When do they stop needing so much attention?
Ever since I got my golden retriever puppy he has absolutely consumed my life. Every second he is awake is a second that I am devoting almost all my attention to him. He is almost 4 months old now. This is something I expected when he was tiny, like 2-3 months old. He is fully potty trained now and is getting better on the biting so we are definitely making progress but it is exhausting. Part of the attention thing isn't that he's badly behaved necessarily (though he does like to get into all sorts of trouble) but because I am paranoid (what if there is something on the ground, etc--even though the house is puppy proofed).
I worry that I'm not as rigorous about training as most of the people on this sub, and that the "it gets better" maxim is reserved only for those people. I will be honest-- I am pretty much living moment by moment with this puppy. We do trick and obedience training, 10-15 minutes almost every day, but other than that I'm not doing anything fancy. I don't have a "puppy schedule", he just sleeps and plays when he wants, as long as he's not bothering anyone too much. I feel so aimless-- like I'm just pulling him away from various objects (curtains, tablecloths, furniture) all the time and telling him off and stuffing toys in his mouth and I just don't know how sustainable this is. I know lots of people who have had puppies and they seemed to raise them so effortlessly. I asked one how they dealt with the biting and they looked at me quizzically. "Our dogs never did that." Talking about puppy schedules, crate training, etc?? Most people off of this sub seem to be clueless about most things puppy, so how is everyone getting such lovely dogs if they didn't put the time in when they were puppies? I've seen person after person whose dog doesn't even know "sit" or "down" but yet they trust their dog to be alone for 6+ hours a day roaming free in the house.
I originally crate trained my puppy, but after a huge setback where he had to be in the crate for 6+ hours in the car he won't touch it even if food and treats are inside, and I'm not one to make him go in there. He just sleeps wherever he wants and I put him in an expen when he's fallen asleep and I am fine with that. Call me terrible, downvote or whatever but I don't think crate training is in our stars.
TLDR: Don't get me wrong I love this little bugger with all my heart but I can't see this getting better under any circumstances. How will he entertain himself when he is grown? He is always getting into trouble, crying at me, asking for something or barking. What do adult dogs even do? All I can imagine is him twice as big as he is currently, barking like a maniac and pulling the tablecloths off of the tables and destroying furniture. People tell me "it gets better" but how? How do people own dogs and not have to watch them every second of their lives to make sure they aren't getting into trouble? How do people leave their dogs to roam around the home, alone, for complete work days?
Posted Mar 12, 2019, 3:50 AM UTC
This is a flat out lie.
There's not a single dog that did not bite as a puppy. Biting is how they explore, it's how they play and it's their primary means of interacting and learning about the environment around them. Whoever told you this either did not have their dogs as puppies, or were just lying for whatever reason.
Or they got an older puppy. We didn't have biting issues with our terrier mix (now almost 3), we got him at around 4 months. He was teething and chewed up some shoes and other things, but never bit at our hands. Completely different with our current puppy that we got at 9 weeks. He's also an Aussie/Golden mix which are both mouthy breeds so that is probably part of it too, though I will also say around 4 months the biting went WAY down.
I think that is likely to be the case. At 4 months our Golden is so much less bitey than when he was smaller. It's honestly a matter of weeks or a month or two so it's possible that you get an older puppy that is already pretty much through the worst of his biting phase, while still being a puppy through and through.