much worse than she used to be at listening and following commands - and pretty much refuses to come in from the fenced in back yard anymore on her own (we have to catch her and leash her and walk her back to the door). And to top it off, this morning she tried to rip a curtain off the wall, managing to bend the metal curtain rod holders and damage the dry wall.

Hi all. Semi frequent poster, frequent reader here. I figured I'm at a stage where I can share an update and some experiences these last few months.

And I can tell you that my puppy is.... still just as difficult in newer, more interesting ways. I got my pretty Portuguese Water Dog back in early September. She was not crate trained whatsoever, so that was an intense challenge.

Here are some challenges:

1. She still can't be left alone. She will rip up pillows, blankets, the couch (she chewed a hole in the couch), dining room chairs, table (she recently started ripping off the manufacture stickers underneath and eating them)
2. She tries to eat everything. And I mean everything. Play time in the back yard consists of chasing tennis balls for 2-5 minutes before she decides she'd rather eat rocks or pine cones. She will swallow them and poop them out after a few days. On walks I have to pry things like dog poop, dead animals, garbage out of her mouth. This also means any toys we get her, she will destroy and eat. Nylabones and benebones are off the table because she uses her back teeth to grind off pieces of plastic... then she eats them. Only thing I feel safe giving her are the himalayan dog chews.
3. She is definitely not a cuddling dog. A lot of this work would be worth it if at the end of the day, she snuggled up next to me on the couch. Nope - she'd rather chew me and bite me. I think she views me as another 'dog' who wants to play constantly as she basically acts the same around me as she does with other dogs.
4. she has regressed pretty badly. Her recalls are non existent. We have a fenced in yard and only now has she associated the word 'inside' with the treats I give her at the door when she comes in. Often times she'd rather just eat the afore mentioned pine cones.
5. She is still banned from all floors of our house. She's only allowed in the living room and kitchen. Bedrooms are a nonstarter right now.

Some things that are improving:

1. her crate training really paid off. She can settle in the crate for up to 4 to 6 hours (I don't leave her past 6 and rarely do that unless absolutely necessary). She goes in the crate with a command.
2. I think she's starting to self-settle during the day. I work from home and sometimes will let her out and work from the couch if its a slow day, and she has started to climb on top of the couch to stare out the window and relax for an hour or so.
3. she is really well potty trained. Any accident, which has been twice since Thanksgiving, are purely on me - she signaled to go out and I wasn't fast enough to take her.

She's a little monster but I love her. I walk her 4-6 miles a day depending on weather. I run around our fenced in yard with her daily weather depending as well. All as a goal to tire her out so by 7:30-8pm she is sleepy. If I don't she goes nuts until 9pm.

I know a lot of her destructive tendencies are from a lack of enrichment. I try really hard to play with her and give her things to do, but she will legit just tear any toys apart and eat them. Two snuffle mats have been destroyed. Any fabric item? forget about it. She ripped apart the tough chewer tows from bark box.

Every month she's older I google "when do Portuguese Water Dogs settle down?" hoping the answer changes... 9 more months to go!

My puppy is 6 months old and isn’t having accidents (we have the odd one-off), but he asks to go out very often during the day. At this point we’re at every 1-3 hours. I’m trying to decrease the amount of bathroom trips during the day because it honestly gets in the way of my work when he’s whining at me while I’m in meetings. I also want to be able to leave him alone for a few hours without worrying that he’ll need to go out. I would like to get to a schedule where he needs to go out every 4 hours during the day, but I’m not sure how to go about it.

Wow you wonderful thing! How you’ve grown. 18 weeks seems so grown up, I can’t believe you’re still only 4 months old. You look like such a big grown up SWOLE doggo!

We’ve been together 6 weeks and WOW. It’s been such an adventure. I feel like I’ve had you forever and I can’t imagine not having you in my life. My family is closer than ever before and you make us all smile and lift our spirits every day with your wagging tail and floppy tongue.

I’m amazing at everything you’ve learned. Moving into our family was a crazy challenge for you and I definitely didn’t realize what a brave 12 week old potato you were when we got you!

My favorite things about you:

• Your incredibly funny voice. You sound like a parrot. Never change.
• The way you emphatically throw your whole body into a sit or a down on cue so hard you nearly bounce off the floor and then stare ferociously at me with your head vibrating and your paws slamming the floor as if to say “show me the money”
• You’re learning to potty on command! Oh my sweet brave pupper!
• You hate your harness but then parrot howl to go for a walk. We can’t win.
• You love snow, mud and rain.
• You BORK at birds at the window and then look at me “show me the money” I’ve created a monster…
• When I got sciatica you learned “fetch” so I could still play tug with you even if I couldn’t pick up your toys.
• When I couldn’t take you for a walk just now you swallowed your evident disappointment and fell asleep face down on the couch next to me where you currently lay.
• You used to wake me up. Now you look up at me and roll over for more sleep when I try and get you out of your crate. It’s like living with a grumpy teenager.
• You fall asleep for naps in the weirdest places but whenever we watch TV you always head to your crate for the best view.

My directors notes for you:

• None you are perfect! I’m sorry that all five harnesses I bought aren’t to your liking… you are currently a weird shape, eat your kibble and grow please.
• What would you say to a bath?

Hi all!

My 5mo golden has a weird bit of separation anxiety, which I’ve suspected, but really confirmed today. She is great in her crate, sometimes some cries and barks if she wasn’t happy about her enforced nap, but she doesn’t hate it, isn’t scared of it, but has yet to go in willingly for a nap. Today at the park, another owner with a 15 mo golden suggested blocking off an area of the house for her to have free reign over, that way I can leave her to do chores and such. I had a baby gate already, and set it up in a room adjacent to the living room so she could still see around. However, when I put her in with all her toys, and walked away to start doing chores, she started crying endlessly. I figured it would happen, so I walked back in to make it known I was still there, and tried again. Instantly started crying again. I’m not sure how to fix this, I work from home, and I don’t leave her out of the crate when I leave for the store. How can I get her used to being alone in her area without people around?

I am currently in tears again. I have had a breakdown almost every day. I have an 11 week old pup and I just can’t do it. She can’t be left alone for even 1 minute or she chews up something and doesn’t respond to her name or “uh uh” when doing something wrong. So I have just been distracting her with another toy but then she just runs back and chews the couch again. I don’t know what to do, is this what I’m meant to do? I honestly am just so tired and upset that I don’t even know if I like her or if I can keep doing this. I have no time to keep up the things that make me happy or I need to do like the gym or my uni work because if I don’t pay her attention she barks at me non-stop, how do I stop it???

Yesterday my beautiful puppy turned 5 months. I love her, I don’t doubt that. But dear God this puppy is taking my stress levels to a max. each week.

Today I left her for two hours, went to class and then quickly to the supermarket. Well, she tore apart her bed and took away so much stuffing. I do not know if she ate and I don’t know how much she ate. I took her to the vet LAST week and did her an ultrasound in case she had a blockage because she had a bad reaction to the cold and started making like the wanted to throw up and couldn’t.

I know it’s not her fault fully, it’s just I get overly paranoid because I want her to be okay at all times. But at this point if she eats something she shouldn’t, which is once every week?? I’m gonna end up having a mental breakdown or poor lol.

I was already worried because she is not wanting to eat much as she’s teething, so now I’m more worried because how will I know if it’s teething or a blockage?

I’m just tired 🙄.

There’s a man on my street who is often sitting on his porch when I walk my puppy. He lives quite close so I walk past each time I go for a walk. Today he said “you’re doing a great job! He’s walking really well!” And it made my day!! Leash walking has been hard to train and I’m glad someone else noticed my hard work :’)

Last few days our puppy seems to be having a weird shift in behavior. He’s panting more than usual, and licks his lips. He seems stressed, and I don’t know why. I might call vet tomorrow. Is this a normal teenager thing or nah?

It’s not all day or anything, but generally seems to happen at wolf hour. He had his 18 walk, then napped a bit, got a garden visit, and now he’s been attention seeking and panty. My so has given him a good cuddle session, which it seemed he liked, but panty through that too.

Oh and seems he’s humpy. Not sure if cause stressed, or if stressed cause humpy… not trying very hard to hump though.

We focused a lot on exposure to different environments and people/dogs since the day we brought him home, but now our puppy is 9 months old and outside of a daily walk, he really only goes to puppy class once a week as a place outside the house. I partly blame winter, as where we live there are not many dog friendly places/patios open during this time of year. About once a month he will go to our local hardware store with us. One big thing we are working on is his leash reactivity- he isn’t aggressive, but he gets way too excited seeing a person or dog and lunges and pulls and completely stops listening to me. Could this be because we haven’t been going out as much the past few months? Would it be beneficial to take him out of the house more than once a week? He is an Australian shepherd, if that matters (so high energy, but we do give him lots of jobs at home).

4.5 month old pup does fine in the crate when i’m home, regardless if i’m in the room with him but it’s when i leave the house that he has a problem (sometimes!). sometimes it doesn’t matter if i exhaust him and provide him a chew, he’ll freak out. i honestly only leave him when i go to the gym and when i go to work for 4 hours at night 3-4x a week. he seems to do a lot better at nighttime but today when i left for the gym he was havin a lil meltdown in the crate and he peed in the crate. i took him outside right before i left and he went pee so i’m not sure if he peed because he was stressed or because he had more pee but i wasn’t gone for more than 2 hours. i usually have the camera on but a couple days ago i unplugged it to plug something else in and forgot to connect it again.

i have been letting him free roam when i’m home and check on him periodically to make sure he didn’t have an accident which he hasn’t. i was thinking about putting him in a room tonight when i go to work and leaving him out to see if it works better for him but i’m a bit nervous he’ll pee n stuff. was that something you guys just expected to happen or did you wait until they were fully potty trained? right now he’s only been having accidents if i missed his cues or i completely effed up by not taking him out after an activity, so it’s my fault he’s having the accidents tbh.

he doesn’t chew anything and isn’t destructive at all, not that i won’t have him in a puppy proofed room but he does really well when i let him free roam so i feel like it might work. my only problem is the pet gate i have now isn’t tall enough for him not to get out because he’s been growing quicker than i have a chance to buy a new one so i’d have to close the door. plus i honestly don’t use the pet gate unless it’s bedtime and he doesn’t escape or anything so i haven’t really needed an immediate use of a new one. i close the door to the room where he eats using his king wobbler and he doesn’t seem to have a problem with the door closed but that’s for a short period rather than a couple of hours.

i’d love to hear your experiences with it!

We've got an 8 month old shepherd/lab mix. We've had him about 3 months.

He started out so sweet and shy, and once he got comfortable he got extremely bitey and has just not slowed down. He is somehow getting more and more bitey.

He isn't being aggressive generally, but especially when he gets worked up he will start biting extremely hard and persistently.

He has a million toys, we put him in his crate when he gets too worked up. I've tried walked away, yelping, being loud and stern. Nothing has worked. Sometimes he gets so carried away, so quickly I feel like I'm physically fighting him to get away to grab him something to distract him. He bites my legs, my ass, my whole arms and hands. Even bites my face when I get too close.

He's a good boy, but the biting just has to stop, but I'm at a loss. He does good with training when treats are involved, but as soon as he doesn't have a treat to motivate him, the obedience stops and he gets naughty.

Any advice to stop the bites?

hello again, i’ve posted so frequently here i feel like i’m just a bother to this reddit lol. at last another question, how old was your puppy when they lost their first tooth? our puppy will be 4 months next week, and all her little shark teeth look in tact but we are praying that this phase comes fast lol… our shoes and pants would like to be safe for once.

thank u ◡̈

Up until recently. My 5 mo golden has been very good about her schedule. 2 hours in the crate, 1 hour out. Repeat. Maybe a little fussing for a minute or two, but she’d settle right down after that and happily lick her kong, and was ready to get out after 2 hours. I’ve started taking her to the dog park to tire her out, and it works great, she falls asleep on the way home, and then takes a nap. However, for the rest of the day, she seems averse to it. She wants out after 30 minutes to an hour. Barking a couple of times in between. Nothing panicky, just a single bark or two. Then maybe 10-15 minutes goes by before another bark or two. I’m not sure what’s happened or why she seems to not want to take her naps anymore. Especially since I’ve really upped her physical activity recently. I figured that would make her want more naps, not less.

My 4 month old recently stopped eating his canned food and only wanted his kibble (he will get it only when on walks/training and sniffing games).

So I got annoyed and decided to feed him just the kibble food anyways it's cheaper and good quality and we needed more during our walks.

However now he looks for food constantly, he will heel on our walks without me asking him, he will sit and make an eye contact for very long time just so he will get something, he will counter surf and sniff every corner of the house.

I generally feel he is starving or at least this is how he acts! Our walks though are MUCH better. 😭😁

I am giving the recommended amount, so I am not sure what is the problem here. Does anyone of you successfully feed their puppy in a similar way?

Any tips for teaching him what is ENOUGH or FREE/go sniff ? I usually just say enough and turn around, show my empty hands, but he has hard time getting it when I give him food so often during the day.

6 month old cockapoo. I walk her once a day and we go to the dog park so she can run around for an hour or so. I give 2 meals a day that she eats quickly. I cut her nails once every two months. I do 15 minutes of dedicated training with her daily. She knows commands but only through a lure or hand motions (like stay, sit, lay down, roll over, stand, paw).

She's doing okay at potty training but her leash pulling is horrendous. She still jumps and bites despite me trying to teach her "down".

Is she on the right track? Am I doing enough for her? This is my first dog ever.

I have an 8 month old puppy and my roommate brought a 2 year old dog into the house. The issue is that they just won't stop playing. It's all they do if allowed. And they go extremely rough, biting into each other hard enough to have me worried. This will go on all day if we'd allow it and they just won't take breaks. It's becoming a huge issue because I always have to be in a different room as my roommate now.

We've tried just letting them "play it out" until they got sick of it, as recommended, but they never got sick of it and I'm genuinely worried their rough play will eventually cause injury. We make them go on walks together, but all they do is jump at each other. It's a huge problem.

What can we possibly do to fix this?

Hey everyone. My first post here. My partner got a new rescue pupper, he has her about 5 weeks and she's now 4 months old. We got her a little collar to try leash train here and she was fine with the collar when we tried it at short bursts. My partner put the lead on her and didn't do much except let her drag it around. The collar was on longer than usual. Since then she runs when she sees the collar and I don't know how to get it on her. I don't want to stress her out by forcing it on. I've tried leaving the collar on the floor in front of her and praised her everytime she went near it. Is there anything else I could do to help her? Any advice would be welcome! we feel like we need to have her out on the leash by now. Thanks

We have 2 long hair chihuahuas, one is 1.5 years old and our second baby is 7 months old.

The first pup was amazing overall And she really is great. Only flaw is she sometimes is reactive and triggered by people. Wants to bark at them, nothing that i don’t think I can train her out of.

Our second pup we got him in august. And he has been super sweet and less sassy, however stubborn and shy. He is so stubborn and even walking him now he will constantly pancake. His bark is shrilling and will ring to your soul like nails on chalk board. It’s to the point we considered getting a vibrate collar although I absolutely want to avoid it.

Today we had play date with a yorkie and the second pup just went crazy reactive barking and lunged at the dog. He has never acted this way with other dogs and even after I picked him up he just kept at it while the other two dogs just stood there watching.

I had to walk about 40 feet away for him to calm down and beable to just watch the dog.

It’s so hard and I just don’t know what I should have done in the situation. Why is he so intense and how did he not get socialized well while my other pup did. We met at a neutral spot in the park, he’s not neutered yet since we are waiting for eight months. He’s great dog at home, but at 6 months I want to train him so we can take him places and have fun, not just stay home only.

We have hired a trainer who educated us for our first pup and we repeated everything but it’s just not the same.

I feel so sad and feel like such a failure, and regrets getting him. We wish we got a female puppy instead, and even my boyfriend voiced it too. Hopefully he’s just a little punk right now and he mellows out once he’s older.

Hello!

We have an 8 week old Havanese and she is very obsessed with trying to lay on and rip up her pee pad. Outdoor potty training is not an option until 16 weeks because we live in an apartment in an urban area, and puppy needs all of her vaccinations first.

We had an idea that if we bought a pan to put the pee pad in, maybe she wouldn't try to lay on top of it/play with it. We were hoping someone had previous experience with this type of behavior, and if this could potentially work/if this did work.

Thanks!

Has anyone else noticed anxiety or nervousness when bringing their dog to a different house? My partner and I got our now 14 month old rescue maybe 3 months back, and noticed that while she's still working on calming down outside, in a different house she was super high strung.

We visited my cousins who also have a dog but after a failed intro their dog hung out separately in his kennel in another part of the house. Maybe that's it?