High energy 6 month old puppy
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Anonymous
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Do you just power through to get to the other side? Puppy is 6 months old, 55 pound rescue mix breed who has a ton of energy. Ideally she needs to play with another dog every day but that isn’t possible. Do we get another dog? Or just try and wait it out?
I walk her 3-4 times a day (around 2-2.5 miles a day) plus play with her outside when she can’t play with another dog. |
Anonymous
| Can you try to give her a longer walk? My arthritic 13 yr old small dog still walks 2 miles. |
Anonymous
Op - I was originally told that you shouldn’t walk puppies too far since it was bad for their joints. I could try to add in another 1 mile walk at some point in the day. It is just so much time and I work full time too! |
Anonymous
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Two separate things:
1. a six month old puppy is still a puppy. She needs a lot more sleep than an adult dog. She needs a calm place and to learn to calm herself and sleep. The more you walk with her and play with her, the more you wind her up. 2. Mental enrichment in addition to physical enrichment makes such a difference- --make her work for her food. 55 lbs is big enough for a slow feeder, to mix up her food and freeze it in a Toppl, etc. --put some food in an empty paper towel tube and crumple the ends. make her rip it apart to get to the food. If she eats the paper, no harm done. (the adult version of this is to wrap it up in a towel but my dog tried to eat the towel so I don't recommend it) --definitely training sessions. 10-15 minutes of trying to learn increasingly challenging commands - stay, place, easy, friend (paw), etc. - will make her tired. Use kibble as training treats rather than actual treats - you don't want to overfeed and overload growing joints. |
Anonymous
| 7:58 here again- yes, you're right. she def shouldn't be running on hard pavement or walking "too" much for a little longer yet. Talk to your vet about when it's time to start adding in distance, and on what surfaces. 55 lbs at 6 months is close to 100 at a year, so that's a very big dog and there's more potential for hip/joint issues down the line. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Thank you! Yes I have puzzles and other mental enrichment toys as well. I do need to up my training more. We do day to day training like stay for food, leave it, stay and come. We are starting a 3 week training program soon and I hope that is helpful.
Since she is a rescue mix breed we were unsure of how big she would get. She is just shy of 6 months and weighs 55 pounds. Do you think she will be 100 pounds?!? That is way larger than we thought we would have and I am not well versed in large dogs. We were told she was a kid-sized lab mix! Definitely not! |
Anonymous
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7:58 here AGAIN - if you're on Facebook, do a search in the Animal Sense and Behavior group (you need to request to join). Only screened and vetted trainer/behaviorists and vets are allowed to respond to questions, so you get more legit answers. I see a version of this question posted in there from time to time and the replies from trainers and behaviorists include some great ideas, but the basics are what I posted above - the puppy needs to learn to self-calm, rest and sleep- this is always huge
and mix up the enrichment. Make her sniff out and find her food - you can just toss it all around and make her find it. Stuff like that. |
Anonymous
How sure are you of the 6 month age? Many rescues adopt out dogs with mere guesses for ages. Once a puppy's adult teeth are in, it can be really hard to tell the age. But yes - 55 pounds at 6 months is huge and she will be quite big. What does your vet say? He or she will have hands on your dog and can come up with a better guess. |
Anonymous
Op - yes we are sure. Puppy was only 8 weeks old when we adopted her. Vet thinks maybe between 80-90 pounds but depends on which breed in the mix wins out (she has some large breeds in the mix that go upward of 120+ pounds when pure breed). |
Anonymous
| How about trying Puppy Daycare a couple of days a week to tire her out? I love when I pick my puppy up and he just wants to sleep for a couple of hours so that I can get all of my work done. I really really really notice the difference on the days I don't take mine in. |
Anonymous
Op - I like doggy daycare as well but ours is 20 mins away from our house and it takes a ton of my time to go drop her off and forth. We aim for at least once a week or doggy daycare. |
Anonymous
| Even by what I consider conservative guidelines, a 6 month old dog should be able to walk 30 minutes at a time with no ill effect. If it takes you 20 minutes to walk a mile, that gets you a mile and a half per walk. You should be able to get 3 miles if you walk twice a day or 4.5 if you walk 3 times. Or do some other exercise with the dog, but it really needs exercise. |
Anonymous
Op - yea we do 0.5 miles in the morning (time constraints), 1.5 miles mid day, and 0.5 miles in the late afternoon. I probably need to add another mile in there at some point |
Anonymous
Ours goes twice a week and it’s 25 minutes there and back. Totally worth my time. |