Need help. getting a 6wk old puppy soon
 

I'll be getting a Min. Pen./Poodle/Yorkie on Friday. He's i think 6 or 7 weeks old. And i would like to crate train him but i dont know when to start that.

Do i keep his food out at all times or just at the same time a day?How much do i feed him?

Also, could i keep him in the crate while im at school. Which would be from 6:20am to 3:00?

And if you could get me advice?

Wow your getting him really young. Hes gonna be very small. I would leave food out all day. Check the food bag for the recommended amount to feed. Having him in a crate while your gone will be fine but is there anyone that can come in and check on him?

Hes really too young to be away from the Mom is there any way he can stay with the breeder a few more weeks. I got one that young but I was home with it all day

Please remember too that they are more so like A human baby at this age. Even though they can eat on their own, they cry and are demanding. A young puppy needs the touch and loving hands of their own mother or Human parent at this age. Time is at the essence. :animal36

Im going to talk to my aunt and see if she can bring him to work with her.
:]

6:30 - 3 is a really long time for a puppy that young to be left alone... I think the rule is that for every month of their age you can leave them crated for an hour alone.
Scooter is 6 months but I don't like leaving him alone for more than 4 hours anyway. At 6 weeks, they should only be left alone for an hour and a half.
Most yorkie's don't go to their homes until they are 12 weeks old or more, where are you getting him from? Maybe you should ask why they are letting him leave his mom so early?

First off I would wait to get the puppy with it's at least 12 weeks old. Then I'd make sure I had at least two weeks off from work to spend getting it use to his new home and to bond with. I'd never leave a young puppy alone for more than 3 hours at a time. You need to get the puppy house trained, and crateing the puppy for long periods of time will not be healthy if it tried to hold it's pee and poo, and so it would have to use it's crate, which in turn creates a bad habit. Can you buy an expen and attach it to the front of a wire crate. Have thick bedding inside and a blanket covering the crate. Attach a water bottle to the pen and have a wee-wee pad at the oposite end of the crate. Take the puppy outside every hour to run, play and potty for at least 15 minutes at a time. Have someone come over every hour to let the puppy out to run around and potty. A bored puppy will become a barker, a chewer, a destructive dog, a fearful dog and one that has seperation anxiety. Feed the puppy a little bit four times a day. This way the puppy will poo about two to three times a day and generally the same time each day.
Make a Vet. appointment for the day after you expect to pick it up to have it checked out.

The owner is my aunts boss. I think they are giving them away because they are eating normal food.

Ok thats a good way to think of it

:(I totally agree with that.


However, Crate training to me is wonderful!

Typically I have been told that you should feed your puppy 3 times a day, morning, afternoon, and evening. fresh water should be left out all the time.

I am not a big fan of leaving chew toys, treats, or food, rawhides, anything that your puppy can ingest in the crate while you are away, god forbid they choke, and oh boy.

Good Luck!

Even if they are allready eating puppy kibble, they need to stay with their mom and brothers and sisters for socialization. If they do leave this early, they need their new family to be there 24/7 to keep socializing them. Maybe you can do what someone else suggested and take 2-3 weeks off for training and socializing? That way when your pup does have to be left alone he'll already be off to a good start. If you decide to just leave him alone as is, you will have a very hard time training your pup. They can't learn on their own.

Loki was not given a full 12 weeks with his mom and litter mates. He is nervous, nerotic, and fearful. I've spent years training him (with a professional and then on my own) and he is pretty normal now but still extremely quirky (he doesn't like changes to his schedule, hates storms and loud noises, has no social skills with dogs)... This is typical of dogs who do not stay with mom long enough. Some dogs do fine, but you won't know if your dog will be one of the lucky ones so you should definitely try to see if he can stay longer. Maybe offer to pay for his food and take him on weekends when you can be with him 24/7. It's important for him to have human attention but it's just as important for him to be with his mom and litter mates. Usually once they are weaned the mom stops cleaning up after them, which is why people try to find homes at 6 weeks. Even if he could get 2-4 more weeks with mom that would be better.

Also, we crate trained and it's a great tool but it's meant to be used for house training. Therefore you shouldn't crate him until he is old enough to hold it for as long as he will be in the crate. You probably should use an ex-pen until he is like 6 months old while you are at work, then you can crate train in the traditional sense when you are home - 30 minutes in the crate, potty break, 30 minutes of freedom, repeat and extend the free time as he can handle it, crating him when you can't watch him to prevent accidents in the house. If you are home and don't want to crate him, you can also tether him (tie a leash to your belt) to keep him from sneaking off and peeing in the other room ;)

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:
Great Advice!

[QUOTE=Erin;2254699]Loki was not given a full 12 weeks with his mom and litter mates. He is nervous, neurotic, and fearful. I've spent years training him (with a professional and then on my own) and he is pretty normal now but still extremely quirky (he doesn't like changes to his schedule, hates storms and loud noises, has no social skills with dogs)... This is typical of dogs who do not stay with mom long enough. Some dogs do fine, but you won't know if your dog will be one of the lucky ones so you should definitely try to see if he can stay longer. Maybe offer to pay for his food and take him on weekends when you can be with him 24/7. It's important for him to have human attention but it's just as important for him to be with his mom and litter mates. Usually once they are weaned the mom stops cleaning up after them, which is why people try to find homes at 6 weeks. Even if he could get 2-4 more weeks with mom that would be better.

[QUOTE]

First let me say Erin, I have great respect for you but what I am about to say is a little different or a little tighter then what you said.. (oh dog trainer and an owner of an aggressive unsocialized dog here. Masive reaing and study behind me.)

First 12 weeks is to late to get a dog socialization is from 8 weeks to 16 weeks and then it is done.. you can work with a dog but as you know it going to be an up hill battle. 100 people, places, things, sounds, and dogs all different by 16 weeks to have a hopefully well adjusted socially smart dog and if you have a dog born with shy or fear concerns a boat load more then 100 of everything is needed... oh and I have taken a 7 week older and done it with great results not a yorkie though.

You have one more fear period to get them through before they are set and stable and in that period a lot of things can blow apart a dog but if well socialized by 16 weeks you can hopefully get them through that too.

Anything before 8 weeks being taken away from mother and litter mates, the dog does not learn enough about getting along with other dogs.

12 weeks is for yorkies and small breeds that can run into hypoglycemia concerns and that why with yorkies we need to hope that a breeder is up on the social skills before we get them as we have only 4 weeks to cover everything without over loading a dog.

But the studies are now showing that socialization to sound to avoid phobias should start as soon as the puppies and hear... so at birth.


I would also like to point out that if the mother has fear concerns like people and is unsocialized or is afraid of sounds it would be better to pull the puppies long before 12 weeks even at the 6 week mark and socialize with stable dogs.
I prefer in the big picture to get a puppy in the 8 to 10 week period and run socialization full steam until 16 weeks and passed that to the first year.

I can snag the social developmental and fear stages chart if you need to cross check what I just said.

JL

I would love to see the chart! I'm so interested in all of that stuff. Figuring out why Loki is the way he is helps to undo it. I actually don't know when he was taken from mom, it was early, maybe 6 maybe 8 weeks I don't know. I didn't get him until 13 weeks and I have no clue what was done during that time.

I don't disagree with you. I say 12 weeks because my trainer who also breeds labs even keeps her big dog puppies until 12 weeks. But she gets them started on socialization and house training. I suppose most good breeders would, although it seems if these people are trying to get rid of dogs pretty early so they probably don't know much about socialization. In that case you are definitely right.

There is still the issue of them being so small.. it's hard to say they should go sooner, you know?

I'm not getting another one any time soon but next time I want to do everything right. I wish Loki could just start over. He's so smart so he's easy to train it's been a lot of hard work. He's doing great though. Today we watched 2 dogs walk by with only a muffled "woof" I had to stand there and sing-song "it's OK, what a nice dog, do you see the dog?" to him, but still, he did great! And he looked to me first before barking his head off (he didn't, but he wanted to!!), which is *awesome* :D

I went and snagged that link.
This info is based on the long standing study of John Scott and John Fuller on four seprate breeds in four seperate catagories of dogs and then some inbreed.
They had a colony of dogs that ran from fully soicalized to non and it was done over years and years. The book is Dog Behaviour- The Genetic Basics by Fuller and Scott, it one heavy read.


Developmental Stages

JL