Frankie Mac
New Member
Hello
We have just been joined in the last 10 days by a new miniature Dachshund called Mustard. Only 11 weeks old so this is all very new for her (and us), hence the load of questions. For some background, she is still a week away from getting her final inoculation, so we are trying to keep her in the flat as much as possible. This makes it difficult for exercise and socialisation (especially with other dogs) which I am sure is contributing the issues we have.
- Biting: Two or three times a day she has her moments of "puppy madness" where she is very aggressive - growling, barking and lots of biting. We have tried small timeouts, distracting her with toys or treats, distracting her with training (sits, downs, etc), exercising her by running her up and down the hall, and "yelping" to show her the bites are painful for us. None of them will work for more than a couple of minutes and she is straight back into it. We obviously do not want to discipline her, but is there any ways that we can teach her that while she is only playing, we do not appreciate the blood and the scars on our fingers, faces and toes?
- Chew Toys: We have bought her a number of different chew toys, none of which she seems particularly interested in. She will chew them all for a minute or two, and then seemingly decide that they have no appeal for her. She will happily chew things that she shouldn't (paper, clothes, a plastic doorstop, shoes, etc) so we have tried to purchase toys that match their shape and texture, but no dice. Is it potentially a case of her having too many items, so being a bit spoilt? Is there anything we can do to try and entice her to be more interested in one specific item? I am sure it would help when trying to distract her from the biting.
- Sleeping: We cannot get her to sleep by herself yet, so one of us is spending the nights on a mattress on the floor with her. Everytime we try to get into bed, with her in her bed or in an (open) crate, she will just run around the bed crying until one of us joins her. We will do the full crate training exercises with her, but it is difficult without her having a favourite toy to placate her with. She sleeps well through the night, and has a couple of 1-2 hour sleeps during the day but we had read that puppies normally sleep around 18 hours a day which she is nowhere near. Is this a problem and do we need her to be sleeping more?
We have just been joined in the last 10 days by a new miniature Dachshund called Mustard. Only 11 weeks old so this is all very new for her (and us), hence the load of questions. For some background, she is still a week away from getting her final inoculation, so we are trying to keep her in the flat as much as possible. This makes it difficult for exercise and socialisation (especially with other dogs) which I am sure is contributing the issues we have.
- Biting: Two or three times a day she has her moments of "puppy madness" where she is very aggressive - growling, barking and lots of biting. We have tried small timeouts, distracting her with toys or treats, distracting her with training (sits, downs, etc), exercising her by running her up and down the hall, and "yelping" to show her the bites are painful for us. None of them will work for more than a couple of minutes and she is straight back into it. We obviously do not want to discipline her, but is there any ways that we can teach her that while she is only playing, we do not appreciate the blood and the scars on our fingers, faces and toes?
- Chew Toys: We have bought her a number of different chew toys, none of which she seems particularly interested in. She will chew them all for a minute or two, and then seemingly decide that they have no appeal for her. She will happily chew things that she shouldn't (paper, clothes, a plastic doorstop, shoes, etc) so we have tried to purchase toys that match their shape and texture, but no dice. Is it potentially a case of her having too many items, so being a bit spoilt? Is there anything we can do to try and entice her to be more interested in one specific item? I am sure it would help when trying to distract her from the biting.
- Sleeping: We cannot get her to sleep by herself yet, so one of us is spending the nights on a mattress on the floor with her. Everytime we try to get into bed, with her in her bed or in an (open) crate, she will just run around the bed crying until one of us joins her. We will do the full crate training exercises with her, but it is difficult without her having a favourite toy to placate her with. She sleeps well through the night, and has a couple of 1-2 hour sleeps during the day but we had read that puppies normally sleep around 18 hours a day which she is nowhere near. Is this a problem and do we need her to be sleeping more?