littlelabrador

oh dear ! our vet trip last week wasnt quite that bad. Molly didnt want to go in, so i carried her, thankfully i didnt get pee'd on, but she did poo all over the exam room floor !! i can sympathise.

Well we do have one of those clams, we arent supposed to fill pools of any sort here, but i can put a couple buckets from the shower into it for her to play in, will give that a go one day this week, maybe if i throw some plastic toys in there she will go after them ? heres a pic of her sitting in one of her holes from yesterday. You cant tell from the photo, but she was digging quite deep, hence the sand all over her nose !

oh very funny. Molly went to the beach today !! I thought she would love the water, labrador and all, but noooo, she was terrified of the waves coming in ! So, basically my husband and daughter went in, and Molly and i sat on the sand about 15 metres back, and watched. She was ok with that, and had a ball meeting a lot of new people. Every second person who walked past seemed to say 'oh, a puppy, can i pat it ?' haha. And mostly teenage boys, which surprised me. Molly had a ball digging some big holes in the sand, something she hasn't been able to do at home, so i hope she doesn't transfer that newly acquired skill ! Is there a way to get them used to the water ? I took her ball along and tried to roll it towards the water, thinking she'd chase it in, but she wasnt having any of that, dug her feet in and would not move.

I took Molly with me to Petbarn today to get more puppy food. OMG, the number of people that stopped to pat her !!! (you can take dogs on leads in to the store, i think that is great!). Anyway, it reminded me of when my daughter was a baby, and all the nana's at the shops want to bend over the pram and touch her !! Of course, everytime someone came up Molly went nuts with excitement. Eventually she would sit, but wow, when does the excitement of seeing new people die down ?? lol. They are real conversation starters arent they ? poo's back to normal by the way, thankfully.

I'm so glad the breeder will take the puppy back. I totally empathise with the stress you have been going through and i think you've made the right decision. We recently got a labrador puppy, and as some on here know, its been darn hard work, stressful and we've had problems along the way. We also wanted a 'best friend' for our daughter, who has high functioning autism, but no way could we have done the whole 'puppy' thing when she was 19 months old ! We got kittens at that age instead, they arent so in your face, dont require anywhere near as much attention, you really only have to teach them toilet training a couple times and they've learnt, and they still like cuddles. We waited until our child was turning 5 (Molly was her present) to get a puppy. Dogs are great, but puppies really aren't for very young children, in my opinion. I have a 18month old niece, and Molly has knocked her over a couple of times, and she is scared of her, so i do understand the issues with your toddler. As someone else said, have a hot bath, relax, and you can revisit the puppy experience in a few years time if its still what you want then. You are doing the responsible thing now, which is great.

Now you tell me that ???? Well when she gets back to normal, i guess i will try the chicken wings if the vet okays it.

Molly had the worst diarrhoea overnight ! Yuk, we woke to find 5 huge puddles of liquid poo on the kitchen floor. It was pretty gross and stunk the whole house out. I've washed the floor twice and i can still smell it. :p Did call the vet about it and she thinks its most likely to be the lamb bone i gave her last night, as she said that if they are intolerant diet wise, its usually to proteins. So, poor Mols, is back on chicken and rice today, and being starved from breakfast till dinner late tonight. Probably chicken and rice tomorrow too, depending on what its like then. I did notice amongst the diarrhoea that the bits of carrot came straight through her unchanged. The vet says to keep her purely on the puppy food with nothing else for a while, as she was going okay on it until last night. yuk !

haha, havent seen the cockatoo's today. I took Molly to the vet late this afternoon, for her last vaccinations (for a while anyway!), etc, so we probably missed the cockatoo's time. I felt really really guilty today, it is my daughters birthday and she really wanted to go to lunch and go shopping (yes, at 5, lol), and as we've been staying close to home since we got Molly i thought it was something we needed to do. Poor Molly was alone for 4 hours, and i really felt awful. I'm sure she slept part of it, and played part of it, and was fine when we got back, but i still felt neglectful. Then i took her to the vet, poor puppy. Anyway, today Molly was 9.4kg, so she is gaining well, but the vet still thought she looks a tad on the lean side, although i think she looks fine. She has gained 2.4kg in the last two weeks. Last thing i want is an overweight puppy. I feed her what the packet says for her weight, plus a little chicken, rice, mince, whatever i have as well. She had the meaty end of a lamb shank today too, which must have a fair bit of energy in it. Sorry, no havent got any more pics yet, she hasnt really changed in the last week, lol. She is a lovely looking puppy though, i must say that whenever we take her out with us, we get lots of comments about what a beautiful lab she is, people commenting on her 'look'. I will take some more pics when i take her to the beach in a couple weeks time.

Well........i've added a bit of grated carrot and cheese (just a little) to her dinner tonight. Hope she doesn't get the runs ! She was into it though !

Will ask the vet when i take her later this week ! Darn cockatoos, today i found her with half an apple, with a cockatoo in the gum tree above going off at her - well who dropped it !? lol.

I'm going to start adding things to her food, as soon as she is on 100% new food, and ok on it for a week or so. I dont want to rush anything. Too many poo's cant be a great thing, but, i want to be sure it is firm, before i go adding extra foods, so i can then tell if any thing in particular changes the balance. Yesterday my brother was horrified that i dont have any 'treats' for her yet. I had to say 'shes not suffering !'. I use her dry food for training treats, and i have lots of treats aside for her, lots of samples of pig ears, snouts, etc, (eeww) that we have been given. I just want to go slow, one thing at a time, and be sure she isnt intolerant of various ingredients. She woke me up at 5am today, i heard a sound that i thought was vomiting, and rushed down to the kitchen to find her sitting there wagging her tail, excited that i was up so early. No vomit, so i dont know what i heard, lol. But i did manage to catch the poo's uneaten, must have been recently done, for once ! Oh im not sure about pineapple at all ! i can imagine that will go right through her at the moment, so i think i will leave that a while.

Hi everyone who is still interested in Molly's antics ! Party went ok. My brother, the dog nut, actually spent a lot of time with her, she didn't bother the kids too much. A bit of jumping and chasing to start with, but in the end she was pretty worn out and just went to sleep. Glad i have to take her back to the vet later this week for the last needles, as im still not sure about her food and poo's. It varies from soft formed to well formed, but she is doing a lot of them, probably 5-6 per day. Usually two overnight, which she eats, (eeeeeewwwwkkk), a couple outside in the morning and a couple in the evening. They are usually right after the other, ie, she does one and a minute or so later, does another. I'd almost say she is toilet trained, in that if the back door is open, she will do everything outside. But, at night, she generally does the two poos and a wee, on the kitchen floor. I know she eats the poo's because you can see the leftover bits ! how gross. Anyway, so will suss it all out with the vet later this week. I have never did hear back from the breeder about our behaviour issues.

thanks. When someone said recently that one grape can kill, i was panic stricken to find her with this bread. Not even sure how much she ate, wouldn't have been more than half a slice. She is only 12 weeks though, not a big dog. So looks like now i will have to search the yard everyday to see if the cockatoo's have dropped anything. Its usually mandarins off a neighbour's tree, but we have found bread, and apple before too.

Just caught Molly outside, eating ! Thought, hmm, what has she got. Turned out to be a piece of fruit bread or fruit bun, with obvious sultanas in it ! We have a lot of cockatoos around here that do tend to drop food when flying over. I'd say that's how it got in our yard. Now i do know grapes are toxic, but what about the sultanas in that sort of bread. Now im worried ! What do you think ? Will it harm her ?

Do you know why its 10 months for beach walking ?? I've been told its okay to take my 3 month old lab (after the last needles next week) to the beach, but for walking at home, only very short walks, like 500m or so.

Had puppy preschool again today. Learning to 'stay', 'wait', and 'come'. Well she did the 'stay' and 'come' pretty well, not so good yet on the 'wait'. She'll get there, we missed it last week because of the weather, and this was the last of 4. Next one starts up on the 24th, and we can do it again, so we will. Otherwise it will be a long time until the dog obedience classes next year. She's been pretty good today. Still having 'poo' issues though. We're up to 50/50 old and new food, and although it is well formed, she did 7 poos in 24 hours yesterday, so just keeping an eye on that. Hopefully it will settle down in a few days. I do have to take her back to the vet middle of next week for the last lot of needles, so will mention it then. I did weigh her today after puppy preschool and she is 8.6 kg at 12.5 weeks. She looks okay to me. Have to keep it that way. Took her to visit my Dad's lab today too. Henry is 10 or 11 (cant remember) and HUGE ! He is around 50kg and to me looked like a huge black wolf going for my baby !! But she was ok, lots of licking and smelling, and he tolerated it well. Just got a little jealous sounding towards the end, probably because i am 'his' and he wonders what's going on and who she is. I had her on the lead the whole time, as its the first time she has 'met' an adult dog. We are having my daughters birthday party tomorrow. I am dreading it ! 6 kids under 6 with her highness. I'm sure she'll be extremely excited. I plan to have her on her harness/lead when they all get here, and confine her if she gets too hard to handle. She usually crashes out for a good few hours in the afternoon, so hopefully that will still happen. Molly is good now with the meals, NO growling, yay. As soon as i tell her its food time she goes in the laundry and sits and waits, how cute is that? I put the food in the bowl, put it down and she doesnt move until i say 'go'. Then sits and i refill, she looks at me for the 'go' and then eats. That is working really well.

Molly wont pay any attention to it now. I put the kibble in the other day with the smallest amount of peanut butter to seal it, and lo and behold - the dog does NOT like peanut butter. haha. I had to remove the peanut butter before she would even have a go at it. Prior to that, she was just spinning it on the floor, the kibble falls out pretty easily, no real effort required. Certainly not sitting there chewing it or trying to get out the contents.

rehome her ?? no way !! Do you think i'd be here getting all this advice if that was our intention ? Nooooo, came here to work out the problems so we can end up with a great family dog. Last week i thought we'd made a massive mistake, but, stress gets to you. Things are improving and i'm sure she will get there in the end. She is kinda cute hey ? See the pic of yours (above) ? Im assuming the big one is a puppy pic. How come all the labs i see have that chubby puppy look ? We dont seem to have had that look. I dont think Molly is underweight, she looks ok. She's 12 weeks and around 8kg, does that sound right ?

Molly was a bit jumpy, and barked at my husband last night. This was the same as last week, when we sat down to watch tv. I really think she just wants his attention. I has been raining here for a week, she isnt getting much outside time because of the rain, and she just wants him to play. She did stop when told no. I gave Molly her first bone today. Well......we did have a few growls when i went to check on her, not aggressive, but more warning, but i fully expected that, because im sure her thoughts were 'this is the best damn thing i've ever eaten, no way are you taking it from me'. So, she did love it. I couldnt find brisket or lamb flaps, butcher said he'd use it all in his sausages (eeewww), so i ended up buying a lamb shank from coles. It was precut in half horizontally, so i just gave her the smaller end as i thought the whole thing might be too much. She spent an hour eating it, but didnt actually eat the bone. She got everything else off it, but left the actual bone. So, when will she 'get it' that she can eat the bone ?

She's going well, no food growls for over 24 hours now. I'm happy about that. Will try varying it but might wait till tomorrow. This morning she was a bit quick at one point, and i had to pick the bowl up and say 'uh uh' and she sat and looked at me like 'well ok, but give it back please'. lol. I can walk around in there at the same time and it seems ok with her. My daughter ran in yesteraday (she didnt know i was feeding the dog) and Molly wasn't bothered by that either, so that was good. Of course i told my daughter to turn around and go back out though. The tag came from Ebay. Name and symbol if you want it, on the front, and vets name and number on the back, for $10 each. I thought they were pretty good. Got them for the cats at the same time too, as they tend to lose their collars every now and then. off to give her a ball play while its not raining !

here's an updated pic of our baby ! She really is a gorgeous thing, despite the problems of the last week (which are improving by the day)

haha, i dont think there is much difference between a lab and a retriever, i grew up with both ! They can be just as boisterous. Only thing is the retrievers coat requires so much more attention. We will have to agree to disagree on the full time work thing.

Yeah, she is very lovable. I love how excited she is first thing in the morning, its like she hasnt seen us for a month rather than just six or so hours ;) ah, i was going to post an updated pic, but camera battery is flat ! will try tomorrow.

I think theres also a labrador rescue society in NSW. Thats how my Dad got his black lab. He was in a pet shop window for 4 months !! (5.5months when we got him 10 yrs ago). We rescued him for the princely sum of $200, they wanted $800, no wonder he didnt sell. Imagine that long in a pet shop. Disgusting. Beautiful dog he's been too. To jamesanddean, you need to think long and hard about a puppy with full time work. We have a 12 week old labrador and i can tell you, SHE is a full time job. There is no way i could or would consider getting a puppy and working full time. Its just not fair to the dog. They need company, care, attention, feeding, playing, walking, grooming, etc. Not sitting in a crate, and not left in a yard all day. I do believe the type of dog you end up with reflects the care and attention, or lack thereof, it recieves as a puppy. Just my personal opinion. Same as i dont agree with people leaving little babies in daycare all day.

I spoke to the vet nurse this morning about the diet. Obviously we are tossing out the optimum, seems like such a waste of money. Oh, would they take it at a shelter or something, or do they use specific brands ? its optimum puppy and its almost a full (small) bag. Vet nurse recommended either the eukanbuba low residue puppy, or stick within the hills. So, i researched online, and the only common ingredient i can find in the supercoat and in the optimum is Sorghum. Sorghum is also in Iams, and in Eukanuba regular puppy food, so in that regard, i have decided to stick within the hills science diet brand, and i have bought a bag of the science diet large breed puppy. Will see what happens. Hopefully as she is on the science diet prescription she will transfer across okay. I didnt really want to go changing brands too. Did the same feed technique at lunchtime, make her sit, a bit in her bowl, make her wait, then let her eat, pat etc. No growls again. I hope this will continue. Shes done a bit of jumping today, nothing much, gets down when told off, but its been raining for days here and i think shes a bit housebound. Not a lot they can really do inside to keep active is there?