Advice for a first time lab and puppy owner... please be gentle :)

It's a difficult wait Captain but it can be up to ten days. I find very vigorous exercise is usually the trigger for Tatze to bring it up. Thus it often happens at my friend's house where her bestest friend, Zaba, lives. If it's coming out of the other end 2-3 days is normal, but - if they 'retain' it (how I do not know!) then chuck it up, it can be much longer.

The first time it happened with Tatze it was a full harness, including the metal bits - just the plastic clip was not swallowed. But I didn't know - it happened at doggy day care and they said she'd 'chewed it up'. It wasn't until it started coming out of the other end, in pieces, that I found out she'd actually swallowed it.

So, when it happened again this time at home, I phoned the vet and they said I mustn't hesitate to come in if there is any change in her behaviour or lethargy etc - otherwise to wait and see.

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Is there another vet practice where you live, if so you could phone them? My practice has just introduced night time cover which will now be covered by an 'emergency veterinary practice' 7 miles away, instead of doing the 24 hour cover they used to do. I will have to change vets if my dog is ill in the night, sad as i worked for the practice.

Probably the rope will pass through, but if you are at all worried, do phone another vet.

 

Oh no. I am a first time puppy owner and with 2 children and the puppy causes me way more anxiety than the kids! good luck. Xxx

 

Hi @Captain I've just been reading your post regarding the food guarding. If it were me I would be working on reducing /eliminating the need to food guard. Once a dog learns that by growling you keep away it's a situation that can become more difficult to reverse or escalates. I notice that you ate putting high value food in the kong and it's when she has that she is growling so as a first step I would reduce the value of what is in the kong and reserve the high value for training treats or to add to the food bowl.

 

Thanks all for your help and stories. Ah, the wait starts...

And thanks MaccieD for the advice! Yes, we still do swap exercises - sometimes she goes for it, sometimes she gives us the "who are you trying to kid" eye. Managing it for now

 

Hi there, just catching up with your posts now! Your pooch sounds similar to mine, we got him when he was 9 months old and came with very little manners . He also had issues with resource guarding. We dealt with it by using clicker training. I would put my hand quite a ways away from him while he had a toy or treat, and if there was no reaction, he would get a treat and praise (and a click). Do this a few times and then repeat, with your hand a little closer. No reaction, dog gets a treat. A reaction is not necessarily a growl, any kind of hunching over the toy or grabbing it closer with the paws, etc. Anyhow we found this really helped to reduce most of the resource guarding, I still am careful with him but it has gotten much better. Have a look at the clicker training articles on the main site, it really is a great way to train your dog!

My pooch ate a whole lot of stuff that gave me nightmares, too, so I feel your pain. I hope everything goes ok with your pup!

 

Hi and welcome Captain. You have been given some really good advice. Things do get better.

 

rope has made an appearance y'all are the best.

 

Oh good. Well done that pup!

 

Yay!
Well done indeed

 

Phew!!

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Hooray! I bet you never thought you would watch poo so closely!!

 

hello ... am back with another freshie lab query - Peps sometimes gets into these fits of hysteria. She will start jumping, teeth snapping, grabbing and tugging furiously onto clothes, anything we are holding. This evening, she leaped and starting tugging on my dear old mum's shirt and nipped a bit of flesh. My mum was obviously in panic. This was after we had taken her to the dog park and given her a bathe. Are these crazed fits normal? We even gave her a time out but after she was let out, it was back to jumping, snapping, scurrying up and down.... She was in such a fit she couldn't listen to any commands. This happens every now and then. How do we get her to calm down in situations like this. And does it get better with time?

 

This is all totally normal - it's not hysteria, or a crazed fit, it's just a puppy!

I'd just ignore my puppy when he did this, or leave the room for a few seconds. I often played with him inside his big puppy pen and if he started biting too hard, or getting too over excited, I'd just step out of the pen. This left him in a safe area where he couldn't come to any harm, but he lost his playmate. I'd stop him doing a wall of death around the house by shutting doors, putting barriers in his way etc.

I think time outs are pretty useless. I think it's very difficult to use a time out in an effective way - either people drag a puppy to a time out as a punishment (and it's totally inappropriate to be dragging a small puppy or dog anywhere by force) or by gently encouraging it, or gently carrying it, to a time out place. If that time out place is a place they are happy to be, it's useless. So that means the time out place has to be a scary place, but probably by the time you've got there, the puppy has long forgotten about the thing it was doing before it got put in a scary place. And who wants to scare a puppy anyway?

Putting a puppy in a crate, with a kong, to calm down for a bit is fine though.

 

It's very, very normal puppy behaviour. When mine start the loopy phase (always evening time) I pick them up and hold a chew for them - this usually calms them. If that doesn't work I put them in the pen with a Kong. It stops (almost) completely by 20 weeks - then the mad zoomies remain but not the biting.


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My pup has his mad moments...usually after his first morning session in the garden. He goes loopy so we have now moved anything valuable or that he can hurt himself on to ceiling height. Luckily family dogs in the past have also had mad dog moments so we just lift our feet off the ground and wait!