Craigslist + Dog Owners = Puppy Love

Posted by French Daddy in Tips and Advice | 995 comments

Raising Puppies Tips

I just wanted to send out a thank you to all the people that have responded to my craigslist post regarding our new puppy Tink. For some of you who don’t know, I posted a post on craigslist asking if anyone could send my girlfriend and I some advice in raising a frenchie from scratch. I posted it in 2 cities. I was flagged within an hour and the other lasted a couple days. But it was sure worth it. Here are some of the tips and advice I received regarding raising our puppy.

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This is from Anna, a vet that know’s her dogs

This isn’t specific to frenchies, but especially if this is your first dog here are some really basic tips that will help out the life of every dog and its owner:

• Start vaccines at 6-8 weeks old, repeat every 3 weeks until after 4 weeks old.

• Spay/neuter at 4 months old ideally. Fixing a dog before it becomes sexually mature (around 6 months old) has many behavioral and health benefits, including a longer lifespan. Ask your vet more about this.

• Get your dog on flea preventative rather early, and administer it every month, year-round. Never buy anything that wasn’t given to you by your vet.

• Dogs require monthly heartworm preventative by the time they are 6 months old. (Heartgard, Revolution, etc)

• Never take a puppy out for walks, to parks, or anywhere other dogs may have been. Parvo can live in soil and feces for months. Even for vet visits, hold your puppy don’t put him on the floor, and don’t touch anything in the waiting room!

• Get him obedience training early (after all vaccines) and practice it at home. Half of obedience training is training YOU and your family how to be consistent.

• Have 100 people come to your house to meet the puppy in the first few months (if possible). Make sure they wash their hands before touching puppy. This will make puppy socialized to people.

• Crate training is the best way to potty train. Start early, Consistency is the key. Have tons of play and socialization time with puppy outdoors (not where other dogs are).

• Socialization is VERY important. Once a dog is done with its vaccines, take it out to lots of dog parks and beaches.

• Try to get your dog socialized around as many places, experiences, and people as possible.

• Any food brand you can buy in a gorcery store is pretty much crap. :) Consult the Pets Discussion forum for people’s preferences.

Now, aren’t those some of the most helpful tips you can find? Every puppy owner can learn something from this.

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This tips was provided by Shirley of Small Paws Rescue

Read up on crate training. It is the best way to potty train and keep your dog safe for its whole life. I wish I had known that years ago. Also, never feed it any food you can buy in a grocery store. Solid Gold is a San Diego company (they are in Santee actually) that makes very good food that is found at their store and also Petco. There are many other good brands of quality food. I don’t know particular needs for your breed. Have fun. Good luck. Spay/neuter and crate train!

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MORE DOGGIE TIPS

I have a 4 year old Frenchie and he is an incredible dog. The best tip for potty training I can give you is to take him out a couple times a day to pee and reward him with a “good boy” everytime he does it. I use the term “pee-pee” whenever I’d take him out. It took my frenchie approximately, 2-months before he became potty trained.

I feed my Frenchie Iams as he was allergic to the other brands.

Your best bet for training is to complete a puppy training at one of the pet shops.

I hope this helps.
Fred

THANKS FRED – THIS DEFINITELY HELPS!

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Here’s another tip from an anonymous sender. It’s a sad one, but it’s a tip.

Keep him away from pools. They can’t swim! They sink. Mine drowned at 4 months. And someone I know had one that was 3 years old and had been around the pool all its life and fell in and drowned. BE CAREFUL!

You can tell that hurts… :(

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Once again, Anna delivers more information bound to help EVERY dog owner…

I see a lot of simple stuff . . .

• For itching, its almost always that the dog has fleas (despite what the owner says) and has allergies to them, and/or the owner was using some crap brand.

• The MOST issues I see in animals come from procrastinating on spay/neuter and/or vaccines, which can be prevented easily. So I try to get that across to as many people as I can.

•  A lot of people don’t know that advertised products like Benefuls and Iams and Pedigree . . . a lot of those products have a lot of fillers which dogs have natural allergies toward, that wear down their immune systems and give them skin problems. If it has a commercial . . . its crap. :)

•  I said I’m not as familiar with Frenchies in general (except that they’re adorable) but most purebreeds have many more medical issues than mixed breed dogs, so always watch for things like allergies and such. Small breeds sometimes have problems with being overweight, an ounce on a small breed is like a pound on you!

•  Once a dog gets to be around 6 years old, ask your vet about dental cleanings. They’re becoming more and more routine.

•  Keep your dog’s nails trimmed, at least once a month (you can learn to do it yourself). This will prevent the “quick” (blood vessel) in the nail from growing out long with the nail, making future nail trimmings much harder and painful for the dog. Its a good idea in general with puppies to play with their ears, open their mouths, trim their nails, anything gentle you can do to get them accustomed to what a vet would normally do.

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Some of these tips may be contradicting, but they are from various owners with various dogs and with various experiences. It’s up to you how you decide to utilize these tips. I like to have many tips at my fingertips for any given cirumstance.

Thank You All for These Tips! As you can see, it was worth it to post that post on craigslist. Even though I got flagged last time, I’m going to post a post again. It’s worth the risk. Maybe I just have to write a different type of post. We’ll See…

Leave a comment if you have a tip yourself.