When do they grow out of the "puppy" stage???
 

I know terrier breeds are known to be quite playful and full of energy, and so in that way they are always "puppies"...but I think our 5 month old Reeses, who is now a good pound heavier than our Rocci, is really pushing her puppy weight around quite a bit.

To give you some history, back when Reeses was first brought home at just over 2 lbs she was full of energy and wasn't too much of a pain to Rocci. They would both play and jump on each other, and Rocci is extremely mild mannered and very gentle...Fast forward a few months later and Reeses still has her short puppy coat and we are growing out Rocci's coat...and there are times where they are both wrestling and playing around, and then Reeses just takes it too far and starts playing tug of war on the longer part's of Rocci's coat. He looks absolutely and totally annoyed by this, he doesn't bark/yelp or doing anything other than just stand straight up and will look at me like, "Are you going to do something about this?" At that point I yell, "STOP!" and then Reeses releases the hair and realizes what she is doing and acts normal again.

It's almost like she is possessed and can't control her "puppy" like urges. I don't mind the occassional chewed on shoe strings/socks/paper/etc...that can be replaced and it keeps me and my family from being lazy and to remember to not have clutter around my house...but I definitely think Rocci is counting down the days that Reeses grows out of this puppy thing she has going on. Not sure if all puppies do this or not, or just Reeses...but she will be completely normal 95% of the day, and then she will absolutely snap and go bizerk and run back and forth across the room barking at Rocci. Rocci will just sit there as calm as can be as this maniac puppy is barking a millimeter from his face, then run to the other side of the room, run back at his face...and absolutely ignores her and won't move. Then she gets frustrated because she can't annoy him, and so she will start chewing on his long coat, but he of course does not have anything to grab on to with all of her short puppy fur.

I don't mind this, but for Rocci's sanity, when do you think Reeses will start acting more like a "grown-up" yorkie? I'm sure they all mature at different rates, so guestimates are fine.

Sorry but I had to giggle on this. Reeses is just being funny, she wants to play. I do not know how old Rocci is but thank goodness he is tolerant. I found a battery operated rat at Walmart that my little girl just loved(in the pet section). They even had a remote control one. I have to take it outside and hold her for a couple of seconds when I turned it on because the darn thing didn't stand a chance. She would catch it in a millisecond and shake it back and forth, take it to her bed and then try to get it to run away from her again. Get her something else to keep her mind occupied. Rocci will love you for it. Maybe if you got the rat they can play together.

Warning!!! Does promote her to try and dig up moles!!! She hates meeses to pieces!!!! LOL

Reeses is a total character! She is the one sticking her tongue out in my avatar. To be honest with you the first 100 times our family laughed when Reeses did it to Rocci...I should probably post up a video of it, because it is funny to watch (mind you at Rocci's expense). Reeses tail is wagging away and she is having a ball running back and forth, and Rocci is very stoic and acting like he doesn't even notice her puppy breath a millimeter from his face...reminds me of the stereotypical drill sargeant chewing out a new recruit standing at attention.

In any event we adopted Rocci when he was already out of his puppy phase and he is now almost 3 and is super, super laid back. We don't know what he was like as a puppy, but we imagine he wasn't quite the energizer bunny that Reeses is...in any event we thought a feisty puppy would get his heart pumping and energize his soul a bit. I guess our plan worked and then some. Back when Reeses was smaller, and when she was about his size they played great with one another...like my human kids, my furkids now know each other well enough to know how to push each other's buttons. Now that the tides have turned and Reeses is heftier she definitely uses it to her advantage...other than that, Rocci seems to enjoy her company for the most part and they lay with each other and he will even share a toy with her. He has never shared a toy with any other canine prior to this, so he is making some progress. Anyways, before we have to cart Rocci away in a doggy straight-jacket and put him away in a padded crate when will the the puppy madness end?!?!?!

As you wrote, they mature at different rates.

Max was born mature. He did a lot of the usual puppy things and he can be a clown, but overall he has always been highly principled and well-mannered.

Teddy is 1 and a half, and he is maturing slowly. He is such an angel, but he has a love for wrestling. Poor Max has to put up with being tackled and having his topknot pulled daily. Sometimes he enjoys tussling, but if he isn't in the mood, he lets Teddy know. The wrestling is slowing down.

Make sure Rocci has a place where he can get away. Max used to take refuge on the couch because Teddy wouldn't jump up there with him.

Haha! Sorry, I have to laugh. Reeses sounds like such a funny girl! I am glad that for the most part, Rocci enjoys her company.

My Levi is three years old and still likes to "torment" our other dog. They are best buddies, but about twice a day, Levi gets in Dallas's face, barks at him, chases him...anything to get him to actively play. Dallas is much calmer than Levi and luckily is good-natured enough to take Levi's feistiness.

Maybe Reeses will calm down when she is less of a puppy, but I am still waiting for my three-year-old to mellow. He's a wild little thing. :)

Giggle, giggle, That's hard to say. She could be a puppy at heart all her life or settle down. Just be thankful she is healthy and robust. Your avatar IS adorable. Be patient. My momma dog plays with her puppies like she is a puppy herself and she is 2. If you see Rocci getting "over it" give him a treat and some alone time in your room watching TV or something. Good luck.

18 months is the time many grow up. Soon, they will start to sleep most of the day and night and only be really active for short times.

What is your avatar doing? hahaha I must have sat here and looked at it for I know 2 minutes, very cute!

Sorry, yeah that avatar is a pretty small picture... A bigger one can be found here:

http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/att...esestongue.jpg

Reeses is such a clown, and this picture totally captures her personality.


We leave Rocci's metal wire crate open 24/7 so that he can refuge in there and be Reeses-free whenever he wants. Pre-Reeses he would NEVER go in that crate unless we asked him to. Post-Reeses he goes in that crate at least 1/2 a dozen times a day without any sort of prompting...I'm pretty sure if he had imposed thumbs he would slam that crate door shut and post up a big "KEEP OUT!" sign.

You crack me up!!! LMAO!!! Still laughing!!

OMG I just saw the bigger picture of Reeses and he is so kissable, huggable, loveable, unbelievable!!

I just pulled up the pic to take a look at your cutie and Bennett was smelling my computer and completely stopped and looked at her haha he is in love..

This is a pretty comical thread.. My Suzi is nearing three years old , and she is the crazy, hyperactive, silly , one. Now I wondered the same thing, just when is she going to grow up? She is also very smart too. Suzi is the ring leader, and has taught the other two so much. For example, Tonight i ran a quick errand. We live upstairs in a apartment home. Suzi has alwways looked out our big side window through the blinds, waiting , and watching for us. Tonight , we had a surprise. Not only was Suzi looking, so was our baby yorkie ! 2 tiny little heads looking out the window. Sometimes it is very good to have such an active yorkie. They keep us on our toes;)

About a yr and a half give or take a few months

I read every post and laughed or smiled at them all. It is so funny how if you have more then one dog the personality changes you can have. My Jillian is my zoomer. Jillian and Trinity (Papillon) will DECIDE that they want to play with Jackson. They will COAX him into playing but when they both try wrestling him, he just lays down and doesnt move until they give up and stop. Then he will quickly jump up on the loveseat next to me and lays down. He knows I will stop them if they jump up there and try to start it back up again. When he first jumps up there I swear he has a very disapproving look on his face because I am still laughing at what just happened. HE does not find it funny.

If they take it too far though he has "put them in their place" and let them know that he is done for now.

She's being a pesky little sister!

We have a Black Lab and a Viszla besides our yorkie Shadow and she drives Brandi, the Viszla crazy. Sadie, our Black Lab is 11 and Shadow seemed to sense right away, not to mess with Sadie. She would take her big paw and just gently hold her down until she calmed down.

But with Brandi! Her greeting in the morning is to nip at her legs, we're constantly correcting her. Sometime during the day she will play hide and seek with Brandi. She runs through the kitchen and family room with Brandi right behind her and duck under a table or ottoman or into her pen, where Brandi can't reach. Poor Brandi starts mumbling and groaning. As long as Brandi doesn't get too agitated, we let them play. But being a much larger dog (53 lbs) we can't let it get out of hand.

I'm sure Rocci (?) will let her know when he's had enough.

They grow out of the puppy stage ? hahahaha and I love that avatar to

My Bella has 'started' to grow up a bit. She is 10 months old and is such a sweet heart. Shes a bit more laid back and lazy than she was as a puppy. Then she has her times when all she wants to do is play attack the socks as you walk game or run around the bed as fast as you possibly can, acting like a lunatic. I have a new baby coming home Sunday and it will be great to see the interaction between the two. I am a bit nervous, but I know soon they will be great friends. (Keeping our fingers and paws crossed.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by jltwigg10 (Post 3408536) Then he will quickly jump up on the loveseat next to me and lays down. He knows I will stop them if they jump up there and try to start it back up again. When he first jumps up there I swear he has a very disapproving look on his face because I am still laughing at what just happened. HE does not find it funny.

This is identical to what my wife and I go through...back when Reeses was smaller Rocci would run up/down stairs or jump onto our couch and could escape being smothered by Hurricane Reeses. Back then Reeses was the typical scared and clumsy puppy, but now she can run up/down stairs with the best of them and can easily jump on the couch.

Then Rocci started getting really creative and he would hide from Reeses. He got so good at it that there were times we swore he wasn't in the house or that he was pinned or had "fallen and couldn't get up!" Unfortunately Rocci doesn't have one of those medic alert things like in the commercial so we had no idea where he was and so we're all in panic mode and the family would flip the house upside down. Sometimes it would take a good 10-20 minutes sometimes for us to find him...which we realized was not good.

Then one day we left Reeses crate door open (we were/are crate training her) and we had the "search and rescue" team out looking for Rocci again, and the last place we thought about looking for him was in Reeses crate. He never ever, ever, ever would go in his crate before this without us throwing a treat in there and praising him so that was the last place we looked. Needless to say our family was shocked when we saw him in there...a matter a fact we had to give him in a treat to get him to come out! Now we leave Rocci's crate open all the time for him to go to for his safety and sanity. There were times he would hide under or behind something and we'd realize that if we didn't know he was there he could have been badly injured.

Mind you, we know Rocci enjoys Reeses company...he shares his toys with her, he will even let Reeses eat out of the same food bowl. He also used to snap at Reeses and let her know to stop, but now he doesn't even snap at her... I think he just accepts her, and will most of the time wrestle with her and lay with her...it's just when Reeses snaps into "puppy-mode", there is no stopping her...we all can see it in her eyes...her ears perk up, her tail wags and she will lay on the ground with her hind legs flat on the floor (hard to describe, but it's like how a human would lay stomach down on the ground). I've got to take a picture of her doing that, because I've never seen a dog do that before her...does anyone elses' yorkie do that?

Our two basset hounds are 18 months old and they are starting to quiet down a little bit. Someone on this forum has two bassets who are 3 years old and she has to crate them because they get into trouble. In the eighteen months we have them they chewed the wire from the electric heater while it was plugged in, the wire from my room mate's juke box while it was plugged it also. They ate a whole shed of insulation and we had to rush them to the vet but they were okay. They also chewed the cable from our tv and the wire from our air conditioner. As I said they have slowed down a bit now but still have to be watched at all times when they're on the loose. Our other three dogs one shorkie one yorkie and one shih tzu are all puppies so we have awhile to go with them.

Wow, your puppy looks exactly like my Charlie, so adorable! He's my first Yorkie and I've had thoughts that he might not be full Yorkie. Mostly because his hair doesn't seem to be growing too fast. But seeing your picture has put my doubts to rest. He is also 5 months old (closer to 6) and he is the most enjoyable, sweetest dog I've ever owned. He too is quite the hellion, we call him Tazmanian Devil when he does exactly as you describe. We also have a 4 year old yellow lab that about 1000 times Charlie's size, that he constantly attacks and pulls on his ears, tail, etc. He just lets Charlie do whatever. It is so comical. But they are best buds.

With much deliberation, my family has come to the agonizing decision of having to rehome Reeses (totally unrelated to what my original thread was about, and Rocci will miss her greatly)...I have 4 human children, and my 2 younger ones are not taking the news very good at all. I will be posting her up in the for sale section here, so if anyone is in the Chicagoland area and is interested please contact me.

The reason for this is a situation has come up, where we have unexpectedly been asked to take in some yorkies from family members who are unable to properly care for them, and due to their small size and health issues (arthritis and hip issues) an energetic puppy may be a little too much for them to handle...so rather than keep Reeses in a crate or quarantined off to certain parts of our house we have decided that it's in her best interest to be rehomed with another family. The thought of not having her around has not set in yet...so if it takes days, weeks, months we will wait for the right home environment for her to go to and in the mean time we will enjoy having her around every second she is with us.

Oh no, are your sure you need to do this? I am sure that Reeses will calm down. Maggie was a wild child when she came home to us and Hot Rod let her do a lot of the same things to him. He would let her go and once he was done, he would let her know in his own way.

You can certainly tell the love that you have for Reeses. It would be such a shame to have to do this if things would settle down after a bit. I know that Maggie has learned her limits with Hot Rod and I am sure Reeses would do the same.

I would take a few moments and consider trying out the bunch of them together and see how it goes. Best of luck on your decision.

I will also pm concerning order.

Maybe you should just help your family members find homes for their yorkies. There are rescues that could take them in and your pup could stay put in your home. Instead of your pup AND all of theirs having to be disrupted and rehomed, yours could stay in the home it now has, and only theirs would have to be rehomed (because they are being rehomed anyway).

:thumbup::thumbup: I agree. That is a great idea. Poor Reeses.

Even if you decide to take in the older Yorkies with health issues, THEY might be happy contained to one area of the house until Reeses matures and settles down. It might make them feel more secure. I would at least give that a try.

She already has Reeses in the classified section up here. I hope she does not go so quick and maybe everything will work out for all the little ones.

Thanks for everyone's concern...as you can see from the timing of my post I haven't really slept at all thinking about this. I've been losing sleep thinking of different senarios of how to keep her, but I haven't thought of any good one's that would be in her best interest.

We thought about rescues, but this family member would not have that and some verbal promises were made by us before Reeses ever entered our lives and we would need to honor that. I'm sure Reeses will calm down as she matures, and in reality she really is not wild at all and she entertains us daily when she goes "puppy-crazy" the few times she does and definitely keeps Rocci on his toes...but we have taken in yorkies that are quite a bit older/smaller and aren't quite as Reeses-proof as the younger/stronger Rocci is. Even when Reeses calms down she will be more than twice the weight of the yorkies we have taken in and a few playful wrestling situations will probably result in emergency room visits for them. Plus we weren't expecting to have so many yorkies at once, and we want each one to get the attention they deserve...and Reeses being just a puppy she probably needs more attention than the rest.

Our whole family is showered by daily kisses by her, and I'm half embarrassed to say this...but she is the first dog I have ever let kiss on my lips. She is by far the most affectionate of all of our dogs...I can go on and on about her. Like I mentioned before it's not an easy decision for us, so we won't just hand her over to anyone...and we are willing to wait for the perfect environment for her to go in. I'm hoping the new owners will be YT members and will blog and/or post pictures and updates of how Reeses is doing.

With the number of Yorkies you have had and "taken in," I'm surprised you needed to ask "when do they grow out of the puppy stage."

Yeah, the weird thing is we've never really had a puppy before. The youngest we've ever taken in prior to Reeses was a 1+ year old...which led to this thread. The reality is we've never seen the transition from being born to being a puppy and growing into adult dog, plus we weren't sure if any or all puppies behaved the way Reeses does and if she would grow out of this stage or not...thus the reason for me originally posting this thread.