I had my annual review at work recently and managed to negotiated more time working from home so I could get a dog.
I've found a breeder that's not too far away and have arranged a visit to see a litter with the parents. All being well, I'll be bringing a beautiful, 10-week-old basset hound home in a couple of weeks.
I know there are loads of dog owners on here, so I'm looking for tips, resources etc for looking after and training a puppy.
My family always had dogs when I was at home, but it'll be over 20 years since I last had a puppy to look after and they were working collies so treated quite differently to one that'll be 100% a pet.
I've got a book by Adam Spivey, though I've no idea if he's respected in training circles. It was just highly rated on Amazon and was included in Kindle unlimited so I thought it was worth trying. If there's anything better out there, I'd definitely be interested.
I've started making a list of basic equipment needs - lead and collar, food and water bowls, crate (x2 one for the house another for the car), toys and rewards. Am I missing anything? At least to begin with, I'll be getting the same food she'll have been on at the breeders (Royal Canin, I think).
Also, I'm after recommendations for pet insurance. I've looked at Pet Plan as my boss recommended them - a bit on the pricier side but they tend not to hesitate when it comes to making a claim. They have two options, on-going treatment cover or an annual claims cap. The latter being about half the price. I'm not too fussed about the price but I'm just wondering if the annual claims cap would be better with the difference going into a doggy emergency savings account?
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Pics when the pup arrives please!
We are very 'doggy' ....bred Irish Wolfhounds for 20 years and have 5 Wire Hair Dax( hunting Dax not miniatures...same size as small Bassetts .
We look after a Bassett .....he came to live with us for 4 months when owner had to work abroad.
Lovely nature but stubborn and a bit barky.
Smellier than most breeds.
Biggest issue is walking ....as a scent hound they get their nose down on a line and if ,off lead, there is zero recall ;it'stheir nature and what they are meant to do.......beligerent isn't the word !
@boogieman - I purposefully left puppy pads off the list. Having read various pros and cons (and having never used them with any of the farm dogs) I've come down on the side of not using them. I get the idea, but it just seems to me that they are encouraging the pup to make a mess inside. I'd rather put up with a few accidents while training her that she does her business outside.
EDIT: Your vet can't make recommendations on insurance, but there's a way round that - you can ask them who they insure their own pets with.
HUGELY important point - do not get annual cover, make sure it's lifetime cover. The difference is that if your dog has any health issue that requires long-term medication or treatment, annual cover will just cover it for the rest of the year and then you're on your own. Lifetime cover will, obviously, cover it for the rest of your dog's life.
And - continuing the theme - a suitable outside toileting area.
You really don't want a dog running around doing its things on a nice grass lawn (which soon becomes a less nice muddy patch when it rains) and then trotting back into the house to clean its paws on your floor / carpet / rugs. We've put down an astro turf area purely for the purpose. Easier to clean too.
We've had insurance for Cheddar although not for previous dogs. The thinking was that puppies can do quite mad things or he might have developed some previously undiscovered genetic defects or something. The premiums go up a lot every year so we will probably change to the savings account approach this year.
We have a long (5m I think) rubberised lead that was useful when first going over parks,etc. Got it from a company called Swaggerpaws and also got his regular lead from there, been very robust and we still use the long lead when we borrow my in law's Retriever/elephant.
Coco had a complication which is relatively common after being spayed, which led to her not being able to completely control her bladder while asleep. The medication for that alone would cost 90% of the current insurance premium, and that occurred 9 years ago. On top of that, she's about to have her third surgery in the last three months, and that's going to take us to within £500 of the annual claims limit...
Sure, we pay about £2k/year on insurance for all three of them, but - to me, at least - it's money well spent to not have to care about finances when we want to be focusing on our dogs' wellbeing.
Of course, I know you're already in the know on all that (only saying it for the benefit of the newbies...). It's one of those "Oh, it'll never happen to me" decisions that it's easy to make when the dog's young and healthy, and even easier to regret when they're older and start needing a lot of vet attention.
Toilet training was incredibly easy and the breeder had made a good start when he arrived. Think we have one solid accident and maybe 5 liquid ones in total. Way easier than toilet training children that for sure!
Soner bought pads but never ended up using them in the end.
My biggest piece of advice is to jump in with off lead training and socialising with other dogs as soon as possible. Loki's recall is not perfect but he is manageable off lead and early socialisation with lots of other dogs means that there's never been any drama and he has learned quickly to read signals from dogs that don't want to interact.
Other big tip is if you are crate training don't give up on the first couple of nights. We had 2 nights which he had us up every hour when he first arrived but since then sleeps through in his crate without fail.
We've also been pretty lucky with chewing, we supervise pretty closely so substitute things he's allowed to chew and because we ate generally pretty on top of it we've only had a couple of things destroyed (although one was a chunk of dry wall ).
I agree puppy pads are great buy counterproductive
Have fun.
We recently inherited my daughter's cockerpoos, so now have 4 dogs.
Great fun.
Hard work.