How long an interval between acquiring two new puppies?

Tiddlypom

Tiddlypom

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More advice please, kind HHOers.

After recently losing the elderly JRT, we are looking to get two JRT puppies. I’m looking at a litter tomorrow who will be ready to leave in mid Jan, and while it would be very tempting to take two pups from this litter, I am aware that ‘littermate syndrome’ can cause quite a few training problems. Let’s face it, JRTs are independent little buggers from the start, so whilst I do want two dogs again, I want to set us up to succeed as best I can.

What would be a good minimum age gap between pups? I’m thinking of getting pup #1 home and settled before getting pup #2. Ideally the gap would be no more than a month or so, so that pup #1 is not an only dog for long.

I’ve seen some really good advice on a website.

https://www.cuteness.com/blog/content/raising-two-puppies-from-different-litters

‘Tip #2 - Allow some time for the new puppy to adjust before you add a second one. Even if you want the puppies to grow up together, a few days for the first puppy to get acclimated to his new home and family can make the transition easier for both puppies. Two scared puppies, separated from their littermates and put together with strange humans, can create a lot of stress for everyone. By separating the arrival by a few days, you can focus special attention on each one during the transition.’

Ideally the gap between bringing new pups home would be much longer than a few days, and if we had still had an older dog we’d wait a year or so, but we are currently dogless, so the gap will be much shorter than ideal.

It’s 15 years since we last had a pup, and I’m very rusty on puppy handling. We seemed to settle them in easily back then, though (or more likely I’m in denial about the joys/hassle of puppy wrangling :eek:).
 
Well I had mine about a month/two months apart. By luck not judgement, this was 12 years ago in my defence.

I’d just want one of them to be starting to house train before I brought another in to the fray.

Best advice I can give is have them as late from their mum as you can though. I’ve had two dogs (diff breeds) at 10-11 weeks and one at 7-8. The latter is the strangest little fellow I ever met 😊

Best thing I ever did having two, my god they’ve given me a world of joy.
 
CorvusCorax said:
I'd leave it years rather than months personally.
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This is what I’d do now.

But to be fair my two little ones didn’t cause me too much bother. I mean, listen it’s not going to be the end of the world and if you know terriers, you know terriers, but be prepared that threes a crowd and you’re the gooseberry here. Nothing you say or do will be as utterly excellent as pulling my brothers ear off etc etc etc
 
My OH who has trained more gundogs than anyone else I know, says he would work on 9 months. You have basic training established in the first one, and will have time to concentrate on the second one. Trying to train both at once runs the risk of you not spending enough time on either. The first one would then be a good example to the second (coming to call or to the whistle for instance)
 
Thanks all, really helpful. I will go for a longer gap between pups. We normally have two dogs at once, but the JRT was already 12 when we lost our previous JRT and he was too set in his ways to accept a pup then. Indeed, he rapidly relished having us all to himself.

I’ve just come back from viewing the week old litter mentioned above and having seen the parents, they weren’t for me. Onwards with the search for pup#1.
 
i would leave at least 3 months so the first one is housetrained. what about looking on dog rescues for a slightly older dog to get first, get him/her settled and in a routine then get a puppy..?
 
I have 5 dogs
Hudson, American Cocker is 5 next month
Rio, American Cocker is 4 next month
Yoshi, Japanese Chin has just turned 3
Boomer, Great Dane was 2 in May
Arlo, Great Dane is 9 months.
These gaps have worked pretty well for me so far :)
 
I think the answer to your question depends on a) the breed of dog (JRT in your case), b) what you expect from your dog (being a pet/competition obedience/drug detection or whatever), c) what facilities you have (as in own land) and d) your level of experience in training to whatever you required in B!

I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that you have your own land, have had JRTs before and are looking for amenable pets. In your circumstance, I would probably allow a year between purchases. This will allow number one dog to get to a level of training that is established; s/he will have built a bond with YOU and also will be of an age whereby you could castrate/spey if you wished to acquire a pup of the opposite sex (often the easiest option with terriers!).

For myself, I generally allow 3 years in between planned acquisitions of HPRs; however, some 'rescues' have managed to sneek in in shorter timeframes and it has been VERY time consuming/demanding.....not just from the point of view of the new interloper but also from the point of view of maintaining/progressing the behaviour of the established incumbents.
 
gunnergundog said:
I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that you have your own land, have had JRTs before and are looking for amenable pets.
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Spot on. We’ve always had dogs, and the new one would be our 4th JRT. We are not experienced trainers like others on this forum, but we do like a fairly well behaved dog. We live out in the sticks with a well fenced (to 4’ high, not the 6’ that rescues seem to insist on) 1/2 acre garden plus 7 acres of paddocks. We have horses and part time sheep, so it is imperative that we train any dog not to chase stock.
 
splashgirl45 said:
i would leave at least 3 months so the first one is housetrained. what about looking on dog rescues for a slightly older dog to get first, get him/her settled and in a routine then get a puppy..?
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Good thinking. We have feelers out locally for a dog whose owners are having to give it up due to getter older/more frail, though no one knows of anything atm.
 
Thistle said:
Any two young dogs of similar age reared together will exhibit littermate syndrome type behaviours.
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My first two absolutely didn’t. The current two, oh yeah, but only because we didn’t take them out/train separately. The issue is that if let off together in the woods, they’d sod off hunting. Due to hip dysplasia, that doesn’t happen anymore and their behaviour is impeccable when out (bar Zak being DA 🙁) They are trained to do separate retrieves etc and are more bonded to us than to each other. They don’t care about going out together. We will always get two together, they’ll just be trained separately.
 
Mine were siblings who had been kept in different households before they came to us (same family), arrived a few months apart, they were reunited at 9 months old. Kennelled separately (beside each other) during the day and trained separately.
The female could not cope with life in general, even less so without her brother (who wasn't really bothered either way). If they were together and the brother left her for any length of time or was out of her eyeline, she would start screaming. Couldn't focus on anything so was hard to train, and tried to run home if you let her off lead on a walk. I appreciate that she was particularly tricky!!
 
Ranyhyn said:
Ps. What they gained in socialisation they lost in train ability because the little blasters would just play together. Don’t think they care about me, fairly sure they’d leave me dead in a ditch but maybe that’s the terrier in them.
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I've seen a few videos of people who fake playing dead just to see how their dogs react, my favourite was one Lab who after a few minutes barking and investigating jumped down from the sofa on to the owner right into the delicate mid-section area which obviously meant he couldn't carry on faking
 
It does depend on the dogs in question but we have had lots of pairs of Lab litter sisters and never had problem with training any of them. The current 2 Lab pups are the least bonded to each other that we have ever had. We did have 2 JRTs - never again!
Not that the problem was having 2 of them, one of them would have been even worse without her sister - she didn't understand English and even needed her sister to translate 'dog' into 'JRT'. We had a number of other older, bigger dogs of different breeds at the same time but it made no difference to her. They were both terrible escapologists, although their recall on walks was excellent.
I don't like single dogs in a household any more than I like single horses in a field, dogs are pack animals, just as horses are herd animals and imo should not be expected to live on their own. No owner can guarantee to not leave the dog alone for any length of time.
 
We have border collie siblings now 10 years old worst thing we ever did and we are experienced collie owners . There is a jack russel terrier rescue group on fb who often have terriers for removing
 
irishdraft said:
There is a jack russel terrier rescue group on fb who often have terriers for removing
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Thanks for that, I think there is a typo in that which made me smile, maybe not so far from the truth :D. I’ll have another look on those sites, but when I have looked before there has been a blanket requirement for 6’ high fencing. We have a long length of 4’ post and rail along the garden/paddock boundary which is infilled with chicken netting, and we’d prefer to leave that as it is.

Taking on an older dog as well as a pup is definitely something we would consider if we could find a suitable dog. It would be imperative that it has not already learnt to chase stock, because retraining a confirmed chaser is outside my skill set. I did see an ad last night for a 9yr old JRT, good with children, cats and other dogs which looked ideal, but he’s already been rehomed. The second dog wouldn’t have to be a JRT, I’d consider any nice small or medium older dog that would later accept a puppy. We want to take the dogs with us out in the motorhome, so smaller dogs would be easier to fit in it with us.

I know that some folk on here don’t allow their dogs and horses to mix, but ours always have coexisted very well. Except for last summer, when I put a new purple ‘cool coat’ on the JRT and the horses took grave exception at the strange purple dog and went for him :eek:. I posted a thread about it at the time. I do need good recall, so two pair bonded deaf lugged pups chasing the sheep or the horses would be a nightmare.
 
You might be lucky, despite being farm-bred from a long line of rabbiters/ratters, our 2 never chased a thing. The old Clydie taught them to stay away from horses' feet, by brushing them each with a hoof, which scared them witless, without causing any harm and although they ran off across the fields, it never occurred to them to chase stock, or wildlife. I can only think that is because they were winter pups, reared in the kitchen rather than in a stable and not allowed to chase kittens, so they didn't learn to copy their parents in dealing with vermin.
 
splashgirl45 said:
been browsing pets4homes and found a really cute rough coated bitch puppy in alfreton,derbyshire, anywhere near you?
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Please be very careful with searching on the internet especially sites such as P4H. Puppy farmers have wised up and place adds with mock mothers and set up that looks like pups have been reared in a home environment. My sister was recently conned in this way, sadly puppy (working cocker) developed parvo and died 3 days after purchase leaving a huge vets bill and a distraught family.
 
I tend to say years not months to avoid littermate syndrome/too close of a reliance on each other and to allow time to lay the groundwork on training for the first dog who then helps train the second, each dogs a bit different but I find most are easy from 18months of so on....as well as all the obvious things people also forget it is incredibly hard on the overly bonded pairs when they hit old age or when they are separated by illness. The ability to cope with some alonetime is a healthy trait in dogs.
 
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