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Own one doodle, getting another today! Need advice!

5K views 30 replies 20 participants last post by  keywee 
#1 ·
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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#2 ·
As someone who dog sits a lot, I can answer some of your questions. I'm not an expert on Doodles or anything, I have one, but most dogs respond the same way.

Dogs don't have a sense of fairness. If you allow one on the furniture and not the other, the other dog doesn't know it's unfair to them not to be on the furniture. If you allow Marley to have run of the house and the puppy is in the crate, the puppy won't know any different.

Marley and the puppy will be fine together. You might be surprised at how rough a puppy will play. I've yet to see an adult dog play too rough with a pup. She might put it in it's place once it gets too rough with her, but rarely the other way around. Oh, the puppy might yelp once in a while, but it will be ok.

As for a carpeted home, keep the cleaner handy. Buy the case of paper towels and good luck!! Seriously, keep a close eye on the pup at all times, even when you think it's fine. That's when it will chose to go. Trust me!

I have found that Doodles adapt quickly to changing situations. Give her a couple of weeks, and Marely will have a new routine around the pup.

And leaving a pup home for a long period of time is not a good idea, but sometimes can't be avoided. You will have to clean up after it and potty training will be a little longer because it has learned to go in the crate. don't even think about trying a puppy pad. All it does is make a good toy!

Have fun with them!!
 
#3 ·
you are brave! It's probably going to be crazy at first, but I bet in a week you wouldn't trade it for the world.

Here are some of my thoughts on housebreaking....
We didn't crate our puppy (now 18 months) either because my husband, like you, was home enough during the day to be extremly dilligent with taking her out. We got her at 12 weeks and it took us about a week to housebreak her. Even at that age she never once went #2 in the house. I'm sure you've heard to never scold a puppy for going in the house (unless you see her in the act) and praise, praise, praise everytime she even farts outside :oops: . Trust me, we practically threw a party everytime she went outside until she was 6 months old and she loved it.

Good luck! I can't wait to have 2 doodles!
 
#4 ·
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?
 
#5 ·
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.
 
#6 ·
Good luck and make sure you post pictures - lots of them

I'm sure Marley will be find providing she still gets lots of love and attention

Do you live close enough to go home for lunch and take the dogs outside?
If not - a trusting friend or neighbor who woudl be willing to take them out for a run once or twice a day?
 
#7 ·
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.
 
#8 ·
Despite our best efforts to avoid making Napa stay home for prolonged periods of time, Fridays were unavoidable. He's home for 5 hrs, typically. It's always a rough day, but neither one of us can really come home. He makes it though, as well as at night, without any issues. But he's also almost 5 months old.

But, in this topic, there were many good ideas for helping a puppy through a long day. Puppy Alone Time

Good luck!
 
#9 ·
Congratulations on your new addition :)

Ok so we have 2 doodles and both work full time (Mon-Fri). We got Dexter at 8 weeks. We made a daily trip home at lunch and he learned to adjust. At 6 mos we cut out the trip. If your puppy is only home for 1 day he should be fine. We used an xpen to contain him to a portion of the kitchen. We would leave a pee pad down for him and he learned to use it. It set us back a bit w/housetraining, but we really didn't have any other options.

I would keep Marley and your new puppy out of sight of each other while you're not there. But I wouldn't drastically alter Marley's routine. We crate Kirby and keep Dex in the basement outside of the crate. Like someone said, Kirby doesn't seem jealous or anything like that. In addition, Dex comes up on the couch where Kirby was trained to not go on furnature and doesn't seem to want to do so.

Dexter shows some signs of jealousy of Kirby, but overall he likes him and likes to have someone to play with. The jealousy is over our attention we pay to Kirby - but it's nothing major (just some crying). They'll be great and I hope to see lots of photos!!
 
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#10 ·
Maya is 5 months old today and I would not say that she is house broke yet. She knows to go outside but she doesn't know how to let me know she has to go outside yet. I take her out every couple hours.

Yes I would leave the crate in the closed off area. When I am not home during the day I put Maya in the garage and there is a back door that stays open so she can go into the yard. I put a crate in the garage for her and she likes it.

Also when I am gone all day I have a pet sitter come by and check on her and play with her. I found my through an ad in the local pets for adoption magazine. I pay about $15 per visit (1/2 hour) but it is worth it for me. My baby has some human contact during the day when I can't be there.
 
#11 ·
HI elh1015...welcome and CONGRATS!

1. Max our F1 labradoodle was 7mos old when we brought home our 2nd doodle Peanut who was only 9 weeks old (last Feb 2006)

WE found that crating Peanut was good for NAPS, potty training, and at night time we put her crate next to our bed while letting Max sleep on the end of our bed

2. Max would get overexcited and needed watching too, he didn't hurt Peanut just that he didn't know when to stop playing hahahhaaa and calmed down a few weeks later

3. I do NOT crate them together as IMO I find they should have some separate time. Also we still do one on one's with both of them

4. Max and Peanut were on different schedules except for eating, it worked out just fine :D

5. OH i did have to monitor them eating ...so Peanut was trained in a matter of a week to SIT and wait to eat until I say "OK" which max already knew. It TREMENDOUSLY helped and they didn't eat each others food.

I also found tethering Peanut to us in the beginning also helped in monitoring activity, play times, potty training and so Peanut also didn't get into anything harmful.

to this day, they are so close and play 24/7.....CONGRATS once again
 
#13 ·
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-
 
#14 ·
OH MY GOSH!! OSKY IS ADORABLE!
he looks like a stuffed animal!

Hang in there.....it sounds like you are doing ok, all things considered. I have unfortunately seen more progress from corrections on mistakes in housebreaking, than I have when I am consistent in crating. So go with whatever works!

There's adjustments everywhere. Hope you get some sleep!
 
#15 ·
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!
 
#20 ·
those photos are absoultely adorable. your new puppy is so cute!!!

Marley is probably so overly excited and probably a little bit of jealousy mixed in. Dexter had 2 days where he threw up all his food 3x immediately after we got Kirby. We took him to the vet who said the extreme change for him probably got his belly all worked up.

We have the barking issues sometimes too. Mostly because Dex is jealous of something concerning Kirby (last night he wanted Kirby's kong even though he had a perfectly good kong of his own - after 2 minutes I took away both kongs :twisted: ). I think Marley just needs some time to get used to little Osky. good luck :)
 
#22 ·
wowie!! Osky is simply the most adorable little doodle puppy and looks like stuffed animal come to life!!!
i love that last picture...so sweet

congrats !!!! :D
 
#25 ·
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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