perla

Thanks everyone. It seems the she's been fine since the following morning (after I fasted her for 20 hours). I took her to the vet still that morning and the vet said there's nothing to be alarmed since she's now better...just have to keep an eye on her. So we're thinking that she probably ate something off the ground while she was on the walk or at the dog park and that irritate her tummy. She still passes gas occasionally though...pretty smelly gas too!

Thank you so much all4addy for your advice. She's been on fasting since noon and she's been a hungry pup all day till she slept in just now. She hasn't go no2 since this morning but I guess that's because she doesn't have anything left in there. I've been taking her to the dog park the past couple of weeks so she might have picked up something that upsetting he tummy.We'll see the vet tomorrow so I hope it's nothing serious. Thanks again so much for taking time to reply to my post!

She is five months old and we have her since she was 11 weeks. We noticed that her poo's become soft (not runny) and have strong odor during the past two weeks. We thought it might have something to do with food. Yesterday on her 1st poo of the day, the first few poos were firm but they got very runny at the end. An hour later she had to go again (normally she only has it once in the morning) and it's runny with mucus. Then the evening one is fine. The first few ones were firm and got a softy in the end. Today she's doing the same pattern so I'm getting worried. We have a vet appointment tomorrow but I just want to get opinions from here in the mean time. Other this, she seems fine....still play & eat as normal. I didn't change her diet and she's never had diarrhea before. Her diet includes grain free Candidae, goat milk (which I stopped giving her since Monday...although she's had goat milk since she was 14 weeks and had no problem), minced meat with rice, and 4leggs natural chicken balls (I alternative between these food throughout the week).

Thanks so much Becks! Off to look for the DVDs

Is this pup going to be shown or you are going to hand strip?? Did your breeder give you any charts that help you understand the stripping process & the stages to go through?? Yes you can over strip but it wont ruin the coat but you will stuff up that stage & will have to wait for it to grow. At present you are just working/rolling the coat ,if your lucky you can do this for awhile otherwise your pup will hit the stage of needing to be stripped back fully & normally in sections as certain areas grow faster so you strip to ensure the length all over works & blends. If it is a show dog then you need to understand the dogs faults & qualities so you can hide/enhance. If its a pet the same still applies but the mistakes wont be such a drastic issue. Not sure how your breeder does the rubber thumb but we cut the end out & use our fingers to pull. We also use strippers like Mikki & Classic plus the slick n easy stone which is super. The one thing you will learn quickly is technique,stripping is a killer on your joints/muscles & done wrong it will hurt ,done right it shouldn't but long term it is known to affect many with arthritis Thank you for your advice! She's not going to be a showdog but I was recommended to hand-strip her for a healthier skin/coat. At the moment I'm doing it in a small bit at a time, working on different section each day. Since she's not going to be showed I don't have to worry much if I overdo (I think!). The breeder gave me a small booklet which contains an but I wonder if there are DVDs out there that teach how to groom a terrier ;)

Thank you for your advice. I will check out the Mikki knife. I'm currently using a nail file with a rubber finger but I would also like to try the knife as well. When removing the coat of the puppy, the hairs that are more difficult to come out mean they are not ready to be pulled out yet, do I understand this correctly? Is there such thing called over-stripping? I'm worried that I will end up ruin the coat.

What I'm going to ask is probably a very naive question. The only grooming tools that I know are brushes and combs so I pretty much have zero idea about other types of grooming rakes/knives. I read about using Mars Coat King online and how some people use it to strip their dogs' fur. Is this coat king similar to the stripping knife (in terms of the result) or it is more similar to the clipper? I have a westie puppy and I'm learning how to hand strip her hair. The breeder taught me a bit and I also read up some information from the web. The breeder recommended me to start out using a rubber finger and then can get the stripping knife once I'm more familiar with the process but I was wondering if there are tools that I can use other than the stripping knife to would make the hand-stripping easier/less time consuming. Also, my puppy is 11-week and is it too early to start hand-stripping her? The breeder already stripped one of her litter-mate hair when he was 9 weeks old but my puppy hair weren't ready to be taken out at that time. Now some of her hairs start to come out easily when gently pulled so I reckon that I can start stripping bits by bits?

She surely can be very vocal I'm glad to hear that barking during play is normal. Is barking at random stuff in the house normal too? This morning she started barking at her doggy biscuit box and yesterday she was barking notoriously at a trash bin. It's kind of funny to see her doing that but I'm worried about disturbing the neighbours :D

My puppy starts barking at various objects in the house (i.e., basket, trash bin, vacuum cleaner, a box, etc.). I try to calm her down or distract her to do something else when it happens but that haven't been much successful. She can be very persistent! I'm wondering if this associates with the fear period (she's 11 weeks now and get spook pretty easily when hearing loud noise) and what should I do to prevent this to develop into an excessive barking in the future. Another barking problem that we're having is she would occasionally bark at her new toys when playing with them. Is this normal? She can get pretty excited and loud. Should I worry?

The breeder that I got her from feed all her dogs with raw food diet so I follow her diet plan (minced cooked beef with rice & veggies for breakfast and dinner...sometimes I add sardines or tuna, eggs, as recommended by the breeder) and dry kibbles for lunch (she's on nutro at the moment but I'm planning to switch to candidae). It seems that her puppy coat is not ready to be stripped yet (still hard to pull) but I plan to strip her coat in a week or two when it's ready. I want to bath her as unoften as I can but she sometimes gets so smelly Can I use waterless shampoo on her between baths? Are those shampoos harsh on coat especially puppy coat?

Hello We just brought home a 10-wk westie puppy last week and need your expert advices. We are keeping her in-house and now trying to toilet train her to go outside. The problem is every time we take her out, she seems to enjoy rolling around the yard, dirt, and also digging around. It is probably what Westie like to do but how can we keep her clean??? I brush off all the dirt and wipe off her dirty feet every time we come in (which is like every hour because I try to take her out every hour) but she is still very stink even after a bath. The house also becomes kind of stink too now. Is this normal with the breed (the body odor) or is it the food plus the love of rolling in the yard? I'd really appreciate any advice you could give.

The past two days I let her play in the kitchen. Her crate is one corner and she'd go in there by herself to rest when she wants to. I leave the crate door opened most of the time. The problem is it's so hard to keep an eye on her even when I'm now working off my dining table which is right next to the kitchen so I can see her but she still has accidents all over (when I put her in a playpen..smaller space...she would go on the newspaper 100% of the time). She also shows no sign when she wants to pee/poo. Yesterday she was diagnosed with UTI so this may be explains the accidents with the pee. But for the poo, she doesn't always go within 30 mins after the meals (sometimes she does, many times she doesn't). This morning I took her out but she didn't go outside but she did after 5 mins that we came back inside....on the kitchen floor and not on the paper that I leave there. I'm a little frustrate but wonder if the poo accident is also the result of the UTI??? Is it even possible to toilet train the puppy when she still has UTI so should I wait until she's better to retrain her again. I still take her out every 1/2 hour like you suggested though ;)

Thanks for all your opinions! I start putting her in the crate this afternoon. The crate is too big so I partition it to make it smaller. She seems to be doing ok in there for now (fingers-crossed). One more question though, I work from home but when I'm work I can't really keep my eyes on her. Should I put her in the playpen (no more pee pads in there) to play or should I put her in the crate (after potty breaks and a bit of a play outside)?

I really need your thoughts on this. We just brought home a 9-week Westie puppy on Wednesday. I was wondering what would be the best way to housebreak her. We want to train her to potty outside. She's been trained to potty on newspaper/puppy pads. Here's our situation, we put her in a playpen (in the kitchen area) and take her out every time we see she is about to go potty. But when we miss the sign, she'll just go on a training pad that we leave in there. During the day though, she has a few accidents when we played with her in the living room so I think I shouldn't let her play in the house until she's housebreak??. At night, we took her out for the last toilet at 11 pm and during the past two nights she didn't go all night until I woke her up at 6.30 am to go. Do you think keeping her in the playpen will make the housebreaking harder? Should I use the crate instead? And if we put her in the crate, should we put her in the playpen during playtime or should I discard the playpen at this stage until she's crate train? ......more info here What I was doing the past two days was to take her out to potty in the yard then once she finishes, I praise her and play with her in the yard for 15-20 minutes then I bring her back to the playpen. She's has a sleep corner (I put a small dog house/bed there) in there as well. After a play she'd take a nap and once she wakes up I take her out to the yard again. But like I said, she sometimes goes in her playpen (the potty corner) so I think having a playpen is kind of defeat the purpose of housebreaking since I do not want her to go inside the house (the playpen is in the kitchen area). If I let her stay in the crate, how often should I let her out to play (in addition to potty breaks which is around every hour...she doesn't go every often though)? I'm thinking about putting her in the crate and take her out every hour to potty then let her play in the playpen before putting her back in the crate. Would this work?