Puppy First Weeks-- Potty, No Bite

[Ashley & Penny]

Hey all--

So we finally got our Penny girl! She has been with us for a week now, and I am planning on starting Petco training classes soon. A few problems we have been having so far:

1. She does not want to go potty in our backyard! I'm wondering if she doesn't like the grass because I took her to school with my for a meeting & she peed immediately in that grass & rolled around loving it. She doesn't do that at all in our yard. The result is usually me staying outside with her for 10-20 minutes, coming inside & her peeing on my rug in livingroom. And yes, we she does go outside we praise her for it. "Good Girl Penny!" :)

2. She loves to nibble! She has been biting my hand & pulling my by biting the bottom of my pant leg! I gave her multiple chew toys, especially when she tries biting my hand & I immediately say NO when she bites my pant leg & try to again distract her with something else.

Any advice? How was your first weeks with your puppies?

I will say, she is doing great in her crate at nights! No whining at all! I am still sleeping on an air mattress next to the crate, but I am going to see how she does tonight completely SOLO :) She is also the cutest little puppy, I am in love already!

[Kylee]

She is adorable! That is interesting that she doesn't like to potty on the grass in your backyard. I am wondering if she pees on the rug because she smells the scent. Are you taking her back outside if you catch her peeing on the rug? I remember Willow peed on our rug and I caught her, told her no, and then grabbed her and took her right outside. I just took her out like every hour for the first week to make sure she caught on. Willow also destroyed a lot of my boyfriends cloths when she was little, she loved biting his pants as he walked by. We would distract her with toys as well, but she just kind of grew out of that stage.

[Judi Kilpatrick]

Hi Penny, not sure about the issue of peeing in the yard, I agree that if you can pick her up immediately after or during a pee in the house then take her out, she may get the idea, also she may need to finish peeing which would give her a spot to go back to. As for the biting/chewing, that's one of those undesirable puppy activities that generally lasts several months. Your best bet is to make sure she has a lot of chew toys, dental chews, anything that will get her attention. When she just decides you are her chew toy, there are a number of ways to start getting her to understand that it's not ok to do that. If she plays too hard and bites, you can try giving her a loud 'ouch' (or something like that) then tell her 'no bite', when puppies play together and one hurts the other, the one that gets hurt will yelp so the other one knows it was too hard of a bite so kind of works the same. You can also follow a bite by gently holding her jaws shut and telling her 'no bite'. If you are holding her when she does it, put her on the floor and ignore her (this didn't work well with mine, they just bit my ankle..lol). Also have chewy's at arms length so you can stick one in her mouth after you correct her, it will take a while but she will get the point, it just takes a huge amount of human patience during this age. One thing I wouldn't do is punish her by putting her in her crate, that creates new issues of her not liking the crate. We used a play pen for a month or 2, had it in an area where I could always see it, served to let me get some things done without 2 puppies under foot as well as a temporary time out location.. Keep us posted!

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Is she peeing in one area on the rug?  If so, she smells that she went there and you need to re-clean it. Nature's Miracle is one of the best cleaners, but there are others.  Then I would place a piece of furniture on that spot so she doesn't have access. 

[Moe]

There is this dog trainer on youtube called kikopup. She has a lot of great videos. There is one to stop leash biting. I used the same technique for pants, fingers, socks, shoes or anything you don't want the dog getting into.

Here's the leash biting video  Stop Leash Biting