toydogs

im sorry i heard "chihuahua". lol my chis are exactly the same you know, they will not go outside when it is raining. hold it until they get inside. i have kitty litter inside for mine. as im not around f/t as i work. mostly they will all go on the kitty litter but it took a fair while to train them all to do it on there. then the youngest the other day, i give him a bone (12 months old) and he is good he will no. 1's and 2's on the litter no worries but he gets the bone and puts it on the toilet the dag. he couldn't understand why i was unhappy about that. apart from saying eeewwwwwwww he is so cheeky, but i let him run around the house and he does nothing now, he knows he can't pee. and the bedding is clean as well now.

i also need to ask, when you say no firmly does the puppy take notice of you? if they don't know that they are doing wrong and don't know they are being growled at, it makes it so much harder, they don't know they are actually doing wrong. I call this conditioning the dog for training. I've rescued quite a few adult dogs ranging from 5 to 10 yrs old and they all have been housetrained and some of them were male dogs. that had spent their whole life in a kennel environement with no training at all. at the moment i have a kelpie cross boy that was 8 months old and had no formal house training so i completed his training and now he stays in the house and leaves the house clean when i come back. he is now trained. but you need to get them every time they pee for them to catch on, usually with our young ones, you grab them half way through (bit of a mess) and put straight out and they sort of get agitated and you can see that they know they've done wrong. you need to catch them right in the act too. as probably many have told you. if you catch after they have a memory span of only a couple of minutes not even that.

Hi, been reading the posts with interest. I do agree be totally totally consistant with your puppy. any diviation will confuse a puppy. in any training not just house training. also, after watching the methods on "its me or the dog" and actually trying them and notice she trained 4 little chihuahuas quite successfully, the first thing Victoria did was get the owner to get rid of the urine smell where the dogs have been. then the owner took them out every half hour or so, and after watching the dog inside like a hawk everytime they went to raise their legs to pee, she clapped or i have used a whistle to get their attention, the dog usually goes, gees whats that and totally forgets that they are about to pee. i tried it on one of my adult males and it indeed works... combined with a firm no. then take outside. i think maybe at 5 months old almost, it is probably time to teach them to go outside only as the puppy pads you have laid down is confusing your pup, they don't know whether they are allowed to go inside or outside. or both. so give them one message and one message only. my little ones, when i have them inside i watch them especially the younger ones as they can't hold their bladder forever so there are going to be accidents, then of a night i put them in a little carry cage the ones we use for airlines. airline carrier. perhaps get yourself one of these for the night. they have to get use to being locked in one for a whole night, but as soon as they get the message they are fine. we always say this trains them to hold their bladder eventually as they don't want to mess in their own bed. no dog or puppy does! we take them out before bed and as soon as they wake up in the morning. they are straight outside so they get the message. ofcourse we don't do this to young puppies, say under 16 weeks or so, they are too young for that method they will never be able to hold it for that long and they are still babies, but 4 months or over i start this type of training. this is for toy dogs only not bigger breeds of dogs as they take longer to mature. at 5 months for a toy dog they are almost mature. have about 3 or 4 months to go. is your dog a toy dog? i am getting the hunch that they might be. they are harder to train for some reason, having had much bigger breeds and also had friends with first chis then dobs. they take a while to catch on completely. good luck

thanks for that dogsforall

further to this, was researching various vitamins and apparently Evening primrose oil is the go to increase fertility, flaxseed oil is more aiding the male reproductive system although it does have some benefits for the female. still researching quite interesting

i buy chicken mince from the local chicken store, the store's name is wishbone and they are in most melbourne suburbs. or mainly in the northern suburbs don't know about east, west or south. I feed my chihuahuas on that and also my kelpie cross - the prices are pretty good too so i just add my own vegies and then my own multivitamins (petvite). the dogs love it. but first i drain the fat out of it, chicken mince has a lot of fat. cheers SAN RITA

:wink: hi - that bit of info, well some of it can apply to other bigger breeds, i myself own a pointer cross kelpie cross "who knows" and my family have owned not only toy dogs of various breeds (exhibition) also farm dogs of various breeds usually mixed, racing greyhounds etc. etc. for over 50 years.

I agree monosylabik and Im also not having a go at any product or people too!! the less chemicals as i said in my other flea treatment post the better and the same goes for the commercial food. we beleive in all natural stuff as well.

thanks for that, that was a very informative post! yes we had lots of trouble with bitches whelping and had C-S's for 5 or 6 years I was convinced it was the bloodlines i'd used it was a large mixture, then i tried the raspberry leaf and we had a natural birth. yay! so i am hoping that might continue. all that you said at the start of your post we used to use years ago, this is going back 20 years or so and we never had a prob. with bitches whelping then changed their diet, so i went back to all that again including lots of exercise as well and it helped a great deal i believe myself. so we will be continuing that program. thanks for that info. wonderful!

Hi, just wondering if any breeders would know what to give bitches in supplements to increase fertility when mating? someone said a few years ago on this forum about the benefits of raspberry leaf and i tried it and i obtained good results from that. so now i was wondering if anyone can give me suggestions of what to try, i read that Steve said something about increasing hormonal activity with raw meat will give that a try. I will be researching it but just wondering if anyone could put me on the right track thanks SANRITA CHIHUAHUA KENNEL

I am not talking about the SPRAY i am talking about the spot on products.........???????????? a cheaper alternative to the frontline spray is what i recommended which is just as good. but hard to buy its available in coles or safeway most of the time. in a purple can. everyone uses frontline spray and and yes it does adhere to the fur yes it does?????? and its safe. but even then for small toy dogs they are extra senstive being tiny and just to be CAREFUL thats why i recommend to put the product on a brush?????? the theme of my post was TO BE CAREFUL when dealing with tiny toy dogs.

usually the canines are the first to establish themselves so i'd say that i don't think it will grow back. With chis they are a breed unfortunately that lose teeth early on, from about 4 years old onwards they start to lose teeth. but 1 year old is a bit young./ i've never had that but then some dogs take longer than others to grow in their permanent teeth so it could still be a baby tooth. I once had an 18 mth old bitch that had two rows of teeth until that age so had the baby teeth and the permanents. can't really be sure not unless i see it myself. hope this helps Louisa

breeder/exhibitor of 22 years, i usually advise our puppy owners to be very careful they are tiny and chihuahuas are sensitive. it says that on most products too strong for chihuahua pups. we have never had a real problem with fleas with our chis. we recommend to use the Raid flea killer plus, not to spray straight on BTW but you spray it on a brush then rub on. this usually does the trick, we have never used frontline or anything that goes into the blood, we did once and i didn't realise the bitch was pregnant at the time and the pups were born deformed. i'd never gotten that before with pups so i put it down to those products. could have been coincidence but i think not. Im sure lots of breeders and pet owners do use that product with much success, we use frontline for our Kelpie X Pointer boy but he is a bigger dog ofcourse. and for years i have used talcum powder as fleas don't like powder of any sort. that works as well. and its safer for them. a puppy to use frontline on them, i myself wouldn't be doing that. but thats just my opinion. especially on a young puppy like that. and especially on a small chihuahua. JMHO good luck with your new puppy BTW. cheers