Its been 6 years now since we had to put our beloved chow down. So the missus and I finally agreed that its time we want another dog. Last sat. we bought a golden retreiver pup from a akc breeder. She is now 8 weeks old , beautiful, and smart as a tack but we are worried about her. We already love her to pieces but " Sunny" has two big problems we need help with though :

House breaking: We have done everthing possible to get her to understand not to use our carpet as the toilet. The day we drove her home, the first thing I did was set her down in our grassy backyard so she would know that was her spot to potty. My wife always takes her out after she eats/drinks, and we watch her for that "sniffing around " the carpet action, letting us know she is looking for toilet. No help, she will just squat and drop right on the carpet if we take our eyes off of her . My wife finally ended up with the "crate" training technique. We bought a large size dog carrier and she now has to sleep in it at night, she cannot be trusted not to potty indoors.

Eats everything that doesnt move: We know she is a pup and needs toys and things to chew on. We gave her stuffed toys, pigskin/rawhide chewy sticks to chew on, and the retreiver's classic toy to play with, the tennis ball. She uses all of them with great pleasure, but insists on chewing on pieces of landscape pine bark mulch, she chews on the peagravel aggregate sidewalk trying to get the rocks out of it that are cemented in. She pulls the grass up and eats the dirt off of the rootball.

She even knaws on the edge of the concrete patio. We checked her teeth and they are all thu and look great. The second day of having her home, she vomited and we found two pieces of 1/4 in. thick plastic pieces in the hurl. We know she got this at her breeders, because we made sure there was no bad things in our small yard before we bought her. We feed her wetted down Purina puppy three times a day on the clock. She is now laying on the sundeck, hasnt eat her breakfast, and has a warm nose, and is not wanting to play. ( not like her) . We know she has probaly ingested something that has upset her stomach. ..


Anyone know if this is normal behavior for golden pups or what we can do to get her through this ? She loves it outside, we hate confining her to a vinyl floored 4' x 6' foot room or in the crate because of these two problems. Sorry for the long post, no other way to get it said.

 

I've had both a Chow and a Retreiver that I raised as pups. The GR is going to take many more repetitions to train, but once she gets it down, she'll be willing to please. Things get a little easier at about 6 months. They like to chew, just keep replacing the shoes with chew toys when you catch her. You really have to "babyproof" things with these dogs, because they do tend to eat anything they can get while they are teething. Make a big deal and get excited about going outside to potty, she'll get the idea.

Crate training is great!.. Try to buy a cage large enough to fit her when she's an adult right at the start and try not to use it as a form of punishment. It can be really handy later on.

The Chow I had could be trained with 2 or 3 repetitions, (if she wasn't being stubborn). Labs and retreivers can take 15 to 25, but are solid performers.

 

I have a black lab that I trained from a pup and let me tell you, it was work. On the house training: I would say "Let's go potty" and take him out every 5 minutes. I know it sems like a lot and it was, but I had him house broke in one week.

Labs and Retrievers chew on just about anything. Get the dog a healthy supply of cow hooves and cow or pig ears and let Sunny go to town......just keep moving your feet so the dog doesn't chew your toes off! Once that dog grows up, you'll have an awesome dog.

 

For house breaking they sell some training pads that you can put by the door, then once they're used to that you can move the pad outside the door.

 

Right on about the chow. Our chow Kodi house trained in 3 lessons. The crate we have for Sunny is for a 100 lb dog, so she should be o.k. in it when growing up.


Update: Over a hour and a half ago we brought Sunny in and put her in the vinyl floor room. She still has not eaten or drank since midnight. As she lay on her pad, she would not move at all. I kept a eye on her and she would not raise her head when called, not a good sign for this hyperactive furball. I put her head in my hand because she likes to be touched by me or my wife. I tried to get her to open her eyes and she would not move. As I moved her around to get her to respond, she got rigid and the whites of her eyes were rolled up. I couldnt get any response from her at all....

I thought the pup was dying in my arms, so I am not taking any chances, if she was 4 years old I would not be so panicky, at 8 weeks old pups are not that strong . My wife called the emergency number for the vet and we are to meet him there in 20 minutes to see her. Geez, now I remember why I was reluntant to get another dog, they become family too quick and only live 15 years , if lucky.

 

Geez Greg, that sucks. Be sure to let us know how things went with the vet.

 

http://www.grca.org/
give this a look. a goldie takes time and she is a puppy. she may need to be feed more then 3 times a day and taken out more like every hour.
email me for more i have 2 of them and they are goldie 3 and 4 we love the breed

 

If your dog went rigid and her eyes rolled back, my guess would be that she had a seizure. Let us know how the vet appt. goes.

Best wishes for your pup,
aerostargal

 

Thanks all for the good tips and kind words, and a good site tip there Cap, I made it a fav. I put a pic of Sunny in my hidden gallery if anyone wonders what a GR pup looks like at 8 weeks old. Hard not to fall head over heels for this little gal ...

The vet did a good exam and took x-rays of her stomach and a stool sample. No foriegn objects in her stomach, but found she was stool impacted and has roundworms. We still have not figured out the impaction part, the missus has been on stool pickup constantly since we brought her home...

I was po'ed about the worms being in her and told the vet the breeder assured us she had the parvo /worming vac shots required. He said she was probaly wormed, but one treatment can still leave eggs in the bowels laying dormant. So he gave her a de-wormer, a doggie pepcid and sent us home with the petenema syringe and worming capsules. She did her thing after that petenema, but is still dryheaving a bit, probaly the worming pill on a empty stomach we hope. ..

She is laying here beside me on the vinyl floor , resting well but one sick little puppy. She just now took her a few sips of water finally , after not touching water for over 12 hours now, was glad to see that. I know as a dog she will do things her way to heal, but I hate it when little children or puppies are sick, makes me want to take their pain away for them.

 

Good deal, glad to hear she's okay.

Been a while since I rased a pup. Lost my German Shepherd Asko to cancer at age 9 a few years ago and haven't had the heart to get another yet. Someday, maybe...

 

great news greg. i'm glad shes ok. as she gets bigger i think you will find shes the best pet you ever had. because thats the way goldens are. i just hope she dosnot get to 100 pounds like my female.
worms almost every puppy we have had had them and we had to worm them. she will be ok.
the web site is grd national and has links to the local clubs that help you out

 

Good news! I think captchas and I just went through this golden puppy thing- it's well worth it. a couple of suggestions:

House training a pup is a lot like potty-training a child (have lots of experience with both ). By the time they're sniffing the carpet, it's too late. Watch them closely- they start getting antsy and start dancing around right before they have to go. A quick walk outside a must, and like howdy said- make a big deal about a successful trip. Golden's live to please- you'll both be thrilled when the concept is learned.

The chews- the best idea Mrs. Bear ever came up with for this was to get a low tupperware tote, and put all the pups toys in it. After she's done playing with her stuff, put them all back. It won't take long for the pup to figure out that everything in the tote is the pup's stuff- and they'll generally leave your stuff alone. Can't help you with the landscape bark, though- ours still does the same thing.

 

Wow, a hundred lb female GR, thats a well loved dog you have there Cap, I see the AKC standards for adult female GR's is 60 to 70 lbs. When will she recoup from this worming business ? A day ? two ? She got up and drank some more water, but has crashed again and is lethargic /unresponsive again. Just one sick little dog we have here ,


on edit: The vet just called to check on her. He said she would be this sick until all the worms are passed. She has passed some already, geez, anyone eating spaghetti as they are reading this ??

 

I wasn't, but thanks for helping me make a menu choice for tonight...it won't be spaghetti...

Saw some folks in a SuperDuty last night with four big pups in the back...two black labs and two GRs. Talk about a truckful of love!

 

GR's and Choclate labs are a handful to train. They can be what I like to call "puppy stupid" for a year and a half, sometimes more. Loyal, great with kids, and obiedient as they come, but wow can they be a handful.

It took me a while with my idiot, and a few handfuls of things I'd rather not have had, but once they learn, they rarely have accidents. Unless they just can't hold anymore, that happens.

Mine used to love pine mulch, bark, wood, you name it. I don't know if it's just teething or what, but his favorite thing to chew was mulch. Don't worry about it too much, it's pretty normal.

Mine like to fight over frozen poop sicles. When I was up in Ft. Drum, they would sit out back in the winter and growl at each other, nose to nose, with a frozen turd in between, to see who would get to eat the poop sicle. Friggin disgusting.

Dogs, gotta love 'em.