What it's like having a 6 month-old puppy

Lancashire Post

Puppy Diary: What it's like having a 6 month-old puppy

Transcript

00:00So I'm back with Ted the Cavapoo who is now six months old and I thought I'd do an update

00:16in my puppy diaries to let you know how things are going, what I've discovered, what I would

00:23change, what I would recommend in these early days of puppy ownership. So I would say that

00:32probably in the last puppy diaries that I did I might not have been completely honest

00:40with myself and other people. It was hard, like the first couple of months were tricky

00:47and demanding and thank you, I can see why people say that there's a crossover between

00:54puppies and children. They, you know, wee and poo in and the demands on your time,

01:03the restrictions when they can't go out because they haven't had their injections,

01:07the extra stresses and strains on your time, your energy, your money, all of those kind of

01:14things. But I do feel like we've turned the corner now. Ted has always been a really good boy,

01:23really great temperament but yeah it was the constant or it felt like constant pooing and

01:29barking to go outside that was quite draining for me initially. But it turned out that he wasn't

01:35very well and he had to have some extra worming tablets which seems to have settled him down so

01:43that's been a big help and now he's not going to the toilet very often but

01:49what I would say is if you're like us and you had no frame of reference and you don't know

01:55what's normal in terms of toileting, how often they should be going, what it should look like,

02:01speak to your vet, reach out to your vet because we didn't know that he wasn't meant to be going

02:06as often as he was, we didn't know that the consistency wasn't meant to be slimy. For us he

02:12was a puppy and he's a smaller breed so a smaller digestive system goes through his body more

02:18quickly. So yeah that would be a top recommendation for me. Something else I would say is doodles,

02:27he is a doodle, he's a half miniature poodle and half cavalier quinchal espanol, very very

02:36fussy eaters and now I was quite concerned about this but I have done some research and it seems

02:43that it's quite normal and I've been criticised for sitting on the floor and hand feeding him

02:49and changing various biscuits but they will eat when they're hungry enough but they do need some

02:57encouragement and apparently doodle breeds can get particularly bored after a while of certain

03:05proteins so meats, chicken flavours, turkey flavours, that kind of thing, apparently you do

03:12need to swap it up. What else is there? Grooming, I found it so difficult to find a groomer. I have

03:22now a lovely lady who is around the corner from me but I thought it'd be easy, I thought oh there's

03:29loads of dog groomers, I've seen boards everywhere. Well I rang up quite a few and quite a few were

03:36quite rude if I'm honest, you know who you are, not answering the phone, not getting back to you,

03:44just saying that they're not taking on new clients, they're not interested in this breed

03:48obviously because he has quite a curly dense, I believe it's hair and not fur because of the

03:55poodle but I stand to be corrected. So yeah anyway we're in with a lovely lady now and

04:01and he's had his first proper clipping so he had a few puppy sessions to get him used to

04:09the sensation, the noises, the lady clearing out from around his eyes, his paws, his hygiene areas

04:19but yeah he had to be clipped when he was six months old so that was £47 and he's booked

04:28in every six weeks so be aware of the cost because that can add up. Other than that though his crate

04:36training went really well from from day one and we have altered that a little bit because over

04:44Christmas there was a couple of times where he didn't get put in his crate overnight and he did

04:53end up sleeping on the bed. Now I know people will have their own views on that but actually

05:00he does still go in his crate if I'm going out but at night time he tends to sleep with us now

05:07or with my son and actually we enjoy that, that's one of the reasons that we wanted

05:13to get a dog was the companionship, was the cuddly teddy thing, he's called Ted

05:19and so yeah so actually people will have their views on that but I quite enjoy that.

05:27And the other thing to mention is people, everywhere we go on dog walks everyone's

05:33so friendly, everybody wants to chat, share their experiences, share their walks,

05:40their tips, that's been really nice to be part of that community to be honest and yeah dog

05:47walks in the winter have been interesting with his coat and he gets filthy so the only thing

05:53that other thing that I would say is stock up on things like towels for the car, wipes which are

06:01so expensive, dog wipes and lots of shampoo because you're going to need it.

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