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leggyblondegrey

Just Whelped
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Newbie, be gentle

Newbie, be gentle (2/9)

  1. Hi all, my husband and I have had our 2yo boy a bit over a month. Bit of background: he is statuing a lot so we are only taking him on the same very short walk around the block about 4x a day until we start seeing a trainer in a couple of weeks. So it's not yet an option to tire him out with walks. We live in an apartment with no fenced yard so no romping around off leash either. We tried to play some keep away tossing his fav squeaky toy back and forth to each other on a nearby grassy patch on leash but he got possessive of the toy quite quickly and we decided it wasn't for us at this stage. The actual issue is that he has started getting really excitable in the evenings and when we come back from walks. Nice to see his personality come through but it has moved onto quite excited nipping/mouthing and jumping, and pretty much only on my husband who didn't do as much of the caretaking in the beginning due to work. Hubby tries yelping and turning away but something about his body language/timing is still reading as play to the dog and he doesn't stop. He doesn't put his mouth on me often at all but when he has and I have tried the yelping, it works - so he understands the signal if it's done right (unlike some dogs who get more riled up when you yelp). We want to redirect his mouth energy to something more appropriate like chews, but we also don't want to accidentally reward/reinforce the bad behaviour - what are peoples thoughts on this? Is it ok to ignore mouthing, wait until calmer, then give a chew? Should also mention he shows definite resource guarding with natural chews so it's not something we want to use too much unless we know we've got some time set aside where he can safely work on it and we don't need to try and take it away. Thanks!
  2. Thanks all! Appreciate the reassurance that it's normal and ok to let him figure it out. He's been sleeping fine in the hallway outside our room. Interestingly I found a small spot of what I think is old pee on our bedroom rug near where he used to sleep (hard to say it's pee for sure, no smell but just noticed it's slightly yellow). he hasn't had any accidents inside that we've seen and is v well housetrained, but maybe he did a small excited piddle when we didn't notice and then didn't want to sleep in the same spot. I've cleaned it up with enzyme cleaner and will see if it makes any difference although now I think he's happily gotten used to his routine in the hallway. And tbh the bedroom isn't massive so we haven't minded the extra space 😉
  3. Hi! First time grey- and dog-owner here, he's been with us just over a week and overall is a pretty confident and happy lad. He's been sleeping soundly in our bedroom in his own bed from day 1 and has slept perfectly through the night. He has a bed in the living room and another in the bedroom. 2 nights ago he refused to come into the bedroom and stayed in his living room bed. He has had no issue getting up in our personal space so far lol, he's not a nervous boy and in fact is a bit velcro and prefers to be in the same room as us so I found it pretty odd. I slept out there with him on the couch just in case he was doing it because he didn't feel well or something, since his last poo of the night was on the loose side. However he was fine. Last night he refused to come in again so I went back to our own bed and just left all the doors open so he could creep into our bedroom if he decided to, rather than end up whining at the door at some point, and again he stayed out all night. He'd even rather sleep on the hard floor in the hallway with no bed, than come into the bedroom. It's the height of summer where I am, and we had moved a standing fan into the bedroom a couple of nights before he stopped going in. He slept fine with it for a couple of nights but did look at it a lot. My theory is he finds it spooky. I removed it from the room and also switched the beds around so that his favourite comfy living room bed was in the bedroom (the one we had in the bedroom before is a little smaller and less fluffy). With the fan gone and the beds switched, I managed to coax him in gently with treats, but only a couple of feet in, then he ran back out even though he looked at the spot where the fan used to stand and saw it was gone. Is it weird that even with the spooky thing gone, he still won't go in? Any advice as to whether to desensitise/countercondition to the fan vs just put it away and not overwhelm him, since it's something we only need for maybe a month out of the year? I don't have any real concerns with him sleeping alone in the living room if it's not making him anxious out there - he's very good at asking to go out for P&P if he needs it and the room is very dogproof. But I would rather he come back to the bedroom just because I don't want him to be anxious about a whole part of the apartment, and I know it can be important for dogs to sleep near their "people". Thanks for reading, I know this was a long post, typical scaredy first time dog mumma!!
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