My friend, Alice got a 15 week old Basenjy puppy 3 weeks ago and it has been pretty challenging so far. She call him is Memphis. She spent the first week crying as the responsibility of owning a puppy fully hit her, She has a 4 year old dog but she didn’t get him as a puppy so She’s still very new to this. She got over that pretty quickly but it’s still kinda overwhelming sometimes.
Memphis is a sweet little puppy, he can be relatively calm sometimes. But other times he is just so damn rambunctious. he gets really bitey and annoying sometimes. When She sees him walk off to go chew on something that he isn’t supposed to chew on, he doesn’t listen when She calls him back (even though obedience training is going pretty well). He’s still having accidents everyday (no more than 1 though). He still pulls pretty hard on leash, and he just straight up ignores me when She take him to new places.
She said “obedience training is going pretty well but some days he’s just such a pain in the ass to train and it’s really discouraging and frustrating because I feel like I’m doing everything wrong. I know Basenji’s are naturally very headstrong but it just makes me feel like a shitty dog owner.
I often find myself thinking “Man, I can’t wait till he grows up and calms down a bit.” But everybody dog owner I know keeps telling me to cherish his puppyhood. It’s kinda difficult to cherish it at the moment though.
My friend also received many the advices of experenced people in animal loving club.
Someone said to my friend “Keep trying! Training your puppy is a year long process. The moment he does something right reward him like crazy. My brand new puppy is headstrong too so when she finally decides to listen in a moment of puppyness, I reward her like crazy and accept that it is going to be a very long time before she is truly “well behaved”. The problem is so many people throw in the towel when the going gets rough. Think of it like parenthood. All children misbehave, doesn’t matter how good of a parent they have. It’s all about not giving up on the training process and accepting that it’s not going to go well at times.”
Another encouraged “I really relate to you!! I can’t wait for my pup to grow up too…. and he’s 7 months old. Puppyhood is hard.
On tough days where I don’t have the patience for my dog (like when I’m working from home and he’s distracting especially) I give him long lasting chews to occupy him for hours. When he was your puppy’s age, he really liked chewing on plastic water bottles.”
And Someone alo shared his experience: “Oh, that was so me the first month I had Loui who’s also a very high energy dog. I adopted him when he was 3 month old, and he’s 5,5 mo now and a lot calmer. I think the key is just time really, and bonding. You’ll always be able to train your pup so just make sure to build trust and confidence and do things together you both like (which of course could be training so I’m not saying you shouldn’t just that you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself). A thing that really helped me calm Loui is capturing calm. I make sure to do this with a high value treat (chicken sausage) and when he lays down on his own initiative and is calm (you know, head to the ground, big sigh haha) I give him a small piece of the sausage. A month ago I couldn’t even cook a meal without him going bananas and doing EVERYTHING to get my attention. Now he’s on his mat waiting for some chicken sausage that I throw him every 2-5 minutes.
Best of luck, Alice, it will all get better!”
And also a lot of encouragement, congratulations, share with my friend. She is very excited and has a firm belief that she will take good care of the puppy.
Thank you if you read the whole read through the whole thing. Any advice is welcome.
