# 13 Week Old Puppy and Potty Training



## NickyTommo (Sep 29, 2018)

Hi, I’m new to these forums as I felt the need to sign up and talk about our family’s new puppy for some advice.

Starting of, Bucky, a male German Shepherd mix rescue, is not quite 13 weeks old and has been with us for a week now. Realistically I know that I can’t expect too much from a baby like him in such a short time, but a part of me and my family is simply looking for some confirmation that he is behaving like a normal puppy and we are not doing anything wrong;

Bucky is not being crate trained for various reasons, so we are working with him under constant supervision for his potty training. Mostly he is a very calm pup who sleeps a lot and doesn’t really whine when left alone either. He plays with his chew toys and goes a bit crazy over feeding time and overall seems like a pretty healthy and content pup.

Now, when we first got him we couldn’t really believe our luck; he hadn’t had a single accident for the first three days, even woke us up at night to go outside and pee once a night, and didn’t jump on any sofas or beds.
We keep him in a small extra room with a nice doggie bed, no carpets for him to pee on, and during the day a good amount of puppy toys. During the night my girlfriend and I sleep on the sofa and we have made a habit now of leaving the door between Bucky’s room and the living room ajar as he came to us at night to ask for a pee break.
We stuck to a pretty decent schedule, waking up, going on a pee break, doing a few minutes of training before breakfast because it makes him approach his food a bit more calmly, give him breakfast, cuddle a bit, play some, take him out for a potty break and a bit of a walk and so on. 
We even have a pretty well working evening routin in which we stay with him at night for a little bit until he is sleepy (usually around 11pm), then we leave to go to bed and everything runs quite smoothly from there on out.
However, on day four we started to doubt that we really did everything right. While Bucky does pee and poop outside and gets hefty praise and a bit of a treat for it, he has now started going a lot more frequently, as often as three times an hour and will sometimes just squat down in the house to pee without giving any signs. No sniffing, no circling, just off his bed, couple of steps away, and he lets go of the pee. 
We don’t use punishments, we just take him as soon as we see he is starting to pee, take him outside and clean the floors with an odor killing detergent. 
He has also stopped waking us up at night, and while we set ourselves regular alarms, sometimes he still pees in the time between one potty break and the next (one hour), usually right by the door which tells us that he does go towards the exit before relieving himself, but the times at which he does are very unpredictable to us. 
On top of that, ever since the increase of accidents and pee breaks, Bucky has also started getting VERY crazy over humping our legs sometimes and biting and digging and humping his bed. He will usually calm down a little with some obedience training, or by simply being ignored until he has calmed down, but we were still shocked to see this in our otherwise extremely calm and cuddly pup.

We have already been to the vet to make sure he didn’t get a bladder condition or anything like that, and we’ve been told that Bucky is a very healthy, pretty pup with good character, but we can’t help feeling like we may have done something wrong since we got him as his schedule and occasional behavior really changed on day 4. He went from needing 8 potty breaks a day to needing 20 (a lot of which overnight) and from calmly bringing us his toys to play with him, to forcefully humping everything in sight and biting at our trousers and knees if we don’t stop to let him mount us. 

We are not at all taken aback by the work that having a puppy takes, we are merely questioning whether this change is normal puppy behaviour or if we might have done something very wrong within his first few days of being here?

I already apologise if this seems like a very unnecessary question to ask, but as my family has so far only had adult dogs and Bucky is the first puppy any of as has ever raised, we felt like we wanted some advice/reassurance from all sides to make sure we weren’t completely failing at raising this little furball of love!
Thank you for all your time!!!


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## JoanneF (Feb 1, 2016)

It's completely normal! 

Keep doing what you are doing with the toileting.

Training a little is good to stop him humping; but while ignoring an unwanted behaviour is good for a lot of things, I don't think it's good for humping. It's a self satisfying behaviour and not one you want him to default to. So distract him rather than ignoring, either with training like you are doing, or a more appropriate form of play.


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## Jamesgoeswalkies (May 8, 2014)

I would simply say you have got a puppy that is growing up! The sudden burst of energy, excess biting and moments of madness are all perfectly normal and quite often don't appear in those first few blissful days when pup is settling in. In fact the next couple of weeks is often the hardest as you can't take pup out for walks yet and so they do have a tendency to get a bit stir crazy in my experience. And nipping always gets worse before it gets better.

Humping is just over excitement at this age so don't make too much of it, redirecting onto a toy often works. Humping legs is a habit you don't want to start so get up and walk away and give no attention for a while. At least that's the way I have always dealt with it.

If the peeing is more indiscriminate now that tends to be because they are more curious about their surroundings now and simply forget to pee outside so take pup out as often as possible. he'll get more control as he gets older.

Enjoy your pup (and post a photo maybe) 

J


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## NickyTommo (Sep 29, 2018)

Thank you guys so much for the responses, it’s so reassuring, I was so worried that we had already messed up in the first three days! Having a puppy in the house is definitely a bit overwhelming but we’ve all taken some holidays to make sure he gets to settle into his new home!

Also very good to know that ignoring might not be the best strategy to stop the humping, I’ll make sure to distract him with a toy or training instead then!! 

Also, here is a picture of our very sleepy little pup, he is very photogenic if I may say so


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## NickyTommo (Sep 29, 2018)

Hi everyone, I was wondering one more thing thy we have noticed in the past few days and i was hoping someone could help me out with it!
Bucky has a bone that he absolutely loves but of course sometimes I do need to put it away so we can do other things with him like going for a walk or training a little bit.
We have noticed that whenever we take the bone away, in exchange for a treat of course, Bucky goes a little crazy trying to look for it and then, after searching for it for a moment, he simply stops and pees right then or there.
We’re of course guessing it might be a result of the stress of losing his beloved toy, but we were wondering what we could do to make him less stressed about it and hopefully stop peeing whenever he has it taken away? Really hope someone can help us with this too!

And by the way, Bucky’s potty training has been going excellent now aside from the stress peeing and I’m super grateful to you for easing my mind about it!!


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## simplysardonic (Sep 1, 2009)

AnnStone said:


> You know, I have a Bullmastiff breed dog, just a small puppy, which is considered one of the scariest dog on the planet. I haven't met any landlords who will say no pets allowed in their house yet. Probably they are all afraid of my puppy. Landlords who don't allow pets are very few in number. Please don't leave your Dixie, because one bastard landlord can't stand dogs. Most of the proprietors allows any pets you want. This article is very useful to calculate puppy's weight Petsoid.


This thread is nearly 2 years old & your post is completely irrelevant to the OP, & doesn't make sense.

Closing.


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