CP - Exercise and Behaviours
Exercise
Walking and exercise stimulation is extremely important in your dog’s everyday life.
It is also important to not overdo exercise in first 12 months while your puppy is growing and developing. Let your dog decide how strenuous the exercise is. A brisk walk a day, fetch with a ball or a swim is generally well received. It is recommended walking them on natural surfaces to avoid hard compression on the joints at such a young age. We also recommend refraining from encouraging your puppy to jump by tossing a ball into the air to catch.
Depending on which breed you have purchased from us will determine the amount of exercise they will need, ie a Cavoodle would require a 20-30 minute walk once old enough and fully vaccinated per day, whereas a Groodle would require more.
An hour is a good amount of exercise for a small dog but remember that their little bodies have not fully developed and therefore shouldn’t be rigorous exercise ie taking them on a run etc.
Make sure you allow puppy time to cool down and always have water available for them after their walk especially if you have taken them to the park.
When you go to puppy school, they will start to introduce puppy to their leash. It’s a very important part of enjoying walks and sometimes you may need to source a specialist animal trainer to help them through this learning curve. It will make taking your pooch for a walk so much more enjoyable if they are not pulling on their lead all the time.
Your puppies’ muscles are still growing and strengthening their joints. Its therefore important that we look after them as much as possible by not allowing them to jump up on furniture or run up and down stairs which will put tremendous strain on their joints.
Mental Stimulation and Interactive Play
If the weather doesn’t allow you to go out for your daily or twice daily walk, then make sure that you have some interactive play with puppy in the morning and afternoon to keep them stimulated.
Any puppy needs to have their minds challenged so they do not get bored and become naughty and destructive. Therefore, we recommend investing in some mind enrichment toys and games.
Teething
Around 3-4 weeks old puppy starts to develop their baby teeth.
When puppy is around 4-5 months old these teeth will fall out to make way for their adult set of teeth. By 5-7 months all the adult teeth will be present. It does vary depending on breed so this is an average timeframe of when this happens.
When they start the teething process, puppy will start to chew and droll and may even experience bad breath. They will go through this again when their adult teeth start to come through.
We recommend that you find some good chew toys so that they have plenty of appropriate items to chew. There are specially designed soft chew toys on the market, and we recommend getting a variety available for puppy to help them through this stage.
Bad Behaviours
Puppy will go through the teething period and will be tempted to chew on fingers and toes.
If your puppy begins a habit of biting or mouthing, use your stern voice to discipline “NO”. Biting or mouthing can lead to dominance behaviour as pup gets older if not dealt with in early stages. If pup does not respond to this gently turn your puppy over onto his back on the ground, this is a natural act of submission for a dog, then use your voice “NO” firmly. Make sure all other members of the family know how to control this behaviour too, so puppy doesn’t get mixed signals.
Just a few extra tips
- Be consistent, all family members should use same signals.
- Reinforce good behaviour with a little training treat.
- Short training sessions are better than long ones.
- Make learning fun for you and your puppy.