So I posted a few weeks ago about a lab puppy we got. He is making our lives extremely stressful. Not him specifically but he is definitely pushing all buttons. I know it is all normal puppy stuff-pooping and peeing everywhere...nibbling on our feet(including my 9 month old!) , Whining, etc etc. We are living with my mother right now and her running her mouth about him makes it worse.. But we are closing on our home Tuesday and so it is time to get in gear full on training!! So my question is.. How long will this whining last? It's mostly if he wants up on the bed (not big enough to get up there himself yet) or if we put him in the bathroom or something to take my mom's dog out (she doesn't want her dog around him bc her dog is animal aggressive) I know that we have to take him out more (although idk when as both husband and I work full time. ) For the pottying and that he will outgrow the nipping our feet, but what do I do.. Now.. To eliminate the whining? I don't want to be hated on day one by my new neighbors..
Presumably you didn't buy your puppy on a whim - if you both work full time, what were you planning on doing with your puppy? He's still too young for walks, but he'll need somebody to come in several times per day to play with him and feed him and take him to the toilet. Lots of people on the forum have juggled/are juggling puppies/dogs and full-time work, and they do it with a variety of dog walkers/helpful family/helpful friends/nipping home at lunch/dog daycare. Leaving your puppy alone will just result in problems in the long-run. Puppies need a lot of attention - just like babies! - but they also need to learn that sometimes life is boring so I'd better have a snooze. If he's had enough attention but he's whining for more it's just a matter of ignoring him. 9 weeks is still so young, it's going to take months, but you can start rewarding him for being calm and chilling out - just quietly drop a tasty treat next to him when you notice the settled behaviour. If he's alone all day he'll bark, destroy your garden, and just won't be able to learn how to be a nice companion. You've got to put the training and time in now so that you can reap the rewards when he's older. There are articles about this on the main Labrador Site, so definitely give them a read.
You have certainly got a puppy at a difficult time ; with a 9 month old baby, moving home so having to stay elsewhere and living with a dog aggressive other dog! You haven't made things easy. @Xena Dog Princess has given lots of good advice. Your little man needs lots of attention at this age. I was shocked at how much attention my pup needed. I work full time but spend about half or more of my working week at home but my work definitely suffered the first few months because, naively, I hadn't counted on her needing so much interaction. Trying to work with her running around like a whirlwind was impossible. It was all very stressful but I was lucky because I had a lot of flexibility. I don't have any family nearby nor friends I could ask to help so I was reliant on dog daycare for a while and also, the dog walker I now use, offers puppy visits; she will feed a pup, let it out for a wee and spend a bit of time with a pup. And I gradually found other people, through talking to other dog owners, who could help out. But there is no denying, it was tough. Now my girl, 17 months, can be alone for longer periods and doesn't need the same level of interaction when I'm at home but I still occasionally use dog daycare and regularly have a dogwalker so she gets attention and company on days I might be away from home a bit longer than I want. I would start to put things in place now with friends/family/paid help because otherwise your boy may develop problems through being left too much. Good luck.
I agree with the others. Having a puppy is hard work and is not for the faint of heart. You will need to get some help with puppy care in order to do it all. Do you have any family/friends around that could help? You pup is too young to be left alone for any extended period of time. He will need focussed attention for toilet training and basic training. It’s not something you can just fit in around everything else. I hope you can make some arrangements to get some help, for all your sakes. Please keep us posted, there’s lots on the forum who work with small pups so it can be done, but again, it needs careful planning.
This is a really good place to start - https://www.thelabradorsite.com/8-week-old-puppy/ Remember he’s a tiny baby with many needs and relies on you completely. Here is a brilliant article on keeping your dog calm - https://www.thelabradorsite.com/dog-calming/ Did you get the happy puppy book as we suggested? Have you got baby gates around your house? If not, it would be worth investing in some, especially as you have young children. They can wind each other up and pups can get a bit mouthy and interactions need to be carefully managed. As the others have said, please get help if you don’t have time for your pup. .
Oh... I don't envy you. Our puppy is now 4 months old. For the past two months, my entire life 95% of the time has been with the new labrador baby. I can't imagine trying to do this with lots of other stuff. Even if you do all the right training, you will probably find that others in your environment need more training than the dog. I still cannot get my spouse to stop him from jumping up with both training or ignoring(he thinks its cute, and I keep telling him how cute it will not be when the dog weighs in at 85 lb, but its like talking to a wall). He'll be complaining then, and won't even remember what I told him.
Wow, it does sound like you have an awful lot going on right now. It's not surprising you're finding it stressful. I would gently suggest having a serious look at your life and considering if this is really the right time to bring a young puppy into your family? They're hard work at the best of times and I just can't imagine being able to give him the amount of care and attention he needs when you have such a young child, too. To answer your question: Well, no-one can say. He likely won't just grow out of it, that rarely happens. He's whining as a form of communication and it's up to you to work on that if you don't like it. Which means teaching him to be happy to be on the floor and happy to be alone. This can take a lot of time and effort on your part. The separation training is especially important because if not addressed carefully, it can lead to a dog with full-blown separation anxiety and I can tell you right now that that won't go down well with either your neighbours or you in your new house! Again, if you don't have time to do this and, because of your jobs, are looking at leaving him alone for extended periods (and by that at this age, I'm talking about less than an hour!) then again, I would urge you to reconsider if this really is the best thing for you, your puppy and your family. I know this likely isn't what you wanted to hear, but to me it sounds like you have so much on your plate that you don't have the time to enjoy your puppy, which means both you and him are getting a raw deal.
According to the birthday they gave me for him he's closer to 12-13 weeks now, not 9. I want to take him to the PetSmart training class but I'm not sure they will really help since its a once a week thing? My husband and I usually work around each other's schedules bc of the baby but when I say left alone what I'm meaning is if he's put in a room or the crate while she takes the other dog out he whiles the whole time. We are moving in days so the only issue with that is that our plan is to have him in our kitchen basically all the time except for cuddles, play time, etc so that if he pees or poops inside then it'll be in tile not carpet. So that is why I'm wondering if we do that is he going to be whining constantly...
I’m far from an expert but I expect that he’ll whine if he’s left alone with nothing to do and he’s not sleepy. Kongs and toys would probably help. I think it also depends on the layout of your house. I’m trying to decide how best to keep pup in our house. Right now we’re planning on him being in the family room or living room with us when he’s being very closely watched (mainly in the evenings when we’re all home), during the day between naps, bits of playtime and potty breaks he’ll be in the kitchen which is entirely closed off (old house, lots of doors). That’ll let me get some computer work done (at the kitchen island) and he’ll have a safe place to explore. Our house is weirdly setup, some houses the kitchen is the central area where all the action is so having pup in there most of the time makes sense as that’s where the family often is too. Is there a space where puppy can see the family from the kitchen? Maybe a baby gate so he doesn’t feel abandoned? Good luck. I don’t envy you, we got our last pup (a beagle) when our oldest was 2, I potty trained a human and a dog at the same time. That was 14 years ago and I still remember it was awful.
You’ve got a lot going on at the moment with puppy, baby and moving house, so it’s bound to be stressful. Maybe your puppy is sensing this a bit too. Although the training class only once a week, it would be a good idea to take him because it will give you things to practise in between the classes. You will also meet other puppies and their owners, helping to socialise your puppy. The trainer may also be able to talk you through some of your concerns and give you some tips too, with the benefit of seeing you and your puppy working together. Good luck. I hope it all goes well. These early puppy days can be exhausting!
Potty training won't last forever and he'll soon get the idea especially if you can take him out at regular intervals but like human children the odd accident will happen. Last week my nearly almost fully potty trained niece pooped right next to her potty.
Would the breeder keep the puppy for you until you get moved? I guess I assumed "closing" meant a house you are buying.
Our kitchen has two entrances, one from the living room and one from the dining and then I guess technically a third that goes into the laundry room and outside. So the plan is to get two large baby gates to go across both entrances. So he'll be able to see us and people going in and out. I only want to do that until he's house trained bc the whole rest of the house is carpet
We didn't get him from a breeder. We got him from someone who got him from a breeder and couldn't keep him. We close in 48 hours and will be moving that afternoon.
As to keeping him in the kitchen, that’s fine. It’s what we do until they are reliably potty trained. But there is always someone in there with them. We teach them to be happy alone by starting with a few seconds, then a few minutes (with a Kong) then up to an hour. Keir is fine now if I leave him alone for a little while without a Kong to pop upstairs etc - he’s eight months old. But without the training he would have very much become a whiner/barker. .
Totally agree with @Boogie - puppies have to be taught to be comfortable and confident being left alone. The training starts by leaving for literally a second or two and slowly build the time. Rushing the process can leave you with a puppy/dog that suffers separation anxiety/distress which is a whole lot harder and time consuming to modify.
DH and I brought Harley into our family with the understanding that I would be working from home within 3 weeks of getting her. BUT things did not work out that way and it was a full year before I am now working from home. So we were both working with a lab pup. Not ideal. We took turns popping in for lunch and we had a neighbour check on her and spend time with her during the day but that was not every day but more days than not (neighbour). So we put a large amount for effort into keeping Harley entertained and safe during the day. We froze her meals into large blocks of ice (it was summer) and DH designed a timed Kong releaser. It was a tube with Kongs loaded and it was set to release a Kong every 45 min I think (it may have been an hour). We had an existing CCV system but we added more cameras that we could watch remotely but also review to see how she was coping. Her routine was heavy with attention from 16:30 onwards until bed time and quieter during the day. We doted on her in the evenings with one of us always engaged with her unless she was sleeping and even then she was with us. But we were also strict about her being in her baby pen for bed time at night. It worked well for us, but Harley is lower on the energy spectrum than most Labs and she is curious but not exceedingly so. I don't think this plan would have worked well with another Lab. Luckily her temperament was already salient when she was a pup and we visited her 3 times before bringing her home. What I am trying to say here is that Lab pups are challenging because the very things that make them such incredible companions as older dogs makes them pups that need our attention and companionship. We thought the potty training would never work. And then it did. We thought she was going to be a crocopup for ever and then she wasn't anymore. But it isn't simple or easy. It is tough. Good luck.
Thanks for your advice We don't work jobs where we can come home for lunch and being new to the neighborhood I don't want people in my house I don't know. But we are already trying to get our schedules opposite each other for our children for childcare so it should workout for puppy too. Right now he sleeps under the couch a lot (my mom's couch. Our couch's you can't get under so he won't be doing that after tomorrow) and only plays by changin our feet. But we do try to engage him with toys so hopefully he'll get more into those and less into nipping soon.
I am sure so much will change when you move into your own space. Something we learned from our cats actually is that some breeds are way more independent and less involved in day to day living. Those were not the breed we got. And I believe that Bengals are the Labradors of the cat world. If Labradors had malevolent personalities at times. But we knew what we were getting ourselves into with Bengals and boy oh boy there was no false advertising. And I feel like the labs are the same - the are full on, intense and highly integrated into our lives or what ever their jobs are because I know that working dogs live a different life but they are still full on and intense. I think there may be other breeds of dogs that are a bit less high maintenance at pups - actually I know there are...they were in our puppy classes while we were cringing from embarrasment they were calm and just lovely. And they are still calm and lovely but Harley has just catapulted (sometimes it feels like literally) passed them in training. So while they remain the cool kids in high school I am more of a PhD person and Harley is a post grad kind of dog. So what I am trying to say is that I know that many people on the forum have raised pups while raising young children and facing all sorts of challenges so hopefully some of them will pop on to chat too. They will hopefully be able to add so much on how to raise everyone together to keep pup super involved too. What a lucky baby you have that is growing up with their own labrador.
