Hi all. It's been quite a while since I've been around here. Bailey is 6 months old now, and it's funny how some of the issues I worried about at first are gone, but there's just always new problems to deal with. I have a few questions, so any of them you can help with would be great...
1. What age do puppies usually lose their teeth? I have been expecting it for a long time, but never saw any teeth until last week, when I caught Bailey chewing on one. Now that's another one of my problems. She'll eat anything/everything and she gets very aggressive when I try to take away something she shouldn't have. It's funny because I was so careful that she didn't get food aggression. She never acts that way with her dry/wet food, but she will with bully sticks or paper towels or other things she picks up. Anyway, I've caught her chewing on 2-3 more teeth since then and I'm pretty sure she's probably swallowed most of them. Could this hurt her?
2. What age is the best to get her spayed? I hope to avoid her first heat. What is the age range of that happening? (And I'm sure at the same time she gets spayed she'll need teeth removal and microchipping. She also still needs her rabies.)
3. Is there anything I can do to help her get over putting everything in her mouth (as I touched on in #1)? If I drop *anything* I have to be super fast to get it before her. It can be dangerous as she is underfoot a lot when I'm cooking and I'm afraid she'll get something she shouldn't have. Plus she's eaten pieces of paper towel because she seems to think they're some kind of prize.
Is she just going to grow up and realize these things don't taste good or do I need to do something to discipline her? And if so, I get worried because of #4...
4. Again, she gets so aggressive about things in her mouth, but not regular food. This started more recently with her bully sticks. I usually don't let her have them for too long, and all of a sudden when I would go to get it from her she would run away. I have chased her around for like 5-10 minutes before. Then when I catch her and get my hand anywhere near her mouth she starts to growl. Bully sticks are pretty easy for me to grab and get away from her, but when it comes to smaller things she has IN her mouth that she shouldn't, like paper or wads of cat hair (I told you, this dog eats anything) she'll nip at me if I get my hand near. And this is not at all like puppy playful nipping. She acts like she wants to bite my fingers off! Very scary for thinking of guests being around her, etc. Another problem with this whole scenario is I'm afraid I might have rewarded the behavior in a way. When she has something bad I really don't want her to swallow, sometimes the only way to get her to drop it is to offer her a treat. She'll drop what she has to eat the treat. How to I reverse this behavior??
This ended up much longer than I planned, but any help is appreciated.