Christine's Tips on Raising Your Puppy

Last modified: June 2, 2002 

(Visit our puppies Cooper , K'Ehleyr, and Lola)

Thanks to all the resources available to me (including tons of web pages!) I've collected and used successfully a lot of great information. Here are some tips that I can share with you about things that worked, and things that didn't.

• What worked
• What didn't work
• Training and Classes
• Supplies we bought
• Resources

What worked

The toys Cooper likes best are woobies (soft toys) with squeakers in them, braided ropes, frisbees. Sometimes it takes time for them to grow into a particular toy. He started out liking just the soft squeaky toys, then as he got older started appreciating the Kong, Buster Cube, and other more "sophisticated" toys.

Mail-order
Definitely do mail-order if possible. You can save so much money especially at the beginning when you have to buy a ton of stuff. The ones I've ordered from are:

• Foster & Smith
• The Dog's Outfitter (great prices! I get my prescription Heartgard here)
• New England Serum Company
• J and J Dog Supply (great leashes and training equipment!)
• Smith-Morrow for super-duper-quality leashes
• Boomerang Tags for ID tags
• dogstuff.com (one of our favorites)

Housebreaking
Crate training is best-- most everyone says that these days. We didn't do full-blown crate training because we wanted our pup to have a little more room, but as a result he didn't get housetrained as fast as we would have liked. We're in a house with a yard, and we wanted him to eliminate outside in a specific area. He was pretty good for the most part, but when he was feeling lazy he would just go in the house. So anyway, the miracle cure-- at least it's an interesting experiment to try. It worked with two of my dogs now, so there must be something to it. Go on vacation! Take your dog with you-- somewhere in nature where they either have to or prefer to eliminate outside. For the first dog we vacationed in the desert (with a rented motorhome) for a week, and for the second dog we were in a lakeside cabin for just over a week. When we got back, the dog was totally housebroken.

As for what else we did for house-breaking, while we were home we set up an exercise pen in the kitchen attached to an open crate. At night we kept the pup in a closed crate in the bedroom. When we weren't home we kept the pup in 2 exercise pens linked together on the patio in the backyard (with a crate in it). We also put a kid's hard plastic wading pool in there for those hot days (it turns out our pup pees in it), and also a piece of cardboard primed with housebreaking drops (and weighted down with bricks) for when he needs to go. We tried to put part of the ex-pen over a dirt area instead of using cardboard but he ended up digging so that was the end of that idea. By the way, for digging the product 'No-Dig' seems to work sometimes.

Flea and tick control
Advantage! This is a product that you put on your dog topically (in one or two areas depending on their size) that spreads out over their whole body and kills fleas for a month. It's supposed to be effective even if you bathe them, although they recommend that you don't bathe them *too* often. It's supposed to be totally safe for you and your dog. It's actually approved now for puppies over 6 weeks of age (instead of having to wait until they are 4 months). It's available at your vet and sometimes at local pet stores. Here's their web site.

If you want tick control as well, use what we now use, which is Frontline. It's supposed to stay on longer in water than the other products, which is important for us since we take Coop swimming quite a bit.

Itch control/Skin-coat improvement, and the Raw Diet
Lipiderm fish oil capsules-- I got the gel capsules, and it's cheaper to get it mail-order. It really helped a lot with Cooper's itching (from allergies to his food or occasional flea bites), but a great benefit of using it is that it provides the fatty acids that help with their skin and coat.

Update: Sometime in 2001, we switched our dogs to a raw diet, and that was the end of the food allergies for Cooper.  For more info,  check out the sites and books:

• Switching to Raw by Sue Johnson
• Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats: The Ultimate Diet by Kymythy Schultze
• The BARF Diet by Ian Billinghurst

What didn't work

We now feed our dogs a raw diet (see above).  However, before we "graduated" to that we fed premium dog food made of human-grade ingredients.  Some good ones that we liked:

• Solid Gold - Health Products For Pets, Inc.
• Innova and California Natural
• Wellness (we particularly like this one)
• Canidae
• Pinnacle

Just a point of reference-- Cooper seems to have "grown out" of his allergies since he got older-- either that or the natural foods have worked all that out of his system. Either way, we're quite pleased.

Here's a couple web pages that list other dog food companies:

• Premium (Natural) Dog Food Info
• Names and Addresses of Dog Food Companies

Cooper has the tendency to swallow the biggest pieces he can, so any bone-toy that is meant to be chewed and eventually eaten is a bad thing for him. Not to mention that some of these things have ingredients that he's allergic to. The big one-piece rawhide bones are okay, but anything that can be broken into smaller pieces are bad-bad-bad. Things like pig ears are pretty good, although some say that pig ears are very fatty and contain too many preservatives. Just in case, I reduced the amount I give him by only giving one after a bath, so he basically gets one every 2-4 weeks. It also helps to get him looking forward to the bath.

Another type of chew I'm going to get for Cooper is the big Galileo bone made by Nylabone. It isn't supposed to break into small pieces.

Actually, a terrific chew to get is called a Bully stick by Red Barn. You can get them through the Red Barn Guy.  My guys love it, and it is much healthier than the other stuff.  He also sells some filled bones which they love.

Training and Classes

Because of this, we tried to safely expose Cooper to as much as possible before 4 months of age. We took him to the beach, swimming, hiking, puppy kindergarten, to stores where there were a lot of people, got him used to loud things like the vacuum cleaner... Unfortunately we tried to get him used to the garbage truck and he was so traumatized by that, to this day he is afraid of garbage trucks. Oh well.

Puppy kindergarten was great for him. One of the reasons we took him as soon as we possibly could, was that we had kept him isolated from other dogs for 2 weeks after we got him. During that time, he had forgotten how to play with other puppies! He was terrified when at 10 1/2 weeks we took him to see his littermates. That was the clincher-- he went to puppy school and has been fine ever since. Besides the socialization it also gave him an excellent foundation for more serious training later.

Supplies

So here's a list of stuff that we got and used, and hopefully it will be useful to someone out there.

Dog Beds	the best dog bed/rug that we've found is made of Polyfleece - I can't believe how much our dogs love it.
Collar/leads	flat adjustable buckle collar  6' leather lead (a lot of training places want you to have leather leads)  Flexi-lead or long-lead if you want to do some recall training  Gentle Leader head collar (info at www.gentleleader.com), but we buy ours at dogstuff.com. This is great if you have a dog that pulls, or perhaps if you want to keep your puppy from learning how to pull. With it, you can practically walk your dog with a fishing line.
ID	id tag (Boomerang tags makes a good one) microchip implant - we did this at 4 months at the vet  license - after the rabies shot
Dishes	portable canvas folding dish for those hikes  stainless steel cage cups (We use these to hang in the crate when he's in there. We also hang it on his ex-pen or outside his wire crate when he's not in the crate so that his food and water are raised. Keeps the ants off the food and makes it more comfortable for him to eat, too.  regular stainless steel dishes
Stain/Housebreaking	Petzorb to absorb mess - this stuff is kind of cool. You sprinkle it on the liquid, and it sucks it all up into the crystals. Then you scoop it up and throw it away. Follow up with the enzyme cleaner.  Simple Solution or Odor-Mute (this is the enzyme cleaner) - I've used both and also Nature's Miracle, but didn't like the Nature's Miracle much. Simple Solution is great for indoors, and Odor-Mute is great for outdoors Odor-Mute for wherever your dog goes potty outside. It works really well - keeps the yard smelling fresh.  Natures Miracle blacklight to find hidden stains. At first we resisted getting this, but we started getting concerned that there were spots that we may have missed cleaning.  Scent drops for housebreaking.
Crate/Pens	pet/baby gates  ex-pen  Deluxe vari-kennel crate  collapsible metal crate
Grooming	pet shampoo (we use Pure Pearl - smells wonderful) dog toothbrush/paste  slicker brush  pin/bristle brush  blunt-tipped trimmer for any trimming  nail clippers (consider using a cordless Dremel for grinding nails if you don't like clipping) ear cleaner  cotton balls  Advantage flea control
Food/Supplements	See the food sections above Heartgard Plus heartworm preventive medication
Toys	Kong  Buster Cube  Bully Sticks (from Red Barn Guy)
Other	Natural Balance meat treats  Space blanket and clips to attach to ex-pen for shade  hard plastic wading pool  poop bags  "No Dig"  Bitter Apple

Resources

How To Raise A Puppy You Can Live With by Clarice Rutherford and David Neil

I love this book!  Everyone should read it.  :-)

Good Owners, Great Dogs by Brian Kilcommons

 This book was recommended by a lot of people on the net. It truly is very useful, and provides a lot of detail on all kinds of puppy-raising subjects as well as problem-solving. The tone of the book is light, so it's fun to read.

The Art of Raising a Puppy by Monks of New Skete

 This book is more serious in tone than the Kilcommons book, but it provides a lot of information into the development of the puppy and how you can influence it.

The Dog's Mind by Bruce Fogle,DVM

 This book addresses dog psychology. Very informative, but it's really just to give you an understanding of your dog-- not a training guide.

Ian Dunbar has some great books, too.  He started Sirius Puppy Training and knows what he's talking about. :-)

Your breeder
My breeder has been an invaluable source of support! When you're looking for your dog definitely consider the breeders as part of your decision-making process.

Your vet

General dog web pages and companies selling dog products

Golden Retriever specific pages