kermat

My partner and I hesitated for a long time before getting a puppy, because we both work full time we thought it might be cruel to leave one at home by himself during the day. Because my partner has an RDO during the week, our puppy Judd is home by himself for about 8-9 hours 4 days a week. But we do the best we can, and to be honest Judd doesn't seem all that worried about it - I haven't seen any signs of separation anxiety and he doesn't whine or howl when we leave him. We make sure we play with him and walk him in the mornings before we go to work, then we play with him for at least 20-30 minutes when we get home as well as taking him to the park for a run and to interact with other dogs. A lot of people say that if you work full time you shouldn't get a puppy, but I disagree - we provide Judd with a warm loving home and give him the absolute best care possible. Obviously leaving him home by himself 4 days a week is not ideal but both of us need to work to pay the mortgage so its the best we can do. We do see some signs of boredom when we get home, which is to be expected - usually nothing more than a few holes in the garden, and he's chewed a few of our sprinklers. Make sure you get your puppy lots of toys, keep some aside though and rotate the toys daily so he's got different toys every day. We got a doggie door installed in our glass sliding door in our laundry so he's got access to the laundry if its cold or rainy, plus we give him bones, pigs ears, and other chew treats as well as lots of fresh water. I think Judd sleeps most of the day while we're at work because when we get home he's got a LOT of energy, so we just make sure we play with him lots and take him for lots of exercise - if you do the same sort of thing your puppy will be fine

Maybe he's just doing it to cool down........ He wasn't too sure of the beach at first but now we take him pretty regularly and he loves it, we even got him into the water swimming on his own!! We were such proud parents that day

Just wondering if anyone has experienced a similar puppy problem - my beagle puppy Judd sometimes goes a bit nuts in his water bowl - its hard to describe but its like he's digging in his water bowl, he gets his front paws in there and starts scratching and water goes everywhere!! At first when he started doing it we thought maybe it was because he was hot, because it was summer at the time, but it looks like thats not the case now that the weather is cooling down and he's still doing it. Its not that big a problem, but when he does it to his water bowl in the laundry, water goes everywhere and I have to mop it all up - I was just wondering if anyone else had experienced this or knows why he is doing it??

We recently found a fantastic shop in Perth that specialises in raw bones and other meat products (dried pigs ears, trotters, dried kangaroo etc etc) for dogs - it was awesome!! We bought three raw lamb bones for our 7 month old beagle puppy, one of them keeps him busy for hours they are our saviour!!! We also give him the occasional raw chicken neck too but they last about 5 seconds, but he goes nuts over them!!

We put polony into our beagles Kong - he LOVES it, he'll pretty much do anything for polony!! Keeps him busy for ages.