Hi all, Hope you’re well. Lulu is coming along really well. She is still sleeping through the night, her bladder control is getting a lot better and no accidents in the house now for a few weeks. This week has been primarily about taking her out and about. Some walks, she is great on the leash whilst others she is pulling. I’m using all the methods from the forum in regards to loose leash walking. There are a lot of dogs in the area, on an average 10-15 min walk, we tend to encounter around 3,4 at least. She always pulls when she sees another dog or another person for that matter which we expect at this age, she seems to be quite happy with everyone and we want to let her explore whilst also training her. We are trying to get her to be calm before allowing her to engage with other dogs/humans. This will hopefully improve as months go by, for now, we aren’t too worried as her behaviour is great for the most part. We have not let off off leash yet and still need to head to a field to get some off leash recall going. As always, we are trying to set her up to succeed. The rest of the training is coming along really well, this week it seemed to click with her in regards to certain behaviours we’d like. She now sits by the outdoor furniture or in the kitchen, once we say yes, we let her up. We’ve also given her more freedom in the kitchen and garden unsupervised if we are away in the rest of the house for 30 minutes or so, she gets on with things and is quite content during the day. We may allow her in the living room from next month if she continues to progress as she is. As her bladder control is getting better, we aren’t worried about accidents indoors anymore. We have noticed, if we stimulate her on all levels in the morning she tends to be very relaxed through the day, in the evenings she needs a watchful eye again. Her biting is around the same, nothing we are concerned about, she has appropriate chew toys, we give her ice cubes, carrots and yesterday her first cows ear which went down well (not all at the same time ) Her socialisation has been excellent overall, she’s been exposed to as much as possible. The only household appliance she is weary off is the vacuum cleaner, she will normally go to her crate when it’s on. She has finally transitioned on to new kibble, she was initially on Royal Canin and we had a 12 kilo bag which we’ve finally gone through, she is now on Millie’s Wolfheart Obedience Mix. Researching food was a fraught process too as there is so much out there in The U.K. We looked at feeding raw which we may go to later on. We wanted to keep to a locally sourced company. We used this website which someone else on here posted a while back to shift through https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/the-dog-food-directory We’ve all bonded with her enormously. I have said this a few times, however I can’t be thankful enough to all the articles on here and forum posts as it tempered our expectations and has kept us in good stead. Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.
Excellent update. One thing I would strongly advise is to let your puppy off the leash in a suitable place as soon as possible. She won't go far from you at this age but that won't last forever and you're missing out on a golden opportunity to get recall training in early.
