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I should be getting a ~14 week old standard wire dachshund puppy in about a week and a half. Exciting! This is far from my first dog, but it is the first one I have had in an apartment or in the downtown area of a city. Do any of you have tips or things of note about keeping a dog in a heavily urban environment? Center city Philadelphia in this case. I keep having these paranoid fantasies about terrible things happening when I have to take the puppy for a walk at night to relive itself. Completely ridiculous, but then again I am used to being able to just let the dogs outside in a fenced in suburban back yard at night to take care of themselves before bed.
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May 17, 2012 15:50
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 06:17 |
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We just picked up a 16 week old standard wirehair dachshund puppy this weekend! Her name is Liebe.   She is my seventh Dachshund by my girlfriend's first. It is the first time either of us have tried to keep a dog in a high rise. I asked a question about this earlier but didn't get any replies. Does anyone have tips on potty training in a highrise? We are having problems getting her to understand she can use pavement as a place to go, and then just getting her outside in time is challenge. We are crate training her and she loves her crate, just want to make sure we are handling potty training properly for our living situation. We want to avoid paper training if possible but considering the elevator ride it may be a necessity at least part of the time. Any suggestions?
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May 29, 2012 15:58
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No balcony, unfortunatly. Right now we are doing what you suggested with the elevator. Does the gravel lined trays help them understand they can go on pavement? We are getting her out a lot, but then she won't go when on the pavement. Most of the time she will go in the apartment shortly after she gets back up into the apartment. The only really problem time is first thing in the morning, which is expected. She holds it in her crate, but then gets so excited she pees the second she comes out while we try to quickly wrap a towel on her to carry her outside in. I don't expect a solution to this soon, but if anyone has experience with it I would love to hear it. Its only been 2 days so far, so we just plan on being patient with her as usual. This specific situation is just so new to us both that we want to make sure we are taking the right steps.
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May 29, 2012 20:32
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Thanks, we have gone over the housetraining guide on the first page. We'll just keep at it. Just want to make sure we get it right and check experiences of others who have been in our shoes before. Rufus: Nope, no grass. Closest things are some trees planted in square foot breaks in the pavement with dirt and garbage right around them. Center City is pretty dirty and where we are is mostly green free. We can get to grassy areas, but none of them are realistically close enough for house training.
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May 29, 2012 21:03
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Speaking of potty training, we have had our puppy for 2 months now and she is just shy of 6 months old. We live on the 11th floor of a highrise with no grass around us, and honestly she is doing far better than I had expected at this point considering the living circumstances. Accidents are only once or twice a week, and she sometimes even scratches at the front door to be let out. My question is that whenever we take her out for the bathroom we need to carry her. She will hold her pee on hard surfaces, but if she walks over anything soft or plush, like the carpet in the elevator or the rug in front of our apartment, she will pee on it rather than wait to get outside. Is there a way we can train her or otherwise work with her so we can start to walk her out rather than carry her? It takes 2-5 minutes to leave our apartment and get outside, depending largely on the elevator ride. I don't expect her to have great bladder control after she has been in the crate overnight, but she should be ok during the day when she goes out every couple of hours. 
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Jul 23, 2012 14:10
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Our vet is urging us to spay before first heat because the risk of mammary cancer goes up a fair bit if you wait until after, apparently. I don't know if there are other risks involved with neutering/spaying by a certain date, but we were also concerned about growth problems if doing it too early.
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Jul 24, 2012 18:26
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We have a minor, non-medical, emergency with our puppy and are looking for some quick advice before deciding what to do either tonight or in the morning. We just left on vacation and couldn't take our dog with because of where we are staying. We were thinking of boarding her for the week, but our friends/neighbors who live down the hall offered to watch her. They have a puppy the same age and like to play with each other so we thought it would be fine. We leave today and just got an email from them that the barking is driving them nuts and she has been peeing on their floor all of the time. They want to just put her in our apartment and pretty much just let her out to go to the bathroom a couple of times a day and play with her a little bit in the evenings. We are not ok with this, but other than just canceling our vacation and coming back home we don't know what else to do. Being the weekend we don't know if we can even get a hold of a kennel, but we don't know any of them and don't know if they would take her seeing as we would not be the ones dropping her off. We also don't have anyone else in the city that can watch over her. Any advice? This really sucks in general, and just want her to be happy and not have a traumatizing experience whenever we have to leave somewhere.
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Aug 5, 2012 02:53
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uptown posted:Having a puppy is a huge responsibility and when they are young, it is so important to keep the rules consistent. I agree with the poster I'm quoting here - I'm a world traveller and there is nothing I like more than jetting off into the sunset, but with a new puppy, I'm anchored to the house for about a year. Inconvenient? Sure, a little... But I made the decision to get a puppy, so he's my responsibility. My boyfriend and some friends are going camping tomorrow. Do I want to go? Sure. Am I going? Nope. I don't even trust my mom to look after my dog, because she won't stick with the rules I am trying to instil into his head. nesbit, I understand you are in a lovely situation, but if there is a next time, you should think hard about the puppy before leaving. You seem to be making a lot of assumptions here. We didn't just on a whim decide to head off somewhere for a week. This was a for an annual family reunion trip with my girlfriend's family, who of course pressures us to go because they want to see us, and we thought long and hard about it since before we even had the puppy since we knew it was coming up. We were unsure of leaving the pup until we met and talked with the neighbors, had several play dates, wrote up a 5 page memo on everything we do with the dog for them, etc. We still had doubts and were sad to leave her, but we ended up leaving feeling our neighbors were willing and well prepared. Though this is the first dog I have had on my own, she is the seventh I have had in my life, and we have had to leave puppies before on trips with my family and things were always fine. It doesn't irk me that it didn't work out. We knew that could happen and we would have to do something. What bothers me is that they didn't even give it 24 hours, sent us a message when they knew we had very little, if any internet or phone connectivity, and just made a decision that they would just keep the dog locked in her kennel at our apartment without talking to us first or anything. I can't even imagine how livid I would be if we had flown to see my family 1,000 miles away with no route back rather than somewhere a 6 hour drive away. We even drove to the next town 45 minutes away to try and call them and see wtf was going on but they didn't answer, later we found out because they decided to go out for the night. We arrived at the place after over 6 hours of driving, got this message, and then ended up heading back 2 hours later because we couldn't get a hold of them. Once they agreed to take her in for the week and everything seemed fine we just stopped considering other options, and then in less than a day they basically just decided for us that our vacation had to be canceled without even talking to us. edit: Thanks for the suggestion A Life Less, we checked around before we left but decided to just head back. We couldn't find any contact info we were confident anyone would answer on Sunday morning, and were not willing to wait until Monday to see if we could find another solution or not. nesbit37 fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Aug 6, 2012 |
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Aug 6, 2012 12:31
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I am a little worried about my 1 year old dachshund who seems to be regressing in terms of separation anxiety. When we leave for work/school in the morning we put her in the bathroom with her crate, some safe toys she likes (nylabone and a kong), turn the radio on so she can hear voices and then before we walk out the door give her her breakfast in a wobbler. She used to be completely fine with this, excited to get her breakfast and didn't even notice us taking off. Starting last Wednesday, however, she started acting almost depressed that we were going. She will run and hide if we turn on the radio before she is in the bathroom, she won't eat her breakfast now if we give it to her in the bathroom and she has started to cry again when we leave. She is starting to do this anytime we put her in the bathroom because we need to go somewhere and leave her alone. During the week we both leave at about 8am, and I come from lunch at about 1 nearly everyday to let her out and spend an hour with her. Most days one of us is back by 6pm, but some days, like the Wednesday this started, she is alone from 8pm to 8pm except for the lunch break I am lucky enough to give to her. Any tips or other possible causes we are not thinking of? I thought we were over this a good 7 or 8 months ago and it seems odd to me to have been re-triggered now.
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Feb 25, 2013 14:24
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Ikantski posted:You're asking why your dog has developed a negative association with being alone in a bathroom for 11 hours a day? That seems pretty boring. Did you guys lock her in there for punishment at all? Maybe the day you left her from lunch to 8 was painful for her to hold it in that long? I understand it isn't a happy time, and 11 hours a day is not the normal time for her, just those unhappy Wednesdays (and luckily not all of them). Regardless, it isn't so much that we can't understand why she wouldn't want to go in there but the suddenness of the transition. She went from running and jumping and waging her tail to go in there so she could eat her breakfast to refusing food, hiding and crying in one day and that has now been persisting. Maybe dogs do that sometimes, but I haven't seen such a transition before, at least not that quickly. Kiri Koli posted:This may be too simple a solution, but after months of being okay with her crate, my dog suddenly decided she didn't want to go in it either, though she didn't really have a problem once she was in. I tried crate games and tons of yummy treats, but it was a no-go. We had her crate in an extra bedroom upstairs and I guess she found it isolating because we solved the problem by just moving her crate down into the living room (and then playing more crate games to get her back in the habit of going in = fun). I guess she just liked being in the middle of things, even if we weren't home (lol, dog logic), or it reset her little brain. Thanks, we can try moving her to part of the kitchen or some where else she can be safely while we are out and see if it has effect. The kitchen is about the same size as the bathroom but maybe just the different location will help.
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Feb 25, 2013 15:43
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MrFurious posted:This isn't rocket science, you're essentially putting your dog in solitary confinement. How many hours a day is she NOT confined? If this is less than 5, you need to have a serious discussion with your partner about whether or not you can really care for this dog. If you live in a high rise, you can probably look into a dog walker or someone to stop by and spend some time with her throughout the day. You can counter-condition the aversion to the bathroom, but there is an underlying issue here that I think you're aware of but not dealing with. Dogs are social animals. Except for Wednesdays, she is alone from 8-1 and then 2-5:30 (sometimes less). I am with her from 1-2 during lunch, we are both with her in the mornings and all evening and then we take her with us everywhere we go on weekends. When we went on vacation we even had her fly with us so we didn't have to board her or leave her with strangers. I get it, some people buy dogs and then only hang out with them a couple of hours a day. I wish she never had to be alone but most of the year, and for most people that just isn't realistic. I appreciate the comments, and we do use dog walkers on occasion when we know we can't get to her for a long while. So, for possible things to help out our dog in the current situation" -Spend more time with her, either ourselves or with a dog walker -Change the location she spends the day in I also raised this question to this thread to see if there was insight into why this might have happened other than it just sucks to be left alone all day. If that is it, then great, we all know no one, human or canine, wants to be left alone for chunks of time. If there are other possible causes than isolation that could have triggered such a sudden change in behavior I would like to be made aware of them so I can hopefully address them.
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Feb 25, 2013 16:28
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Thanks again for the advice and the ongoing discussion for helping our dog (the red one below). We are starting to try some counter conditioning and either due to that or coincidence she is getting better. When we first leave in the morning is still the worst, but she is almost normal when I have to leave her after lunch. We want to try a new food as well just in case her hunger strikes are not solely related to anxiety. She eats her dinner but isn't very excited about it which is not at all typical. We haven't started keeping her in the kitchen yet but should start tomorrow. We wanted to wait until after the longer Wednesday of alone time was past to not taint the kitchen as a space right away.
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Feb 27, 2013 15:09
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Should I get my dog's teeth cleaned by the vet? I have a 7 year old standard dachshund named Liebe who has never had her teeth cleaned. Every time I take her to the vet they look at her mouth and tell me how much she could use a cleaning and I should let them do it, but then I ask how much and they tell me after anesthesia, the cleaning, possibly pulling teeth, its going to be like $1500. Aside from the price tag I don't like having to put her under for things she ultimately doesn't really need, especially since it just gets more dangerous the older she gets. Is this something necessary according to new vet training or is it just something they like to do because it's good in general theory? So what is everyone's thoughts on vet teeth cleanings? Note: I've had 10 dachshunds in my life, and I am pretty sure none of them have ever had a teeth cleaning. I had one who had an abscessed tooth that had to be removed when he was 16 or 17 but thats the only dental problem I can recall in any of their lives.
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Dec 3, 2019 01:18
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The cost not an insignificant factor but I am more worried about the anesthesia. No way I would do annual cleanings, especially on a dog over 7.
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Dec 3, 2019 18:02
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Is 8 weeks old enough to fly? I've been flying with my dog since she was 1 (she is turning 8 soon) and I swear one of the requirements is they be 6 months old at least or something. Might vary by airline. Expect it to be a pain in the rear end. My dog flies with me as an emotional support dog now (which she is, supported by my therapist) because it's such a PITA to do as a pet
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Dec 12, 2019 18:09
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Fluffy Bunnies posted:can we see a pic of those teeth? Because there's a lot of different levels of gross at 7. I've seen dogs that needed teeth cleaning at 2, I've known dogs who never did. Way late on this but here are her teeth and gums  
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Dec 15, 2019 00:31
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 06:17 |
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My dog eats out of a larger one of these, has since she was about a year old. No choice but to slow down with it. It was fun watching her and her brother figure it out as well. At first he would get frustrated with it and pick it up and just chuck it across the kitchen. https://www.chewy.com/kong-wobbler-dog-toy-small/dp/44194
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Jan 9, 2020 18:31
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