at our whitsend

[kdowner]

please help we have a 10 week old pup who was doing really well with house training and other basic training but everything seems to have dissapeared and is causing a nightmare and dont know how much longer we can cope - she is :

1. using the house as a toilet when she was almost there
2. kicking up a fuss when left alone or not given attention, when this we thought had been cracked
3. jumping up and trying to bite faces
4. not listenng to any commands she had learnt

this probably seems all very trivial but is causing a lot of stress in our house we have had dogs before so were not complete numpties, but this is really getting to us. both being dog/animal lovers even the thought of rehoming is creeping in

please please help us as we want our pup to be happy

 

[Patches]

She's only 10 weeks old.....can she really have learned that much in a couple of weeks?

Give her a chance. Our border collie pup used to jump up and nip at faces but doesn't now. Infact, she doesn't nip at all. I just ignored attention seeking. They soon give up. You know the old saying "any attention is good attention" to those seeking it out. If you were to constantly reprimand her or shout at her for making a fuss (not that I'm saying this is what you do) she'll do it all the more as negative attention still means the focus is on her.

 

[Thistle]

It is a 10 week old PUPPY. What do you expect.

I would rehome it now whilst it still has a chance of finding a forever home with a family who are prepared to put in the time required for a puppy.

If you still want a dog then get an adult rescue that already has some training.

Harsh but probably better for the dog.

 

[kdowner]

were just worried about her, we want her to be ok! we were wondering if there was something that has happened. we love her to pieces we dont want to rehome her just want her to be ok. just confused why things have turned around thats all!

 

[MurphysMinder]

If she is only 10 weeks I would think she was a bit overawed for the first couple of weeks she was with you and nowher real personality is coming out. I have very occasionally had a pup that was getting the basics of house training in a couple of weeks but that is very unusual. It took about 6 months for my latest pup to really get the idea

Have you had a lot of snow recently? If so she could either be to busy playing when she goes outside to go to the loo, or alternatively might be too cold and in a hurry to get back in.
Training a pup is a long haul, just be very firm with the jumping up, tell her no and then ignore her until she is sitting quietly, and be prepared to take her outside after every meal, sleep, game etc, as well as when she just looks as if she might want to do something. You will get there as long as you are prepared to put the time in.

 

[Lucy_Nottingham]

My puppy is now 7mnths old, and he is 90% toilet trained but still has the odd accident especailly when it is just not quite as interesting as life in general!
Attention seeking, patchesi s right, ignore until she settles, THEN give attention! it is hard but at 10 wks if she was gettin the idea its good just go back to stage 1 n start again! NAF but remember at 10wks old her attention span is mightly only about 10 mins"!

keep workin from step 1 it will all come back!

 

[AmyMay]

[ QUOTE ]
we love her to pieces we dont want to rehome her just want her to be ok. just confused why things have turned around thats all!

[/ QUOTE ]
I am lost for words quite frankly....................

 

[CorvusCorax]

Reiterate what others have said - she is only ten weeks - I hate to anthropomorphise (sorry, spelling!) but if she was a human, she'd be not much older than a toddler.
She has only just left her mother, please give her a bit more time!

During her life, you can probably expect to have to retrain her on more than one thing - my two are 18 months and love to try my patience on a daily basis....

 

[nijinsky]

At 10 weeks old she can only have been away from her mum a few weeks she can't possibly have "10 weeks training under her belt", you haven't really given her a chance, how long have you had her, a few weeks?

Your puppy will go through all sorts of stages, my now 16 month old, didn't chew as a baby puppy but went through that stage as an older puppy, she goes through stages of not liking to be left and she's never left for that long & has another dog to keep her company.

You'll be training your puppy for a long time to come yet, they don't just remember a command & that's it - we've cracked that, you have to keep going with it.

Has she had all her jabs yet? Probably not if she's only 10 weeks but once she has I'd recommend taking her to puppy classes, great for socialising, great for her mind & you'll find she'll be knackered when she comes home as it will be so much for her to take in.

My concern is the word rehoming already - you really haven't given her a chance at all. Your pup is probably really happy with you, it just doesn't happen overnight & certainly not in a couple of weeks.

As with everything, you have to put in the time & effort, like with kids & horses, etc, etc. It's a long term commitment.

 

[Vizslak]

shes a baby baby puppy! At 10 weeks old alot of pups are only just leaving their mums, you cant possibly expect her to be at even 10% of her eventual obedience level at this age, shes still settling in and learning her place in the pack, I'm worried you are expecting so much from her at this age... puppyhood is a long slog, you have at least another year of teaching and patience before she is going to be a dog that is trained to a good level and can behave herself and retain her what she has learnt without constant intervention from you. I woud suggest she has gone backwards because you assumed she had 'got it' and forgot to keep teaching her, no pup at her age is going to retain any training without continual reinforcing and praise.

 

[AmyMay]

[ QUOTE ]
My concern is the word rehoming already - you really haven't given her a chance at all

[/ QUOTE ]
It would probably be the best option - as the OP clearly doesn't have the first idea about young animals.......

 

[Stacie_and_Jed]

Oh dear lord! Im guessing youve never had a pup before? We still had miss haps at year and a half old with our pups. They still now chew the odd shoe but hey thats dogs for you.

Im sorry but you will not be able to train a dog that fast! Stick with her and it will be ok in the end! Puppies are a hell of a lot of time and effort and i can honestly say it will get worse before it gets better. So if you dont think you can cope now i would seriously think of finding her a new home with someone who does have the time and patients for her and maybe buy a gold fish!

 

[kdowner]

we do have time and patience and yes we have had puppies before the veterinary nurses at our surgery have said she is doing so well with everything. as i have said before we want the best for her and her to be happy and will continue to give her the best she deserves. maybe like our nurse has said she might of just had a little relapes and is finding her feet again.

sorry if i have upset anyone but i hope you understand that anyone who loves animals is just simply trying to the best they can even it means asking others for help.

would like to say thank you for peoples kind toughtful tips is much apreciated.

 

[Vizslak]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My concern is the word rehoming already - you really haven't given her a chance at all

[/ QUOTE ]
It would probably be the best option - as the OP clearly doesn't have the first idea about young animals.......

[/ QUOTE ]
Im inclined to agree, and better for her to find a home now as a young pup before too much goes wrong, however we all have to start somewhere and if the OP is prepared to put in the time and effort and use support available, ie. puppy training/obedience classes then then im sure they can have a very rewarding life together. BUT some people and/or their lifestyles just arent cut out for puppies and if this is the case (and the OP already has concerns) then they should rehome NOW. I am also concerned as to where this puppy came from? OP did I read in a previous post its a lab pup? Do you not have any support from the breeder, did the breeder not warn you the implications of having and bringing up a well rounded puppy? Did you get no written care advice, information sheets etc? It deeply worries me that there are still breeders out there taking money for puppies and not bothering to ensure the new owner is able to care for them or prepared for what that may entail.

 

[BBH]

How ridiculous - she is ten weeks old fgs, give her a chance to settle in and if you are already talking of rehoming I don't think you should own animals at all.

 

[CorvusCorax]

[ QUOTE ]
we do have time and patience



<font color="red"> </font> <font color="black"> </font> <font color="black"> </font> Good, please give her some time and be patient with her, then, because your first post suggests you are doing neither.

Glad that you are prepared to put the work in, but try not to fry her brain with far too much at a young age.
As I said, in human terms she'd be a toddler and no one expects miracles with young children, do they?

Maybe you had other dogs who were foot perfect from a young age? Not all dogs are the same, they all have different levels of ability and understanding - I meet so many people who say 'well, Rover didn't need to be told and just got everything immediately and we don't know why Rex is behaving so badly'.

Also suggest a puppy class or training class when she is older and advise you continue to seek advice from knowledgeable people and on here too.

I repeat - we used to let our pups go at nine weeks - I don't know how long you have had yours - to expect a pup who has spent I HOPE at the most four or five weeks away from Mum to be a perfectly obedient house pet is a bit much, don't you?

 

[Stacie_and_Jed]

[ QUOTE ]
we do have time and patience and yes we have had puppies before .

[/ QUOTE ]

Well you should know full well how much work it is and that PUPPIES will not learn over night!!! I do find it hard to believe that you have owned pets before as your original post sounds very novice and TBH quite clueless!!!

 

[kdowner]

breeder is useless! at first she seemed really helpfull but as soon we went for advice after we had got her and they are terrible never answer any calls or emails so hopeless!

 

[Vizslak]

[ QUOTE ]
breeder is useless! at first she seemed really helpfull but as soon we went for advice after we had got her and they are terrible never answer any calls or emails so hopeless!

[/ QUOTE ]
Well thats terrible. I feel for you on this point. I see all my pups as my responsibility and will help any new owner with anything I can for the rest of the dogs life if neccessary. Is the pup KC reg? Another example of bad breeding practice folks! And the most overlooked example I think. Aftercare and home screening is as important to me as breeding healthy puppies fit for purpose. Do you have a local breed club or training school you can get involved in and help from instead? Keep pestering breeder too, they may think twice about breeding another litter if they cant hack new owners contacting them for help!

 

[FinnishLapphund]

Most likely you've had her for 2 to 4 weeks, new family, new home, new environment, no mother/siblings, maybe as Murphys Minder suggest new weather with snow, new routines, learning what it means to be a dog... + you say you're "house training and other basic training". I'm willing to bet money on that what has happened is that you're advancing to fast for her.

You say you've had dogs before and maybe they were of a rare miracle -sort, but now you've got a perfectly normal puppy

. And you need to calm down and lower your demands. If nothing else you might even be training her brain to demand a lot of exercise as an adult, because as a puppy she got used to be needing to have her brain on maximum "effect".



Most normal puppies can seem house-trained one day and next day, a few days later, your back where you once began again, that's perfectly normal. Sometimes one day is one step forward and next day is two steps back. And if you're then getting worried, stressed or demanding or all of those things, then she will sense that and you could add sensing those feeling from you, but not knowing how to deal with them to the list of new family, new home, learning to be a dog etc.

When I sold a puppy last summer, I gave the puppy-buyer a few pages with basic advices. Besides feeding advise and such things, three of the pages was about things involving puppy-training that I have found being most useful for me. I have translated a little piece from those pages :
[ QUOTE ]
(From myself) Take a moment and think about what demands you actually have on the puppy.
Many have an internal, unspoken list with a series of requirements and desires, ranging from: it should not eat up a neighbour's children, not behave so that people think that it can eat up a neighbour's child, not run away, become house-trained, can be alone at home, not be to vivid except in those situations when you want fun and speed and it should understand which of those situations that exists right here and now through some sort telepathic transfer from you...

It made it easier for me when I found an advice in a Swedish book The puppy in our family, by Mickie Gustafson, about making a list of between three to ten things you absolutely want the dog to learn, and I forced myself to really think through what was most important to me.

You should rank them so that what is absolutely most important for you, to be able to enjoy your life as dog owner for many years to come is number 1, based on the idea that if your dog only can learn one single thing in his/hers entire life, what will then come first. Please write them down so that all are in agreement with the objectives you have. The first few weeks with your puppy, you should only give priority to, focus the training on one or a couple of things on the list.

As an example, I can mention that number one on my list is being able to walk off lead. That actually involves so many things that it maybe shouldn't be allowed to be counted as one thing, but that is THE thing that is most important for me to enjoy being a dog owner.
House-training "only" comes as number two on my list, because I'd rather have a dog that isn't 100% house-trained but can walk off lead, than the other way around.

[/ QUOTE ]


So calm down and remember to enjoy the puppy-time.

 

[CAYLA]

[ QUOTE ]
please help we have a 10 week old pup who was doing really well with house training and other basic training but everything seems to have dissapeared and is causing a nightmare and dont know how much longer we can cope - she is :

1. using the house as a toilet when she was almost there
2. kicking up a fuss when left alone or not given attention, when this we thought had been cracked
3. jumping up and trying to bite faces
4. not listenng to any commands she had learnt

this probably seems all very trivial but is causing a lot of stress in our house we have had dogs before so were not complete numpties, but this is really getting to us. both being dog/animal lovers even the thought of rehoming is creeping in

please please help us as we want our pup to be happy

[/ QUOTE ]

Have you have never had a puppy before, the behaviour outlined above, is nothing less than normal in a baby that age...............Im not even sure how a 10 weeks old puppy could have you at your whitts end

Do u have a routine in place for him/her, and or any training aids? if not you need some, as if u think a 10 week old puppy is stressfull, u will need taking away once it's big enough and capable enough of actually causing any problems

Do u have children?

All mentioned are very easily remedied, with a little time, and patience, I would be more than happy to help or advise, if you really want to put the time in with the puppy, I feel this baby may be destined for many a home, being passed around from this age

 

[Louby]

At 10 weeks old our pup had us up at all hours howling and crying. He was excellent to house train but he was older than your pup when he cracked it. He is 10 mths old now and we are still struggling to leave him on his own during the day for anything longer than about 30 mins without him howling which I admit is a big problem but we are trying so hard to rectify it.. with not much success at the moment. He didnt really learn any commands until a few months old and its only really been this last month that he comes reliably to call.
I think your pup sounds amazing for his age. Im sure he will be fine in a few months time.

 

[woolly]

I recognise this type of panic and I think that the OP is soooo absolutely terrified of 'ruining' or harming their pup that they have blown things out of all proportion. I think Finnish Laphund has terrific advice and for those who are merely judgemental without backing up their arguments, what exactly does that achieve with someone who obviously is slightly underconfident because they care so much?????? Some of the posts here are less than useless but some are excellent and encouraging.

 

[Inchy]

QR - with our latest puppy we began the socialising puppy classses and then progressed to the obedience classes....the instructors are normally very good and will progress you and your pup on at the right pace...perhaps try joining a puppy class so you know what speed you should be progressing at rather than trying to do too much too soon...

Also when we've had pups in the winter before we've always found them harder to toilet train than summer pups as they don't want to go outside because its cold...