New puppy

[Tilda]

Hi, we have just got our new girl pup Tilly 2 weeks ago. Came on here to look for help! But I now realise she is completely normal and not half wild dog. She's mouthing, jumping, chewing etc but it seems we aren't alone  . Just wondering if anyone had any words of wisdom for us, regarding the training & calming of our fur baby for these next few weeks, till she's had all her jabs & we can go to puppy classes, anything that worked well or things that didn't. My 2 little girls love her but are a little bit nervous of her, as she's a whirling dervish 

[MIN]

hi and welcome to the club.
long time since I had a pup  but  advice will appear shortly from others. I will say though pups and small children do need supervision. When you see pup getting over friendly (they get boisterous and nippy when over tired)  She needs time out away in her own space . Start now with ground rules  and she and your girls will be best buddies for life.   
Look forward to hearing  Tilly's storys

[Tilda]

Thank you for taking the time to reply
Tilly & my girls are never left alone, they have taken to wearing wellies in the house as she is so jumpy! When she's jumping or mouthing we say a firm no, stand up cross our arms & turn our backs to her, but I'm not sure if it's part & parcel of the cocker breed or if she is just particular thick skinned but so far it's not working, it's like she has springs in her feet. During the day she is confined to the kitchen & we have baby gates on the doors leading off. This gives the girls space, the cat space ( who is disgusted with me!) & Tilly space, so they aren't crowding each other. Most of my time is spent in the kitchen anyway, and lifting small children over baby gates is doing my biceps the world of good! She has a crate that she sleeps in and goes in if I need to pop out. To be fair so far she's very good in the crate. We play with her in the house with her toys & in garden fetching balls and we've got toys where you put treats in & then she needs to work at it to get the treat out. She has the sweetest nature, is very loving & really is a little ray of sunshine, but she is a complete lunatic at the same time  I think we are going to try puppy school as it seems to come highly recommend. X

[BonnieScot]

I love stories of these little monsters when they first arrive!  And you do know that it's the law to post pictures of your new arrival?

The mouthing is totally normal and one of those things that you get really grumpy with until one day you've realised it's stopped. Bonnie's stopped once she'd started to get out to play, and then totally disappeared once she went to day care- I guess the other dogs put her firmly in her place. Ian Dunbar has some good videos on this- his view is that it's about teaching them bite inhibition.

In terms of the exuberance, it's why we all love cockers! You could have a look through some of the kiko-pup youtube videos for some help- there's definitely a jumping up one. I found Bonnie would be exasperating when she was tired, so some time in her crate would encourage her to sleep and that's what she needed. They need a lot of sleep, and like little toddlers, they don't always want to give in to it.

Anything you can do to tire her little brain will help- so clicker training, playing 'find it', puzzle toys or kongs. They can learn to do all sorts from a very young age, you just want to be the one deciding what she learns!

I also found it useful to try to think 'What is positive about this behaviour from Bonnie's perspective?'. Figuring out what's reinforcing about what she's doing is often the key to stopping it.

Anyway, you're making me all broody, despite all the challenges at the beginning, they're the best dogs ever in my view!

[Theo961]

Hello and welcome to COL.

Yes you will read many of our cry's for help when our fur babies were that age! Lol This site helped me keep my sanity in the early days. 

Looking forward to here all about Tilly and her adventures over the coming months, and more importantly lots of pictures for us to swoon over. 

Take care
Tracy & Reese x

[Tilda]

Hi & thank you so much for the advice & welcome. After a good nights sleep my sense of humour has now returned  reading through the comments has given me a light bulb moment. We play with her far to much & she's not been given much opportunity during the day to play on her own & keep herself busy.  So she is constantly looking for us, her play mates to play with her because that is now what she has become used to. So 3 balls of newspaper later, kitchen looks like we've had a newspaper snow storm & we have one very happy exhausted puppy. She's had a whale of a time ripping up, on her own. I have 2 happy children who got to eat breakfast without a puppy hanging off the end of a wellie & a very happy mummy who got to eat breakfast without having to remove said puppy from the end of small child's  Wellie over & over again & a very happy daddy who had  all the above going on & having to listen to me moaning, win win around! I'll look up the YouTube recommendations & find ways to keep her busy & thinking for herself. I've also after all this busyness this morning, crated her. She was starting to quiet down, so instead of letting her choose when to sleep, I've put her in and within minutes she had fallen asleep. I think perhaps there has been some over tired issues going on to, so I'm going to as best as I can give her more of a sleep/ play routine, a bit like when the kids were very little. So thank u again, I was starting to feel like a doggie mummy failure but with some good advice, I think we'll b ok xx

[Londongirl]

Hello, welcome and you've cracked it! Encourage hervto play by herself, and whisk her into bed when she gets tired for a proper sleep. I watched Henry's nap patterns when we first got him and developed a nap schedule that suited both of us. He would have 3-4 decent naps a day of between 45 mins and 1.5 hours and I planned things I needed to do puppy-free around those times. He was never one to voluntarily go to bed, so I used the clock. He always fell straight to sleep, so I knew my timings were right.

I remember standing on a kitchen chair trying to avoid a small pup hanging off the leg of my last pair of hole-free jeans. It's a VERY annoying habit, but does just disappear over time.

Cardboard also makes a great puppy amuser.

[Markr64]

Hello and welcome, have fun and enjoy the madness.

[MIN]

Hi & thank you so much for the advice & welcome. After a good nights sleep my sense of humour has now returned  reading through the comments has given me a light bulb moment. We play with her far to much & she's not been given much opportunity during the day to play on her own & keep herself busy.  So she is constantly looking for us, her play mates to play with her because that is now what she has become used to. So 3 balls of newspaper later, kitchen looks like we've had a newspaper snow storm & we have one very happy exhausted puppy. She's had a whale of a time ripping up, on her own. I have 2 happy children who got to eat breakfast without a puppy hanging off the end of a wellie & a very happy mummy who got to eat breakfast without having to remove said puppy from the end of small child's  Wellie over & over again & a very happy daddy who had  all the above going on & having to listen to me moaning, win win around! I'll look up the YouTube recommendations & find ways to keep her busy & thinking for herself. I've also after all this busyness this morning, crated her. She was starting to quiet down, so instead of letting her choose when to sleep, I've put her in and within minutes she had fallen asleep. I think perhaps there has been some over tired issues going on to, so I'm going to as best as I can give her more of a sleep/ play routine, a bit like when the kids were very little. So thank u again, I was starting to feel like a doggie mummy failure but with some good advice, I think we'll b ok xx

Its these light bulb moments that we try to inspire.    
Remember  this, your remedy, because soon a new newbie will be looking for this  type of advice   

[AlanT]

I have had several Terriers, but a Cocker is COMPLETELY different.

They are sensitive and easily develop nervous habits. They like to be BUSY.

Just once I gave my pup a good telling-off like you might with a Terrier. These just shrug off such treatment but the Cocker would not co-operate with me for about four-days.

All training needs reward and praise. Just ignore bad behaviour and this is boring so they give up.

They are bright and cause trouble if BORED.

Two things I do with mine that make a lot of difference to him. One is swimming the other is tracking and scent-work. I do about half-an-hour per day of this. There is a video on here showing this.

Mine is a 3-year old, full male and is coping with a new-born baby. This is not proving difficult.

[Tilda]

Honestly ours is so thick skinned, a firm no or telling off just isn't registering! I'm becoming concerned she will think her name is Tilly no, because we r saying no that much! She managed to corner our very patient cat earlier, it seems his patience has run out though & bopped her on the head, I'm think he might b the one to teach her manners & place as she was subdued after, for 5 mins anyway.

I'm really interested in the tracking & scent work as I can now see, why spaniels are so often used for sniffer dogs, she puts her nose down in the garden & doesn't much look up. Its like she's on the trail of something, which to her, I guess she is. Thank u I'll have a look at the videos.

I know all this will come to pass & your right at some point I'll be the one giving advice, even its to say don't go there (joking!!) And at some point in the future we'll look back at these day's as the golden ones & not the Marley & me's one that they r at the moment 

Once again thank u all so much for taking time to give advice. X

Congrats on the baby AlanT

[Tilda]

Oh and meant to say, I'd love to post pictures of her but can't work out how to 🙈 X

[AlanT]

Put your photos on a server. I use Flickr but others here use Photobucket.
The site will generate a link for you and you just paste it in here.

I never use NO. It's a complicated idea for a dog. You use the SAME word for lots of different situations.
You want the dog to make an abstraction that the same word applies to many things. This is HARD for them.

Say I want to stop barking.

I train a command like "speak" so the dog barks when I want.
And at the same time I train "calm".

Now it's easy, bark, stop barking.  Use the command and treat when you get the result you want.
This they find easy to grasp. They are just working for reward all the time.

It's actually useful to have the dog bark when you want. Suppose you hear a burglar!

Look in Videos for "Archie Finds a Ball".

[Patp]

Ooh welcome to the insane life of a cocker owner.  I agree with lots that have been said but have a couple of things also.  Clicker training is great but get the whole family involved however young - consistency is key.

If you feed Kibble throw your pups  breakfast on your lawn so they can search for it whilst you get on with your own breakfast.  Check the content of your food, some brands have a tendency  to make hyper puppies worse!

If all else fails, buy wine and forget about housework for a couple of years

[AlanT]

If you shout and make a fuss, like yelling NO, to them this is a GAME.
Your attention is a stimulus, a reward.

If they do wrong, turn away, ignore, keep quiet. No reward in this.

They don't do SENTENCES. "oh what a bad dog you are" is just attention, a game.

Just one clear word for each thing you want to train.
COME, AWAY, LEFT, RIGHT, LEAVE, TAKE, SIT, STAY, FIND, SPEAK, CALM.

Of course you can fuss them and whisper sweet nothings.

You don't train them NOT to wee in the house, you train them TO wee outside. Think about the difference.
One is an easy action, the other a complicated concept.