Hi! We just put a deposit on a lab puppy so I've been searching the net to read everything possible, and to be honest, it's freaking me out a bit! So I figured I'd might as well introduce myself now as I foresee spending a lot of time here in the future. Pup was born either January 1st or 4th (2 litters). Full-bred lab, either light yellow or black but definitely male. No name yet, open to suggestions We haven't met him yet, the breeder doesn't allow visits until 3 weeks but they're nearby so I'm hoping we can visit a couple of times before he comes home at 8 weeks (how many visits are typical? I don't want to overdo it w/ the breeder). The last time we had a puppy was a beagle, 14 years ago (she passed away this fall). We didn't do a great job with training her (she ended up being more of an outside dog) and really getting her to be part of the family, so we've vowed to do better for this pup and our family. The kids are older (16 & 7) now and we will be able to focus more on the pup. I work from home so I'll be the primary trainer, which is stressing me out. First things first, what supplies do we need? Crate 42" w/ a divider lots of old towels (i figure a bed will be destroyed early on, might as well just give him a couple towels to sleep on/with for now? or not??) a brush (to get him used to it from the start) food/water bowls (should we start w/ slow-feed bowl or just regular to start?, what about water bowl, just a plain bowl?) food (we'll start with whatever the breeder has then switch to....???, not doing raw/homemade food, I can barely cook for the kids, lets not push it) treats (? maybe just start with food/kibble? I don't know) nail trimmer/grinder (to get him used to it from the start) collar/leash toys (kong, plush something, don't know what else [how many toys should be have to start?]) maybe a playpen? (I work from home, sometimes I can work on my laptop in the kitchen but sometimes I need to be in the basement w/ my equipment. Once he's reliably housebroken for an hour or two I'm thinking maybe I could put him in a playpen downstairs so he can see me and play for a bit, but not have full-run of the room as it's not puppy-proof) gate/fence? we have an old house that has doors on most of the rooms but we spend most of our time in the sunken family room (no door). do I need to worry about him climbing those 3 steps? steps are wood if that matters I don't plan to even buy puppy pads, want to train him for outside from the start. Is that the best? I'm considering using a bell for potty training so we can hear him ask to go out, good idea? bad? Other questions: Our house is big so I'm debating on where to put the crate. We always had our beagle in the family room (she was 4 when we moved here), but that's the furthest from the bedrooms (upstairs and across the house), I won't be able to hear the pup that far. I have a baby monitor I could use (not video), I could sleep downstairs with him for the first few days/week(s), or get a 2nd crate for upstairs by us. Due to hip concerns we don't want to allow free reign of the stairs for at least a few months (they're wood, 75% of the house is wood/tile). Maybe someday he can sleep with one of the kids, but certainly not until he's proved trust-worthy (and they've proved trust-worthy, which may take longer than the pup). The breeder gets all pups a vet visit at 7 weeks along with their first shots, do we need to schedule another vet visit right after he comes home or is he good until his booster shots at 12(?) weeks? Ok, I have trillions of other questions, but I've bored you all enough for the moment Thank you so much!
How exciting! My first post here was very, very similar to what you’ve just written! Tatze was my first Lab pup, ‘tho I’ve always had dogs. Labs, in my view, are much harder as pups and much easier as adults. I’ve come back again and again and again for help and advice, it’s a fabulous forum. I would point you to this thread - https://www.thelabradorsite.com/what-to-expect-of-a-new-labrador-puppy/ and highly recommend the Happy Puppy Handbook Your next vaccination will be at 12 weeks. Ours also have another at 16 weeks, but that depends on the vet. Be sure to get insurance straight away, even if the pup comes with a week or two’s cover, new policies often don’t cover things contracted immediately. And get lifetime cover, not the yearly one which excludes any new conditions year by year. As far as sleeping goes - see how the pup is, they are all very different. Some settle instantly, some take quite a while. And welcome to you from Mags, Tatze and Keir from Manchester UK Tatze is my pet dog, a black Lab and she's four years old. Tatze means 'paw' in German. Keir is my fifth Guide Dog puppy, a yellow Golden Retriever/Flatcoat cross and he's seven months old.
Hello and welcome ! And relax ! You seem to have everything covered re the requisites , use a couple of towels or a throw in the crate to start with , and see if the chewing develops , saves wasting a bed . Pups often do cry at night , I always had our pups in with us for a few nights and then gradually moved them further away, in fact my last puppy decided that he wanted to move away ( maybe the snoring ). If you don't want him with you in a second crate , then the baby monitor is a good idea , as is a playpen for the daytime when he cant be supervised all the time . You are absolutely right to restrict stairs , puppy hips must be protected as much as possible whilst they are very young . Due to circumstances , we were not able to visit my last puppy until the day we brought him home , and I often wished we had seen him as a very young puppy , so relish those visits and take lots of photos !
We are a month in with our 2nd Lab pup. As far as vaccinations go our vets will do the 2nd at 10 weeks; bearing in mind that you are house and garden bound until a week after that, the sooner the better. It is good to visit the pups at least once before you make your choice, but at 3 weeks you won't get much sense of what each individual is like. 7 weeks is the best time to choose but in some cases this isn't possible as the breeder may have a lot of interest and you may be obliged to pick sooner if you want a choice at all. I slept downstairs, with Caspar in his crate and me on a sofa for a week. He had 3 days next to the sofa so that he could be comforted and after that his crate went into his room (the utility in our case) with me still on the sofa so that I could quickly respond to any night time distress/toilet urgency. After that I went back upstairs and left all doors open so that I could hear him. I would have used a baby monitor if I had still had one but in the event Caspar let me know very loudly when he needed attention. By 10 weeks he was sleeping 7 hours, and this week it is 8, and as long as I get to him by about 7.15am he does not cry. His crate has a cosy vet fleece base, and I have put rolled towels around the edges to make it a bit smaller. In addition he has an old shirt of my husband's as a pillow area and an old fleecy blanket folded into quarters running around the inside. We found that he likes to sleep with his head higher, having been used to a litter mate's rump for a pillow. I have a draped towel over the crate for night times to make it more den-like - a suggestion from someone here. It seemed to help, and now occupies him for a few minutes in the morning as he tries to pull it through the bars of the crate. Although he chews pretty much everything else he has not chewed his bedding at all. Apart from obvious feeding apparatus and some toys (a soft, squeaky one and a couple of tough things he can chew) you can buy everything else as you go along. You will find lets of excellent support here and I look forward to hearing how you get on.
Oh, and he has a teddy in his crate, too. All his toys belonged to our first Lab who passed away suddenly in November, so they may be comforting in some way.
You cannot get everything you need on the internet. I can recommend two fabulous books that have become my main guides(I did buy about 5 more). Like you, we had not raised a puppy for more than 15 years. TRAINING THE BEST DOG EVER: A 5 week Program of the Power of Postive Reinforcement by Dawn Sylvia-Stasiewicz and Larry Kay. Dawn has been training dogs using positive reinforcement since the 1980’s She trained the Obama’s dog and Sen. Kennedy’s dogs. Both of these people could have chosen anyone to do it, but the chose her. The Puppy Whisperer: A Compassionate, Non-violent Guide to Early Training and Care by Paul Owns and Terence Cranendonk. The name whisperer has been used by him first starting in 2007. Has everything you need to know with schedules and lots of information. Buy both of them; you won’t regret it. We had to put down our 14.5 year old Labrador(the 6th dog in our marriage; the 4th Lab, and the 5th Puppy) in early November, 2017, and we found a puppy that was born within 12 hours of the death of our puppy. At 5 weeks we visited the breeder to see the puppies. We already had reserved one of the three chocolate males. We were going to let the breeder choose for us based on the temperament tests. But that was not to be. When she put all the puppies out to run around in the pen, all came over to be petted, but then they all lost interest in playing with toys and each other. Well...all but one actually. That was one of the three choccies. He sat in the center of the play area, with all the other puppies running around him. And....he simply stared at us, making eye contact back and forth between me and my wife. We picked him up and he melted into our arms; he stared into the eyes of my wife when I held him and vice-versa when she held him. The breeder said that she’d never in 30 years seen a 5 week old puppy do that to humans who came, and obviously he had already chosen us. When we put him down he positively moped; I think he thought we were taking him at 5 weeks. But when we told him we were coming back for him, he did then play with the others, but he never lost eye contact with us. When we picked him up on January 2, there was no whimper for his siblings or mother; he moved right into our house like he’d always lived here(and maybe he did for the past 14.5 years).
Hello and welcome! You certainly seem to be thinking everything through, which is great. One word of warning, though - I thought I was prepared, had read it all and knew what I was getting into. Well. I didn't So, if your pup comes home and you feel a bit overwhelmed despite your preparation, don't worry, it's normal. Come here and moan and you'll get lots of support from other people who have been there, done that, got the T-shirt and other people who are going through it at the same time as you. To answer a couple of questions - you don't need to swap the food your puppy has come from unless you want to. If your puppy is happy on it, and it lives up to your standards (whatever they may be), then stick with it. There's no need to change just because other people do. Puppy pads - if you're planning on house-training from the start, then you don't need puppy pads. The only thing I would say is that they're very handy for clearing up puddles inside when you don't quite get it right I would absolutely recommend a puppy pen. I didn't have one with my first pups (yes, two at once - madness!) but made barricades to enclose them into small areas until they were safe to have more freedom. A puppy pen is infinitely easier, and can be used to separate rooms, close off doorways etc as your puppy grows. I'd have been lost without a pen with my last pup. For treats, starting with kibble is fine. I don't generally buy commercial dog treats for training (the exception being a few of the Fish4Dogs things which I always buy when I'm in the UK) but I use things like small bits of turkey hot dog, and roast whole joints of pork, beef, whole chickens etc which I then portion up and freeze so I can defrost and slice into bits as I need them. I also make lots of treats, like dehydrated liver, liver cake, sardine cake, mince bites etc. If you have a family, this might be a step too far With your floor, I would consider getting some cheap rugs to help protect his joints if they're at all slippy. It depends on your floor; my floor is wooden and isn't slippery, but where I stayed with my latest puppy for a couple of months until she was old enough to travel, the floor was slippery, so I bought some non-slip rubber flooring which I laid over the slippy parts so she didn't hurt herself. I just wanted to address this comment about vaccinations: This isn't entirely true, actually. The way the vaccinations work doesn't mean it's better to get them out of the way as soon as possible; doing so may mean your puppy isn't actually covered. I would recommend any new puppy owner read this document by the WSAVA (World Small Animal Veterinary Association) to understand vaccination better: http://www.wsava.org/sites/default/files/WSAVA Owner Breeder Guidelines 14 October 2015 FINAL.pdf The section starting on page 25 explains it well and I've copied some of it here: The second key feature of the immune system of dogs and cats that impacts on vaccination is the process by which newborn animals are protected from infectious disease. Unlike in man where the newborn receives protective pre-formed antibodies from the mother by placental transfer, newborn pups and kittens (that have a more complex placental barrier than in man) must receive these maternal antibodies by taking in the ‘first milk’ or colostrum from the mother. These maternal antibodies are absorbed during the first 24 hours of life and provide systemic immune protection for the neonate during the first weeks of life whilst their own immune system is becoming established. Without this maternally-derived antibody (MDA) the neonatal animal will rapidly succumb to infection and may die. However, although essential for survival, the presence of MDA also prevents that young animal from making its own immune response – and in particular from responding to conventional vaccines. These maternal antibodies have a finite life span (defined by the ‘half life’) and so eventually degrade away allowing the young animal to replace MDA with antibodies that it produces itself. Only when the MDA has sufficiently degraded is that young pup or kitten able to generate its own 27 protective memory adaptive immune response to a vaccine. This is one of the reasons that we do not vaccinate pups and kittens for some weeks after they have been born. This situation becomes slightly more complex if one considers that within a litter of pups or kittens the different individuals will likely absorb different amounts of maternal colostrum. The stronger animals may receive relatively more MDA than a small or weaker littermate that is pushed to the ‘end of the line’ for colostral uptake. Essentially, this means that individual animals within a litter become capable of responding to vaccination at different times – depending upon when their MDA was sufficiently degraded to permit their own antibody response. The runt of the litter that received less colostrum might be capable of responding to vaccination at 8 weeks of age, whilst the more robust animals may still have persisting MDA blocking their own 28 immunity until 12 weeks of age. That is why we recommend the last dose of core vaccines for kittens and pups be given at 16 weeks of age or older. The vaccination schedules developed for pups and kittens therefore take into account this potential difference between littermates and between litters (as the antibody level for one dam may be dramatically different to another). Because we do not routinely test dams for antibody levels or measure the level of MDA in an individual pup or kitten, repeated vaccination is given (refer section below but generally starting at 8–9 weeks, with a second injection 2–4 weeks later and a third at 16 weeks or older). The runt of the litter may well respond to vaccination at 8 weeks (and is not harmed by receiving additional vaccination at 12 and 16 weeks), but the more robust littermate that gets more MDA may not be able to respond until 16 weeks of age. Furthermore, some entire litters born to a dam with a very high titred MDA (e.g. to CPV-2) have no pups in the litter that develop an immune response until they receive the dose of vaccine given at 16 weeks of age or older. The doses at 8 and 12 weeks will be completely blocked (see section on Vaccine Guidelines). The vaccination schedule consists of this initial series of injections with the immunological response occurring at either 8, 12 or 16 weeks in any one individual, but also, crucially, it includes revaccination at either 6 or 12 months of age to ‘catch’ the very occasional puppy or kitten that may have failed to respond to vaccination, even at 16 weeks of age. Pups and kittens will benefit from this 6 or 12 month revaccination as an important ‘safety measure’.
The very best puppy book I have ever read, and the only one I ever recommend to anyone any more, is Pippa Mattinson's Happy Puppy Handbook. It tells you everything you need to know about puppies, and how to have a loving, caring, bonded relationship, as well as how to train a well-socialized and happy dog!
Our first vaccinations were done by the breeder’s Vet at 7 weeks. Our vet will do the second set 4 weeks later in the 11th week, sometime next week for us, as RijL is now 10 weeks old. Up until then we basically have to carry him everywhere for socialization, and not have him running around in any place where a) there are a lot of other dogs running, or b) where there are dogs that are either very sick or without their up to date vaccinations. Since this is in the critical 8-12 week socialization period, we do in fact carry him everywhere to visit people and other dogs. He has already a good vaccination profile from his first shots. Of course, we do have to put him down briefly for Potty and Big Potty(which he gets a treat for doing, of course---now pretty much potties on command).
Has he been titre tested? As, if you read the above from WSAVA, you'll see that a puppy may not be covered against potentially deadly diseases unless he's vaccinated again later (16 weeks at the very least). Early vaccinations do not mean your puppy is safe - in fact, quite the opposite. Your puppy is less likely to be safe the earlier the vaccinations are completed.
...I'll just add it's never to early to start recall training - Total Recall is my bible (& lots of other people on here too). There is a section for puppies.
While I understand that process, I live in an area where there are not a lot of Vets, and my Vet does not do that. The hospital is one that has taken care of all my animals for the past 6 years, when I moved here in retirement. I re-read my post. At no place did I use the word SAFE or suggest that he was safe because he had the first set of vaccinations. In fact, I said the opposite. I said we had to pick him up and carry him everywhere for socialization. While there is a lot os discussion here and elsewhere about vaccinations, the bottom line is that we are all subject to the available veterinary services available where we live. After our second set of normal vaccinations, then we start of some of the more specific ones for our area such as LYME disease. I understand that one, as I’ve been bitten several times, and actually have chronic LYme disease. People who live in large cities have more options.
I never had a problem with that one. My puppy responded to his name, RijL, when we first used it at the breeder when he was five weeks old. It was and still is WEIRD.
Oh I'm so jealous you're getting a puppy. I'm dying for another!! It's lots of hard work but you sound really prepared! My main advice is just to enjoy them! It's so easy to feel overwhelmed and you don't appreciate how adorable they are at that age. That was my mistake and I'd give anything to have those days back. But everything always works out in the end so try and remember that Please show us lots of pics when you have them. We love puppy pics!!
Surely you could insist if you wanted? Give them the WSAVA guidelines and tell them you'd like to adhere to them in the best interests of your puppy? I also live in a place where my vet - as much as I love him and is the best in the country - probably wouldn't be my first choice if I lived in the UK. Some of the laws here mean I have to do things I'd otherwise rather not; yearly rabies vaccination springs to mind. That, I have to suck up and get on with it. It's the law. But I can also talk to him about research I've found and we discuss what we both feel is best for my animals. I trust him, but also know that vets can't always be 100% up to date with latest research about everything, which is why I go armed with papers for him to read, digest, and then discuss. If you don't want to do that, then that's fine, but for me, it's a no-brainer to follow the vaccination schedules advised by the WSAVA and I know for a fact that my vet appreciates both the level of care I give to my animals and also the opportunity to refresh his knowledge.
Our vets only do 2 lots of vaccinations and always have done. I know that you vaccinate for slightly different things in the US. In our semi-rural area we know an awful lot of the dogs (all healthy and vaccinated), so I am working on the basis of herd immunity. Didn't mean to start a slightly off topic discussion - sorry.
I second the ‘kibble only’ for treats in the first week or two. New pups are really susceptible to runny tummies and lots of different treats will mean you won’t easily be able to pinpoint the cause. Always feed treats from below, young pups don’t have a good cough reflex if a bit gets stuck.
Hi and welcome. Harley was my very first pup and the best decision I ever made. For a new pup owner I really do also recommend The Happy Puppy book by Pippa Mattinson. I recommend it to anyone even looking for a pup so they can read what to expect and also offers guidance on how to start training and what you need to know about certain breeds. As for sleeping, I tried the crate but my girl hated it at night. She went in fine when I went to work, but wanted to be with us when we were at home. She is now 4 years old and sleeps at the bottom of our bed. It is very much around what you want and what you are happy with. Please do ask any questions, you will always get really good advice and sympathy when it's a hard day.
Welcome I'm just going through the puppy phase at the moment did I say that labs never grow up lol my girl is just over 12 weeks old and has had her vaccination at 8 weeks and 10 weeks and her 1st walk on Saturday followed by some time over my sisters horse yard and farm (replacing some roofing today so lots of banging ect )and her face as she got to see a horse and all the smells puppy heaven
