After having childhood allergies that prevented me from having a dog for forty years, my husband and I adopted a black lab in October at 9 weeks old. To say taking care of a puppy is challenging is an under statement. I thought I would still have to deal with my allergies after we brought her home for our son but honestly there has been no sign of allergies since we brought her home. Yay!! We are just making it to the four month milestone and our vet is talking about changing her feeding schedule and spaying her. Yikes. I feel like we just got used to things. I know it is for the good of the pup though. I want to be a responsible dog owner, but I am such a ridiculous newbie. Luckily, my husband grew up with dogs, although he never raised one from a puppy himself. We are having fun learning everything together. I can't imagine what the vet must think after all my questions at our puppy appointments. In researching puppy feeding to transition her from three to two feedings a day, I came across this website. I decided to sign up on the forum so I can relieve the pressure from my vet and hopefully get some diverse opinions about raising our Labrador puppy. So, let the advice begin! Thanks to everyone for reading & adding your thoughts. We feed IAMS puppy food. She is being crate trained. She gets treats when she goes to the bathroom and for training. The vet said the first thing to cut is the treats, but what about the training? Train with kibble? Please forgive me if I'm not supposed to be asking so many questions here. Next, I figure out how to find what I need through the various forums and threads. Thank you. Sincerely, Jenn K.
Hi Jenn and welcome to you, your husband and your new dog. What is her name? Regarding your vet's recommendations - I think four months is a bit too early to move from three feeds to two, but you can certainly start making the lunchtime meal a bit smaller. Regarding cutting out treats - your vet is right that you need to be careful about over-feeding with treats, so you need to consider the treats as part of her daily food allowance. Yes, you can use kibble for treats, but you will probably need high-value treats for some aspects of training such as recall from distractions - here many of us on this forum have found cheese cubes, pieces of roast chicken, or similar very useful. Don't worry about asking questions; we are here to help! Best regards, Karen
You definitely need treats for training and while kibble will do the trick for thoroughly learnt behaviour, you need something scrumptious to train things like recall. If your vet is worried about your pup becoming overweight you can cut down quantity at meals instead of abandoning treats. I would still feed 3 meals a day too as puppies sometimes get upset stomachs if they eat too much in one go. Again if it's weight that's the issue you can feed less overall but still split it into 3 meals. It's lovely that you now can have a dog without allergic reactions.
Hi, Thanks. Yes, in all my excitement I forgot to mention her name is "Cally." My son decided on the unusual spelling. I appreciate your message. Okay, I was reading that 6 months seems to be more in line with the switch to two meals a day. My husband was also curious/wanted to try just a small meal at lunchtime for a few days/maybe a week or two. I'm not sure how much "overweight" she is, we can still feel her rib cage and between the ribs, but cannot see the last rib or two, which is something our vet said is important. He said we should be keeping her "lean." I have tried blueberries and banana just about 8 blueberries in a sitting or two slices of frozen banana, which the vet said shouldn't be a problem. He was definitely more focused on the treats, I guess. (We use Nutro, Organic apple flavored treats and were giving her just seven a day, what is recommended for a 15 pound puppy.) She is 25.8 pounds now. Um, also I'm not sure what recall is exactly, we have taught her "sit," "outside," and unfortunately, she has learned "no." That's another thing we went for a puppy consultation with a local trainer and he said to try not to say "no" to her, to only reward for good behavior but...well, the shoe chewing was a problem, we tried various things there. We are teaching her "release" for that. All of these things are hard to remember but we know we needed to be consistent so we came up with the commands and what we wanted them to mean.... So much to learn and to try to be good at all at once. And I have THREE KIDS!
Joy, thank you as well. I'm still just getting used to using this message board. Do calories matter then, should I be working from an overall calorie count? Or, I read one book that said to just one "serving" of food and put it aside for "treats" throughout the day. I must admit, I'm partial to the treats because I feel it reinforces her "potty habits" outside. Someone told me that my body probably changed during pregnancy and that may be why I am not allergic to dogs anymore...not sure about that.
Hello & welcome. Cally sounds lovely! You must feel like you are being bombarded with information. "Recall" is when you call your puppy back to you. It is a very important cue to get established - I'm a huge fan of the book Total Recall by Pippa Mattinson (forum owner!). I'd strongly recommend you have a look at it (buy it really, it merits re-reading at various stages of life). Our dog Coco came to us at 16 months with very little recall. I started from scratch, using the book, and he's not too bad at all now, though I do say so myself! I'm no puppy expert, but I think using kibble from her daily allowance should be fine for now.
Hello and a warm welcome to the forum. Where in the world are you? Training with treats is very powerful, so I'd agree with the others that you should continue to do it; just make sure you're not over-feeding. It's hard to say how much is the "right" amount, because it varies so much from dog to dog, so finding the right amount for your own dog is really important. You should be able to see her ribs quite clearly when she turns, sniffs hard, eats etc. If you can't, just try reducing the amount of food she gets by a quarter to a third. Labs generally seem to be pretty efficient at eking every calorie out of their food, so don't generally need anywhere near as much as it says on the feeding recommendations. As for reducing the number of meals, this really isn't something you have to do. My two are over two years and they still have three meals a day. They're chowing down on their lunchtime kongs as I type There's a lot of conflicting advice on whether and when to spay. There's no definitive "right" answer and it's becoming less clear that the health benefits are obvious. I had Willow spayed before her first season, but (maybe irrationally) I do regret it and will be keeping my next puppy (who is arriving in a few weeks) entire certainly through her first season and maybe beyond, depending on a few things. This article may help with your decision: http://www.thelabradorsite.com/should-you-spay-your-dog-a-look-at-pros-and-cons/
Welcome to you from Mags, pet black Lab Tatze and Guide Dog puppy Mollie (puppy number four) We do the pups training mostly with kibble from their food allowance but we also use dried fish cubes, which they adore. Mollie (10 weeks) will do anything for a fish treat! They are low cal, high value - I keep Tatze and the pups nice and slim, but Tatze's meals are pretty small - half what it says on the packet. She's on Skinner's field and trial, the pup is on Royal Canin.
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome! We are in Western New York, USA. It is VERY COLD here! I was so happy to see how much Cally loves the snow (as you can see in my avatar). I am sticking to treats, but we've also found a low calorie, high protein "training treat" that we will switch to and I am considering cooked chicken. (My husband has some reservations about using "people" food - he doesn't want her to beg or confuse her food and our food. I'm introducing things slowly (we just tried green beans) and using them strictly as treats as well. Unfortunately, we still have quite a few of the other "cookie" treats so we will keep using them sparingly and adjusting her food accordingly. My husband did know about the recall training and explain it to me after I saw the replies on this thread and I asked him about it. I now understand why the treats have to be "high-value." I do appreciate every piece of advice that you all have shared. The Iams puppy food says 3 1/4 c. and our vet wants us to keep it at 2 cups, so yes, that is way less than what the bag says. (Although, interestingly, on our second puppy visit we asked him how much to feed and he said - read the bag...then she became "overweight.") Oh well, I guess I was naïve and thought that my Vet knew everything. He is definitely a good vet, but I now I understand I have some choices as the pet owner.... I just want to make good informed decisions. As far as the spay, we are waiting at least until mid January for now. It is hard to think about taking care of her and keeping her calm during the holidays with three teenagers in my house. It is a bit of a circus here around the holidays because my kids love Christmas (and they are homeschooled). On another note, I feel like I have to ask about this too: This pup gets a lot of attention and is walked (or taken out for a bathroom break) around 9-10 times a day because there are five of us to rotate through the walks. I was surprised my mother (who does not own a dog, btw) still chastised me for keeping the pup in a crate for naps, sleeping, and feeding when she was here for our American Thanksgiving holiday. I thought we actually had her out of the crate quite a bit. I know there are many different opinions of crate training, but she is really in the crate for a total of roughly 7 and a 1/2 hours during the day never for more than 1 - 2 hours (she usually sleeps for 30-45 minutes of that) at any given time and then at night she sleeps from about 7pm to 5:30am or so...although we take her out and put her right back in after the 5:30am bathroom break until 7am when the rest of the house is awake. (Perhaps over the holiday we had her in a bit more because we were cooking and there were lots of people here...but not much more than that.) I guess I'm just looking for some opinions about cruelty versus necessity for crate use if anyone has them to share. Really, thank you all so much. I've read one book on dog training generally and then a magazine with information on Labs specifically and I know there is still so much to know about her. Jenn
I'm a bit confused by your question about the crate. You say she's in there 7 1/2 hours during the day - is that in addition to night time? If so, that's a total of 18 hours a day, which I would say is, yes, rather too much. I crate trained my puppies, and will my next, but the crate is used for keeping them safe and for naps. The rest of the time, they were out and interacting with me and my husband. Training, playing, learning to settle down, cuddles... all important social interaction. The only times they were in the crate and awake would be when I was specifically working on their crate training, or working individually with the other one, or if, as you'd have had over Thanksgiving, too much going on to be able to keep an eye on them. As well as their social needs, it's not good for their growing joints to be restricted in movement for so long. Maybe you could consider getting a pen arrangement so that you can assure she's still safe but she has more space to move around, especially as she gets bigger?
Thank you for answering my question. ...Okay, yes, I was totaling the time spent at different times during the day. We had been debating a pen set-up and I can see your point about her joints. We just moved her to a bit bigger crate because we read it should be big enough for her to stretch completely out too. I was surprised myself when I just sat down to total it all up that it could be up to as much as 7 1/2 hours in a day. I'm not sure it is ever really that much because it varies each day, but it could be if we were on a schedule. On days when my husband works from home he keeps her out of the crate for most of the day but when I am homeschooling my kids, we are in our homeschool room and only take breaks for her walks and some short training during the day depending on what school requires. It is almost impossible to have the dog with us because of the distraction and she doesn't settle down, just wants to chase the cats (we have two) around and play with their toys. Our trainer suggested feeding her in the crate, so she is in there for about twenty-thirty minutes for three meals a day. We take her out for a bathroom break/walk before each meal and then for four thirty minute walks outside each day, three times after eating and then one final walk at night before bed. She is in her crate for naps, about thirty to forty-five minutes three times a day right now, although I know that will be less as she gets older. Sometimes she falls asleep directly after eating so that accounts for longer time in the crate because we don't wake her up to go out for a walk, we just let her sleep and then take her out when she wakes up.... She is never in the crate for more than an 1-2 hours at a time without a break. When we take her out for a walk we also usually keep her out of the crate for playtime when we come back inside and as you say cuddles and training before returning her to her crate for her next nap or meal. She gets a long playtime first thing in the morning after her breakfast at 7am and then again at night after her 4:45pm to 5pm dinner. We do keep reading new things and changing our approach as we go. I think I will look for some kind of pen at our next visit to the pet store....
Perfectly understandable! It's a pretty steep learning curve - all we can do is try to do our best with the information available to us at the time
Oh, thank you. I've been reading about tethering so we are trying that today but in all the excitement my oldest just spilt water all over her computer...but we are keeping her out for now anyway. We'll just keep trying new things I guess.
It's been one month since my first post. Cally is doing really well. She is getting spayed today. We really waited as long as our vet would allow. Also, she is on two meals a day but mid-day she usually gets a Kong with apple or plain yogurt and blueberries. She also like Carrots and peanut butter. Our vet is always reminding us to keep her lean while her hips are growing so she is not over fed at all and we constantly watch her weight. She also learned how to sleep on a blanket so during the day she sleeps on her blanket instead of the kennel. She will always sleep overnight in the kennel, but I am happier now that she can stay out for more of the day. She still eats in her kennel and takes one-two naps in there each day. We use it for safety when we travel but her temperament is much improved and it gets to be less and less. We still love our Cally-girl so much! So glad we got a lab. She's such a nice girl.
