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Own one doodle, getting another today! Need advice!

4114 Views 30 Replies 20 Participants Last post by  keywee
I'll try to keep this short.
We are probably crazy, but tonight we pick up a new doodle puppy. It happens to be free and was offered up to us and I couldn't resist. The basic story is that the breeder (hobby breeder, this pup is from her 4th litter) had this puppy leftover after it's sale fell through. She planned to keep him but then had a relative fall ill that she will need to help care for. She doesn't want/'have the time to go through her advertising and screening process for a new sale of him and so she put the word out to some friends. She is the friend of my friend who immediately thought of us since we already have a doodle. He is an Australian Labradoodle, cream with apricot highlights. Oh my is he cute!!

So...Marley (our current doodle) is an F1 that we re-homed from someone at 11 months old and she's now 23 months. She's got the typically nutty doodle traits, but has settled into a nice routine and can stay inside the house alone when we are all not home 2 days a week and doesn't get herself into too much trouble.

This will be our first experience with a puppy. I will need a lot of guidence from all of you experts. My overall concern is just how to integrate this tiny puppy with an adult dog especially when there will be some times each week that they are alone at home. Here are some of my questions-

1. Do we need to keep Marley and the new puppy (not yet named) mostly seperated? I would think they should meet, he's 9 weeks and his siblings left home last week and there are other dogs (his parents plus another) in his current home, so he's been around other dogs, but I don't know if Marley should really play with him too much. (He has had his first round of shots.) I'm just nervous that Marley will be beside herself with excitement to have another doggy in the house and play too rough with him and bother him or somehow get him sick. Or get nutty being seperated from him within the house. I assuming I should use the same consideration for a new puppy just like an infant child.

2. Marley's previous owner did not crate train. She learned to go to her bed and learned all the basic commands and was housebroken. In our house she has her bed, but has freedom at night to roam the house and generally sleeps on the floor next to our daughter's bed or on the foot of her bed. Like most doodles, she just needs to be near someone and give/receive love. The downside to this is she's often not ready to settle into bed until midnight or later and wants in and out of the house a few times before settling down. However we are getting a crate for the puppy and plan to crate train him. I'm just wondering if it's doable when Marley has a different routine? We wouldn't mind crate training Marley too, but she's so used to sleeping with our daughter I don't know how realistic it is to re-train her.

3. Our house is mostly carpet. I'm hoping to proactively minimize the accidents and will be diligent about potty breaks outside. With such a tiny puppy, do we keep him contained in a space using baby gates right now? I can't imagine him roaming the house at this stage, but there's a good section of our kitchen/breakfast nook we can close off with baby gates or even our master bathroom. And if we keep him in the bathroom, we can shut the bedroom door and keep Marley totally out of sight if that is what is best for both. Also, 2 days a week I'm at work so he would be inside all day. There's no one to let him out and neither of us work close by to come home at lunch. Is this a total problem? Marley has learned to control herself so I'm assuming we can eventually reach that with the puppy too.

Thanks in advance for the advice!!
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Thank you!
I had read that you should not crate a puppy all day, so I planned to just use a baby gate to give him a portion of safe (and easy to clean) space in the house while away. I thought I would try this while home to see how much it might (or might not) make Marley nuts to be seperated from him. Should I have the crate within that space so he can go inside in and out of that too?
Seriously? It only took that long? My expectation is that it would take months. I have no clue about this. However he is younger, he'll be 10 weeks later this week and the breeder said she's been taking him out every hour but it's been a bit early to really have him trained. So I would assume it's going to be a few weeks.

I just realized I will have to get a bag of treats suitable for puppies, the big biscuts we have for Marley won't cut it.
I had definately been thinking about how we must remember to not be too over the moon over the new pup and that Marley is still our girl. I think more walks and more frequent dog park trips will be the key to showing her love.
Unfortunately we don't really have someone we could ask to check on the puppy on the weekdays. Neither of us work close by to come home during the day either. It will only be one day this week that he'll be alone with no break and then not again until Monday next week so maybe we will make some progress in the span of days that we're home.
3
I am functioning with little sleep. The few sporatic hours I got were on our recliner. And it's not because of the puppy (who is now officially named Osky) but because of Marley who was totally beside herself all night barking at me and Osky. I assume she was telling us, "how dare you sleep?!" "Are you nuts?!?" "Let's Play!"
Osky would have liked to have slept more. And so would I.
Marley had 3 episodes of subbmissive peeing when we first got home. I had anticipated that so we had them meet in the back yard. She peed once there. Then did it twice more inside the house a little while later. :(
The crate training is not taking off that quickly. Osky was very unwilling to go inside and when he did he cried and barked non-stop. Because it was evening time and basically the first try I didn't think it would work to start out with trying overnight. So he slept on my lap...on the recliner. As much as I tried to have Marley go to bed in her usual spot with our oldest, she couldn't stand to be away from the "action". Any suggestions?
There is peace right now as they both are snoozing, away from eachother but in the same room. They do run around and play well, which is why they are napping right now.

Here is a pic of Osky that had been emailed out by his breeder


This one is from last night-


And this one I took a few minutes ago and basically forced them together-
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Thank you! He just melts my heart.
He is an Australian doodle and in looking through the paperwork from the breeder, he comes from very well bred parents that she purchased from a breeder in Australia. She included copies of their eye and hip tests.
I consider ourselves to be very lucky to have him. Albeit crazy too!
Thank you all for the compliments and advice!


And I must note a correction that my husband pointed out to me. The correct spelling is Oski. He is named after the UC Berkeley California Bear mascot, Oski.

So I stand corrected....and Osky is now Oski. :D
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