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New puppy owner - help!

1K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  Rab1 
#1 ·
Hi,

Our 8 week old pup will arrive shortly and am trying to prepare as best I can. Have read through a lot on this forum which has been so useful. Questions I still have are:

1) shall I put pup in a box in my bedroom for the first few weeks to sleep at night or downstairs from the start?
2) to use a crate or plastic bed at the beginning?
3) how to find a good dog training class?
4) I didn’t ask about the mum and dads hip and eye scores - should I do this now?
5) how to toilet train?

Any advice appreciated please!

Thanks.
 
#2 ·
Hi Rab1, are you in the UK?

I'm about to add another pup, she'll be in a crate at the foot of my bed until she's sleeping through the night, my big old girl comes up to bed with me as well, my other dogs will be in the dog/utility room overnight as normal. I use a crate as it's good to get dogs used to them, if ever you have any need for crate rest, so from a dog being poorly, injured or after an operation etc, then they are incredibly useful.

In the UK we use the BVA health testing schemes, so hip scores, elbow grades and BVA eye certificates. And at least one dog should be DNA tested and clear for prcd-PRA, CNM, EIC, HNPK and possibly SD2. Some of those genetic conditions are more prevalent in certain lines, but so easy and cheap to test for, so there's no excuse. Hip scores should be around or below the breed mean standard, or BMS, which is currently 11.5, and the median is 9. Elbow grades should be 0, and both parents should also have a current, clear BVA eye certificate. This is done by a specialist ophthalmic vet. If one parent is clear for the other genetic conditions, then the pup can't be affected. But if the genetic tests aren't done, or one is a carrier then the pup could go on to develop one of these conditions.

The problem is, if you haven't already asked, and you've become attached to the pup you've chosen, what are you going to do? If there aren't any health tests in place, realistically, you shouldn't support this sort of breeder. But most people can't bring themselves to walk away from a pup, and think they are in fact somehow rescuing it. In reality, once that breeder sells all the pups and knows they can without doing the health tests, they'll just do it again, and more pups will be bred without health tests in place.

Good luck, I hope the breeder has done the health tests in which case it will be much simpler.
 
#3 ·
Forgot to say, toilet training is just time and patience, encourage them to toilet where you want them to go, obviously they can't go out and about until their second jabs have taken effect. When they pee/poop where you want them to, start associating a phrase, I use 'busy'. They pretty much want to pee/poop after waking, eating, a bit of a run around, and so on. You can usually spot the behaviour before they squat to pee, some circle before a poop as well.
 
#4 ·
Tarimoor has just about covered it.

As to crates. I'm old, and when I started there were no such thing. I never started using one until I had the kitchen floor destroyed by two consecutive pups. I now always use one for the first year and the pups seem to like it. Unlike Tarimoor, I don't have my pups in my bedroom, They start in the kitchen, where they will sleep throughout their lives.
 
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