Then extend it to 4am and see if he can hold it. Then try 5 am...
He might just surprise you with being able to hold it all night.

 

I have been extending Mandalays potty times during the night by 30 minutes. When she started having accidents in the crate at night I went back 30 minutes for a few more days and then added 15 minutes. Sometimes I wake her up to get her out and sometimes she starts in just minutes before the alarm goes off.

 

We have found that the stupidest thing worked for CJ and his mouthing. We stop petting, put up our hand like a stop sign and say stop. He stops!! Can you believe it? A stop sign with my hand and saying stop. Who would have thunk it.

 

KCandMace,

Well we tried it two days ago and he held it until 6 in the morning! Thanks for encouraging me to try it. Now I can get a full night's rest.

 

Congrats.

I had to adjust the pup's collars today... Man do they grow fast!

I just need to teach them to catch the flies for me. We live out in the country, like farm country with cows in, yes IN, our town. I killed at least 10 big fat ones yesterday! UGH

 

Hi!
I have a 13 week old. Try a radio on low at night for a few nights - keeps the pup company. NO WATER after 7:30 pm or you will never get housebreaking down. I stop water at 7:30- 8:00pm and he sleeps thru the night NO ACCIDENTS! We got the pup together with his sister GSD who is 2yrs. old several weeks ago thru the trainer and they are wonderful together! GOOD LUCK!
WE ARE IN LOVE WITH OUR PUP!
Diane

 

OK, Jackson is back from the vet...three months old and weighs 27 pounds....doc said that was a healthy weight for him, but he still seems a little thin to me.

 

The boys went to the vet today for shots. At almost 13 weeks they are 18 and 20 pounds. I didn't see the vet. They are to cheap here for a vet to see each animal so some E-3 soldier gave the boys their shots and Rex his microchip. I really wish I could afford to see a German vet for each visit.

 

Our GSD puppy will be 18 weeks old tommorrow. She is doing great. As far as training, she was house broken in a day or two, a couple accidents on my part of not getting her out in time. We have done some light obedience training with her and besides "go potty" she knows sitz, platz, steh, hier, and crate (time to go in your crate). She sleeps a lot during the day when I am at work. Her typical routine is awake at 5:30AM for potty and breakfast, then I take her for an hour walk to the park with some ball fetching and playing with some other dogs if they are there. That pretty much tires her out until the afternoon, she goes out a few times with my wife during the day, and has all the water she wants, but is pretty much in the house. She likes to go for walks, but lately she has started plopping down sometimes on the way the park and I have to coax her to get up and keep going. She just stares at me testing my patience. If I keep walking and don't look back she will run up to keep up with me. She is great at the park retrieving her ball. If she gets some good scent she might be distracted and forgets to bring the ball back. In the evening after dinner I usually take her out for another walk, then she is pooped out for the night. On weekends I take her out a lot to differant places to encounter differant situations, sounds, dogs and people. Sometimes she is funny and will bark at silliest things like a plastic bag waving in the wind or a bright garbage bag, or the neighbors bright green motorcycle. I also take her too Schutzhund club every two weeks where she is just working on prey drive and gets to meet up with some of the other GSDs. She loves doing that. I also work on her prey drive with her at home every few days for a few minutes. She eats twice a day and looks lean but strong weighing 42 pounds. She used to bite a lot when we first got her but now she is pretty good about it. She also is pretty vocal with her noisy toys and loves to chew on a rawhide like bone thing especially since she is teething. She lost her first tooth last week. Her favorite playmate is a 3 year old GSD down the street from us who tolerates all of her running around, and under her. She is a lot of work, but its all fun for me and the family.

 

Ace is almost 3 months old now. I am having trouble house training him. He will be in the outside pen for an hour and a half, when he comes in he pees and poops. It is like he won't do it out side. What do I need to do? He is also still biting. Suggestions please.

 

Almost three months old...is like, 11 weeks old. That's still a tiny baby. I'm not sure how long you've been actively housetraining, but I think you might be expecting too much too quickly.

when he's outside for an hour and a half--are you out there with him--to praise him when he does go?

My routine for housebreaking is this: when the pup is indoors, he is either in a crate or next to me, being watched like a hawk. Pup goes outside every hour, and after waking, playing, eating, or drinking.

If he eliminates outside, he gets lavish praise, and then we go back inside.

Repeat 500 times.

 

Hey all,

Great thread.

Our WGSD is now almost 4 and a half months. I weighed him yesterday and he is 46(!) pounds, man is he growing fast. People are already starting to cross the street when I have him outside, I don't blame them though since he still enjoys using those razorsharp teeth on human skin.

From the second day he has never gone potty inside and he holds all night with no problems (I do work from home and he has the opportunity to go to the backyard when he wants during the day).

He knows come / sit / down / stay / up / shake / to your place / sit before crossing the street. He does everything fine inside and outside if there are no distractions (or if I "force" him to look at me).

Where I live (argentina) there is a LOT of stray dogs and I used to be very afraid of letting my dog meet them, but my vet said it was ok (he has all his shots, including rabies now) so I now I am actually using the strays as socializing oportunities. By now we know most of them and they are actually really nice and well behaved, I guess they have to be to survive in the streets.

Things we are working on:

- Focus and attention outside
One of the things I do is I take loads of toys to the park where there are loads of dogs, people and noise and play - working on breaking that "locked" look he gets when he sees something interesting (kid running / another dog / birds etc). Also following the tips given to me in another thread: http://www.germanshepherds.com/forum/ubb...true#Post715798

- No more nipping (and that means clothes and bags as well)
Still doing the "ouch" thing, but I think I am going to try a waterbottle to see if that gives more effect. When he bites me jeans and I go ouch he's like; jee, I didn't even touch you!

- No jumping on ppl
This is a hard one as I let anyone that wants pet him and "dog-ppl" enjoys when a puppy jumps on them, and I still find it rude to say to strangers they have to ignore him.

- Roll over (for fun)
From a down I make a rolling movement infront of his face with a hand full of treats until he rolls over. He currently does 3/4 of a roll so I reckon in a week more we'll be there.

- No barking when he can't do what he wants.
I am thinking of making him bark on command and from there move on to shut up but I am not sure how to do this yet.

Then of course there's trying to control him when he gets the puppy zoombies at the wrong place/time but I am not sure it's even worth trying

This turned out to be longer than expected, well well

Cheers,

-Thomas-

 

AmandaH: When I couldn't get mine to go anywhere else than the backyard (he would always wait until we got home if we were outside) my vet told me to bring some paper with his urine on (ie: his smell) and put it where I wanted him to go. So I brought some to the park, waited until I thought it was time and put the piece of paper down, he smelled it and went straight away.

 

Originally Posted By: Everett54

Originally Posted By: GSD07

You move towards him and he runs away, what a fun game!! He doesn't know anything yet, even the basic commands, so please don't be to hard on him and yourself. You are imprinting him right now...

Exactly right. You want to use word association with the actions you want to imprint. So instead of....

Quote:If I move toward him with a firm "come" he gives me a woof and scampers off..

Change that firm come to a happy come and move/run away. And when he starts chasing you... "Good come!!"

You can also have a toy in your hand and start playing with it (instead of the pupy) while you move away. Again when he starts toward you -- "Good come"

I want to stress the importance of this post with one of my experiences. My pup is now 6 months old - but when he was
only three months, my son took him outside off leash and when
Failte decided to investigate a little further then normal my son
yelled for him to come back. His tone of voice I guess scared the
pup and he simply ran the other way. Since there is lots of bush behind he was out of sight almost immediately.
I work 40 minutes away so when my son called me and by the time I got home it was more then an hour gone. I drove around the back road once before parking - so there is another 15 minutes.
I grabbed the leash and walked into the bush calling Failte, here pup pup, woo hoo, here pup pup in as happy and carefree voice as
I could. About 20 minutes I heard crashing in the bush behind and
when I turned around Failte stopped - I could see four little brown legs through the trees. He still wasn't sure if he was in trouble or not - but I bent down and called Good puppy, come puppy in a really happy tone and when he came he got all the praise he could get. After all, he came when he was called so he did what he was told.

If I had not been as carefree sounding (even though I was in a complete and utter panic inside, I could have puked easily enough)
then I am positive that I would never had gotten him back.

You can't give them **** for running, only praise when they come when called as that is what they remember. This is too important
and that poor pup could have been lost in the bush all night at the very least - coyotes could have gotten him or someone taken him if he survived the night in the bush.

 

Sounds like things are going great so far!

Originally Posted By: thor wgsd- No jumping on ppl
This is a hard one as I let anyone that wants pet him and "dog-ppl" enjoys when a puppy jumps on them, and I still find it rude to say to strangers they have to ignore him.

If you're worried about telling people to ignore him and sounding rude, how about approaching it in a different way? Tell them that you're trying to discourage your puppy from jumping up and are trying to teach him how to greet people politely. Ask them if they'd like to help. And then instruct them that as long as he's sitting they can move towards him. If he gets up they should stop and wait for you to put him back in a sit.

I've used kids in the neighborhood to help me train my dogs, and they're always happy to help. Even if it's just to keep doing whatever they're doing while I use them as a distraction for focus work - riding a bike or a skateboard, tossing a ball around, I always thank them for helping me train. I think most people would appreciate that you're working towards having a well mannered dog, and wouldn't mind taking a few minutes to help you either.

 

Originally Posted By: Luca_stl

Originally Posted By: AmandaHAce is almost 3 months old now. I am having trouble house training him. He will be in the outside pen for an hour and a half, when he comes in he pees and poops. It is like he won't do it out side. What do I need to do? He is also still biting. Suggestions please.

Almost three months old...is like, 11 weeks old. That's still a tiny baby. I'm not sure how long you've been actively housetraining, but I think you might be expecting too much too quickly.

when he's outside for an hour and a half--are you out there with him--to praise him when he does go?

My routine for housebreaking is this: when the pup is indoors, he is either in a crate or next to me, being watched like a hawk. Pup goes outside every hour, and after waking, playing, eating, or drinking.

If he eliminates outside, he gets lavish praise, and then we go back inside.

Repeat 500 times.

In addition to what Tracy said:

One thing I have going on with Lancer (9 weeks old) and use to our mutual advantage is that he does not want to potty near his living/playing areas. This is one thing that may be going on with your puppy. If he is viewing the pen as his living/playing area, then he may want to eliminate elsewhere. Are you giving him some time and a chance to explore an area away from the pen to potty before bringing him indoors? If you are bringing him straight into the house, then maybe (from his viewpoint) he has not had a real chance to potty.

Lancer is only allowed a small amount (time and area) of freedom in the house and that is only right after he has gone to the bathroom outside.

 

Our pup is 12 weeks old. He seems to sleep A LOT!!!! He runs around, plays, torchures the kids with his nipping for a short period of time. Then back to sleep. Everyone keeps saying how skinny he is. He is about 28 lbs. His appetite hasn't been that good. His ears were up now one is down, and has no signs of going up in the near future. He does see the vet this week. Not sure if this is normal for a puppy or not. How much should he be sleeping?

 

Hello All,

Kaiser is 12 weeks old and I am not sure how much he weighs. He goes back to the Vet this week. He weighed 13lbs at 9 weeks. I am thinking he is around 20-25lbs(does this sound right)
He is a terrific puppy. He is pretty much house broken. He usually wines by the back door when he needs to go out. He can sit, lay, stay, heel on and off lead. He comes when called. All commands are rewarded with Food and physical praise.
In the house he is exceptional. There are about 30 minutes collectively throughout the day where he is a biting terror.
We have started time outs and that seems to work. I am also teaching him kisses with reward to keep him from nipping.
My children are very good with him... but he seems to pick on my 2 year old alot. She is about his height when on his hind legs.. He is constantly nipping at her and biting her little arms and belly.
She of coarse crys but that doesnt deter him.
I have tried redirection, I have tried timeouts. I think he thinks she is a playtoy.
Yesterday Kaiser was enjoying a Kong bone thing and the kids were sitting next to him and all of a sudden he got aggressive. I had never seen it before but now i know what to look for. I informed the kids that they had to leave the pup alone while he was eating. That it was instinctual.
Regardless it scared the poo out of me.
Other than these minor things we are super happy with our pup!!

Oh and we feed him Science diet puppy for large breeds.
My vet told me to only feed him twice a day and the bag says only 2 1/2 cups a day. Does this sound right? All I know is he is starving in the morning and night time. And I also feed him about a cup of kibble during training times...

 

Originally Posted By: AmandaHAce is almost 3 months old now. I am having trouble house training him. He will be in the outside pen for an hour and a half, when he comes in he pees and poops. It is like he won't do it out side. What do I need to do? He is also still biting. Suggestions please.

Mine too is 3 months and 30 lbs. He's going to be pretty good size. My suggestion on the potty training, use a 4 foot lead and walk with him while he is trying to go. I used potty as the command word first, now we've moved onto pee & poop.

This worked wonders for me, since my backyard is not fenced as of yet. Even if it was, I'd probably still use this method. Cause he gets instant reward once he goes, which tells him "I did this...it means I get rewarded with praise." Cause their attention span is short at such a young age, and the power of repetition works wonders.