4 month old doodle

[Jacki Waldman]

I have a 4 month old doodle.  He weighs about 19 pounds.  We got him from a puppy store! (I have allergies and we wanted to see how I would do with one, there are no breeders by me so my daughter caught me on a week moment and we went to see one)  Needless to say we fell in love!!! He was dehydrated, had a parasite and a cold.  He was about 9 weeks and 5 pounds. After 3 days in the ver, he was 7.9 pounds and feeling great.  He has been a great puppy.  Our only complaint would be the nipping.  He goes through about a 1/2 hour 3x a day of constant chewing.  When we got him the puppy store said he was a medium goldendoodle, but they lied about his parents size twice so I have no idea how big he will get.  Any ideas???  This weekend he has been making about 4 doodies a day.  He barks when he needs to go out.  SO my husband took him out and he made a big doodie, then he came inside and not a minute later made another one.  He has not had a number 2 accident yet in the house so I am wondering if it has something to do with the original parasite? or my husband seems to think it is about his training treats.  By the way just to brag he can sit, wave, high five, down and rollover.  We love him so much.  But I am a first time dog owner and I get nervous about the littliest things.  Any ideas about the number 2 incident.  I love this site.  Although it keeps me up at night reading about all the great doodles.

[Kaytlin and Cooper]

http://www.doodlekisses.com/group/thefoodgroup

[Jacki Waldman]

Thank you

[Lorraine Bromley]

Congratulations on being a doodle owner and finding this site to help raise and enjoy your new addition to the max!

[Lucy & AnnaBelle's Mom]

Also, one other thing to consider, is that a "treat" for training purposes doesn't really have to be a treat type item.  It could just be his food given by hand vs. in his bowl.  We used a lot of food for treats and sometimes would just use a different food that what their normal food was ... so they were just getting something that wasn't usually in their bowl, so they thought it was a treat.

[Richard Crowe]

I flew Holly home from Cheyenne Valley Labradoodles and Goldendoodles which is located north of Dallas Texas to our home near San Diego, CA.  I wanted to see the place she was born and meet her parents so I flew to Texas.  I was impressed by the Cheyenne Valley setup as well as by her parents...

 

Holly was seven weeks old.  If we had waited until she was eight weeks old, she would have been too large to fit under the plane seat in her carrier.  She was seven and three quarter pounds at seven weeks and started to gain just about a pound a day.

 

Holly would pee indiscriminantly.  I would bring her out to the yard and she would pee and poop and then pee again as soon as she was back in the house.  We were so worried that we called the breeder who said don't worry.  It is normal behavior.

 

She continued this behavior until she was about three to four months old.  I don't remember if she was three months old or if it was three months after we got her that she suddenly stopped peeing in the house.  No tapering off; one day she was wetting constantly and the next day she was perfectly housetrained with no accidents since.

 

I don't remember how much Holly weighed at 4-months but, like I said, she was gaining about a pound a day at the start.  This is what she looked like at just about four months old. I remember Judy and I worrying because Holly did not, at four months, have the normal bearded Doodle face or the beautiful wavy Doodle tail.  She developed both at about six or seven months old.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of her at four months with her standing.  You can see in this picture that she had large paws which indicated that she would grow p to be a rather large dog.  Right now, Holly weighs about 65-70 pounds at a bit over four years old.

 

Holly loved to chew and our salvation was Bully Sticks which she adored.  She never chewed anything wrong in the house but she would pull up clumps of our lawn and eat the grass, sod and all.  We kept her on a flexie lead when she went out side but, finally gave up and bought a training collar.  Two mild stimulations was all that it took and she never ate grass or needed to wear the training collar again.

 

I was quite strict about some of Holly's behavios.  I never let her nip without reprimanding her - a scolding was all it would take.  I also had her sitting for her treats by the second day I had her.  I knew she would grow into a larg dog and didn't want her jumping up on anyone for treats.

 

Holly did not have the advantage of growing up past 7-weeks old with her mom and her litter mates but, we had several Maltese who became defacto Holly's brothers and sisters because they were about the same size as Holly was when she arrived.  Our daughter has a female Labrador who was about two years old when Holly arrived.  The Lab adopted holly and trained her like a normal dog mom would do.  Holly is now quite a bit larger than her adopted mom and Holly now adopts our Maltese rescue dogs and becomes a mom to them

 By the way, we used non-sugar coated Cheerios as treats.  They are tiny, pretty well low calorie and it doesn't matter how big the treat is - the frequency of treats is important.