Five months and counting

Dasher is doing well with both his obedience training and his household manners. I tell him every morning he is going to win Crufts one day! His puppy biting has decreased, although he is teething now, so I have to watch out as he likes to chew on the odd chair leg. I provide him with plenty of chewable toys that he can munch on for relief and rotate regularly so he doesn't get bored with the same old toy. Novelty is the key to keeping a puppy occupied. If you have a puppy, you will know it is a roller coaster of happy and frustrating moments. Clients often ask me how to stop a puppy or adult dog from digging. The simple answer to that question is I don't. I always let my dogs have time to be dogs and enjoy doing doggy things. But I insist that certain activities have a time and place. For instance, I will encourage my dogs only to dig in one place in the garden. And I will even bury a toy to enable them to dig in that spot. When I lived in Cambridge, next to our veterinary surgery, we didn't have the space for digging, so I invested in a children's sand pit and buried toys for them to find. However, when my Leonburger came on the scene, I got a bit more lax with where she was allowed to dig because, as a bitch who suffered from hormonal swings, she wanted to dig a nest, and I felt it would be unfair to be so insistent about where she could dig. But now hormones have settled down; she follows the other dogs' lead, and all three dogs dig in the same garden area. It's a shame my husband is insistent on pulling up the thistles in the lawn, though, as the hole he leaves seems to them to be an invitation to dig there. We can't have it all our way, and husbands have to fulfil their hedonic budget, too.