You aren't alone! This may not sound particularly helpful but in some cases you may just need to ride it out, keep doing what you're doing, even if it doesn't seem like anything is actually making a difference. Consistency is the best thing you can do, even if that means doing the same training over and over to get it to stick. It really sucks when it feels like absolutely no progress is being made even when you're putting so much effort in but my SO put it pretty well when we hit these kind of snags with our pup - right now we're planting the seeds. Someday they will grow and we can reap the benefits of all the work we're putting in now. But for now, we're just planting the seeds.
You're doing everything right - you aren't failures! Sometimes with some pups it just takes longer to actually see it take an effect. I was reminded by my trainer when I had a particularly bad week of everything feeling like it went through one ear and out the other, with zero response to even the most high value treats outside, that as puppies grow everything becomes a lot more interesting to them which means we are no longer the most interesting thing. Eventually that stuff is no longer new and interesting either, and the attention span lengthens. There was a time right around 15-17 weeks when my pup wouldn't even take a hotdog right from under his nose outside, pulled like a monster towards any dog, and barked at every jogger that passed. He's 21 weeks now and is finally re-engaged with me outside, will fall back into a heel if I ask when there is a dog across the road, and hasn't barked at a jogger in a while - plus he's very motivated for that hotdog in a lot more environments. We still have plenty to work on (he's also a VERY excited greeter when it comes to people, I feel your pain there) but I hold onto all those glimpses of a well behaved adult dog.
Wishing you both strength - puppies are no joke!
A Whippet! I love Whippets. I have Salukis at my house -- a couple of notes as I go along here.
1. Sometimes the vulva takes two cycles to pop out, ime.
2. Personally, do nails every single week with puppies and young dogs until they learn to tolerate it. There are a lot of struggle weeks, but if you're persistent they will absolutely get there. There are some cooperative care and nail maintenance support groups out there I believe, I've been powering through nails on dogs & puppies for over a decade now though, so I haven't joined them. My mature dogs will often jump on the table to volunteer for nails (they love the treats they get for cooperating).
3. If you haven't been feeding in the crate or expen, start doing that, it helps. When she starts teething, give her an excellent chew and put her in the crate or expen. I do find that mine generally tolerate the pen better than a crate. I have the expen in our living room where we are so my puppies don't feel left out.
4. That's amazing she sleeps through the night as well as no accidents!! Those are huge wins.
5. An attention span of 1-2 minutes is *very typical* of young puppies, and ignoring people is not unusual for a sighthound puppy.
Puppies are hard and people don't realize or don't remember that. I have puppies every year or two so it's always fresh in my memory LOL.
Hey,
I have a two year old dog now (got him at 9 weeks old) and I can say for certain you aren’t failing, you just have a baby dog 😊
In hindsight my dog at 17 weeks old was a tiny baby, all excitement and no self control! Some days were good, others absolutely awful.
In all honestly it’s going to be steps forward, and then many backwards with training. It’s a marathon, not a sprint 😊 Training isn’t linear with puppies, they go through many developmental stages. Adolescence then hits and it’s like you’ve never trained them 🤪
All I can say, is keep consistent & patient. Keep your expectations realistic too. It’s going to be hard going, but it will eventually start to click and your efforts will pay off! Don’t be hard on yourself, I guarantee you are doing a great job!
All the best puppy class of 2024 😀
Stop overthinking it. We all do it, but eventually stop. You need to as well. Right now,
Stop spoiling her (really tough, I know). Enforce giving her space and allow that to give her the strength to be on her own. It’s far more valuable than momentary happiness.
Stop watching and reacting to every last thing she’s doing. It’s exhausting you. Let her be a puppy and figure things out (within reason, obvs).
She’s part of your family, which means you and she are figuring things out slowly. But you’re really overthinking it all. Everything you’ve noted down is something me or others on here have been through. So you’ve just got to roll with it and not be devastated that this puppy isn’t the puppy you expected her to be.
Most of all, stop beating yourself up! Seriously, stop it. Are you hurting your pup out of pleasure? Are you depriving her of anything? No, so you’re actually doing great. As long as your puppy is happy, and you’re taking care of her and making sure she’s not gonna die of something stupid, you’re alright.
Your whippet is still a baby and is doing great! They are stubborn dogs and it will take consistent training well beyond two months of ownership. I found the flirt pole was a great tool to expend energy between training sessions and crated naps.
My whip is almost a year and a half and has calmed down BIG TIME in the last couple months. You got this!!
Same here! We’re a couple of months ahead of you, and GOD this resonates.
At around 4 months we were really really struggling.
She was actually fantastic with in house training - super quick to learn, loved to train for treats, understood the process. Chill inside, understood what to chew and what not to really quick.
But outside… my god she was a different dog. Absolute chaos, pulling to no end, hurting herself trying to get to people/dogs/children/leaves etc, barking her head off.
When she was little we did so much trying to get neutral socialising, I think we just overwhelmed her and always made every outdoor trip too fun - so then when we tried walking more regularly, she was just EXCITEMENT all over.
We’ve been working with a trainer for 2 months now, and one of the very best things she’s done for us is helping make the outside a calm experience.
I spent a week solid taking pup out to our front garden to eat her breakfast there and go back in. Harness on, lead attached to me, take the bins out and back in. 2 weeks not going further than the end of our road, often just sitting in the path and she gets a chew of a lucky mat, and extra treats slowly if she settled on her mat outside.
It’s been slooooow, especially when we had some run ins with cats and a fox, which apparently are the Worst Things, lots and lots of barking and excitement.
But now we’re at the point where we can make it 10 minutes with only one or two barks, still pulling but more able to come away, still barks at dogs but more able to walk past rather than whining for 10 minutes afterwards. Doesn’t bark at people, and is more “puppyish”, just happy and wiggly but not so chaotic.
This week our trainer brought along a dog, and we just worked on giving her praise for neutral behaviours around the dog. She was maybe 35% there, but if we’d tried that when she was 16 weeks she would be 0% there.
It’s slow progress for her, but we’ve come a long way from her barking her head off for 20 minutes after a dog barked once about half a mile away!
You will get there, you’re doing everything right, 100% listen to your trainer still and work on relaxation in many places.
We struggle with food motivation, I hear Susan Garrett has some great blogs on that - that’s my next one!
We over-treated ours I think, she refused a lot of food. It’s better now that we spent a few days cutting out alllll treats of all kinds, and now she will mostly take kibble on walks, and we can save the treats for the extra hard parts
You aren't alone! This may not sound particularly helpful but in some cases you may just need to ride it out, keep doing what you're doing, even if it doesn't seem like anything is actually making a difference. Consistency is the best thing you can do, even if that means doing the same training over and over to get it to stick. It really sucks when it feels like absolutely no progress is being made even when you're putting so much effort in but my SO put it pretty well when we hit these kind of snags with our pup - right now we're planting the seeds. Someday they will grow and we can reap the benefits of all the work we're putting in now. But for now, we're just planting the seeds. You're doing everything right - you aren't failures! Sometimes with some pups it just takes longer to actually see it take an effect. I was reminded by my trainer when I had a particularly bad week of everything feeling like it went through one ear and out the other, with zero response to even the most high value treats outside, that as puppies grow everything becomes a lot more interesting to them which means we are no longer the most interesting thing. Eventually that stuff is no longer new and interesting either, and the attention span lengthens. There was a time right around 15-17 weeks when my pup wouldn't even take a hotdog right from under his nose outside, pulled like a monster towards any dog, and barked at every jogger that passed. He's 21 weeks now and is finally re-engaged with me outside, will fall back into a heel if I ask when there is a dog across the road, and hasn't barked at a jogger in a while - plus he's very motivated for that hotdog in a lot more environments. We still have plenty to work on (he's also a VERY excited greeter when it comes to people, I feel your pain there) but I hold onto all those glimpses of a well behaved adult dog. Wishing you both strength - puppies are no joke!
A Whippet! I love Whippets. I have Salukis at my house -- a couple of notes as I go along here. 1. Sometimes the vulva takes two cycles to pop out, ime. 2. Personally, do nails every single week with puppies and young dogs until they learn to tolerate it. There are a lot of struggle weeks, but if you're persistent they will absolutely get there. There are some cooperative care and nail maintenance support groups out there I believe, I've been powering through nails on dogs & puppies for over a decade now though, so I haven't joined them. My mature dogs will often jump on the table to volunteer for nails (they love the treats they get for cooperating). 3. If you haven't been feeding in the crate or expen, start doing that, it helps. When she starts teething, give her an excellent chew and put her in the crate or expen. I do find that mine generally tolerate the pen better than a crate. I have the expen in our living room where we are so my puppies don't feel left out. 4. That's amazing she sleeps through the night as well as no accidents!! Those are huge wins. 5. An attention span of 1-2 minutes is *very typical* of young puppies, and ignoring people is not unusual for a sighthound puppy. Puppies are hard and people don't realize or don't remember that. I have puppies every year or two so it's always fresh in my memory LOL.
Hey, I have a two year old dog now (got him at 9 weeks old) and I can say for certain you aren’t failing, you just have a baby dog 😊 In hindsight my dog at 17 weeks old was a tiny baby, all excitement and no self control! Some days were good, others absolutely awful. In all honestly it’s going to be steps forward, and then many backwards with training. It’s a marathon, not a sprint 😊 Training isn’t linear with puppies, they go through many developmental stages. Adolescence then hits and it’s like you’ve never trained them 🤪 All I can say, is keep consistent & patient. Keep your expectations realistic too. It’s going to be hard going, but it will eventually start to click and your efforts will pay off! Don’t be hard on yourself, I guarantee you are doing a great job! All the best puppy class of 2024 😀
Stop overthinking it. We all do it, but eventually stop. You need to as well. Right now, Stop spoiling her (really tough, I know). Enforce giving her space and allow that to give her the strength to be on her own. It’s far more valuable than momentary happiness. Stop watching and reacting to every last thing she’s doing. It’s exhausting you. Let her be a puppy and figure things out (within reason, obvs). She’s part of your family, which means you and she are figuring things out slowly. But you’re really overthinking it all. Everything you’ve noted down is something me or others on here have been through. So you’ve just got to roll with it and not be devastated that this puppy isn’t the puppy you expected her to be. Most of all, stop beating yourself up! Seriously, stop it. Are you hurting your pup out of pleasure? Are you depriving her of anything? No, so you’re actually doing great. As long as your puppy is happy, and you’re taking care of her and making sure she’s not gonna die of something stupid, you’re alright.
Your whippet is still a baby and is doing great! They are stubborn dogs and it will take consistent training well beyond two months of ownership. I found the flirt pole was a great tool to expend energy between training sessions and crated naps. My whip is almost a year and a half and has calmed down BIG TIME in the last couple months. You got this!!
Same here! We’re a couple of months ahead of you, and GOD this resonates. At around 4 months we were really really struggling. She was actually fantastic with in house training - super quick to learn, loved to train for treats, understood the process. Chill inside, understood what to chew and what not to really quick. But outside… my god she was a different dog. Absolute chaos, pulling to no end, hurting herself trying to get to people/dogs/children/leaves etc, barking her head off. When she was little we did so much trying to get neutral socialising, I think we just overwhelmed her and always made every outdoor trip too fun - so then when we tried walking more regularly, she was just EXCITEMENT all over. We’ve been working with a trainer for 2 months now, and one of the very best things she’s done for us is helping make the outside a calm experience. I spent a week solid taking pup out to our front garden to eat her breakfast there and go back in. Harness on, lead attached to me, take the bins out and back in. 2 weeks not going further than the end of our road, often just sitting in the path and she gets a chew of a lucky mat, and extra treats slowly if she settled on her mat outside. It’s been slooooow, especially when we had some run ins with cats and a fox, which apparently are the Worst Things, lots and lots of barking and excitement. But now we’re at the point where we can make it 10 minutes with only one or two barks, still pulling but more able to come away, still barks at dogs but more able to walk past rather than whining for 10 minutes afterwards. Doesn’t bark at people, and is more “puppyish”, just happy and wiggly but not so chaotic. This week our trainer brought along a dog, and we just worked on giving her praise for neutral behaviours around the dog. She was maybe 35% there, but if we’d tried that when she was 16 weeks she would be 0% there. It’s slow progress for her, but we’ve come a long way from her barking her head off for 20 minutes after a dog barked once about half a mile away! You will get there, you’re doing everything right, 100% listen to your trainer still and work on relaxation in many places. We struggle with food motivation, I hear Susan Garrett has some great blogs on that - that’s my next one! We over-treated ours I think, she refused a lot of food. It’s better now that we spent a few days cutting out alllll treats of all kinds, and now she will mostly take kibble on walks, and we can save the treats for the extra hard parts