Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Little heathen chews on everything.
I haven't had a puppy for 8 years and mostly just forgot what a monumental pain in the ass they are and the fact that they should line jungle traps with those !@#$ing teeth. Man those things are sharp. The baby boy loves him so when he's around, the boy gets to him first and kinda dominates the narrative. The baby girl, OTOH, has no idea what to do with him and he just plows right into her face and pisses her right off. And I've never had a puppy since I had children so a house full of baby/kid toys adds a whole new degree of difficulty that I didn't face with the 4 prior dogs.
He's....willful. But I don't think he quite understands that no matter how big he gets (and he's gonna get big), I'm still gonna be bigger. Rotty's are notorious for trying to buffalo folks and out-stubborn them but this isn't a battle he's gonna win. He'll try to ignore me here and there and it's just not working out for him. On the plus side - he's shockingly close to housebroken already. He's had one poop and one pee in the house since he got here but otherwise everything outside. 90% outdoors is a pretty good ratio. The trick will be teaching him to let us know when he needs out but with a couple older dogs in the house, he'll just end up on sequence with them and it'll be fine.
My 2 labs though, I'm starting to feel a little sorry for them. My 'younger' one was 100 mph until about a year ago and while he's still very playful, he's 8 and the energy doesn't stay up for as long as the puppy's does so he just starts to get exasperated. He growled at him last night and it's literally the first time I've ever heard him make a noise of any sort in anger. He'd played with the puppy for over an hour and was finally just done with him. The older boy is 14 and has no time for any of this shit - he gave the puppy a pretty snap on the second night and won't hesitate to snarl at him a little.
I kinda vacillate on what I think about that. My general rule with dogs is "let them figure out it; that's what they do..." but at the same time, virtually all behavior in dogs is learned. I'm not sure how excited I am about the possibility of him being 6-8 years old in his own right some day and giving the next puppy a similar grab and biting the damn things head clean off. Not sure there's much that can be done - I'm not gonna yell at the existing dogs for trying to tell the puppy that enough's enough.
It's gonna be a long couple months. Puppies are a pain in the ass, man.
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I went through the same thing with my oldest two dogs when we got our puppy 3 years ago. Brought in a 4 month old pit bull puppy who had all the energy in the world and just wanted to play with the other two dogs. Our 8 year old chihuahua dachshund mix played with him for a little while until she realized that he was bigger than her....and then she wanted nothing to do with him. Our 12 year old lab beagle mix instantly wanted zero to do with him and let him know right off the bat not to **** with her. The lab beagle mix is gone now and the dachshund chihuahua mix growls whenever the pit comes around. And it's hilarious because the pit has this look on his face....like...."seriously? Still pissed off at me?".