Is it hard to raise a dog? Essential Tips

Training Your Dog with Voice Commands

Question What food should I get for my dog? Brian Bourquin, DVM Veterinarian Brian Bourquin, better known as “Dr. B” to his clients, is a Veterinarian and the Owner of Boston Veterinary Clinic, a pet health care and veterinary clinic with three locations, South End/Bay Village, the Seaport, and Brookline, Massachusetts. Boston Veterinary Clinic specializes in primary veterinary care, including wellness and preventative care, sick and emergency care, soft-tissue surgery, dentistry. The clinic also provides specialty services in behavior, nutrition, and alternative pain management therapies using acupuncture, and therapeutic laser treatments. Boston Veterinary Clinic is an AAHA (American Animal Hospital Association) accredited hospital and Boston’s first Fear Free Certified Clinic. Brian has over 19 years of veterinary experience and earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University. Brian Bourquin, DVM Veterinarian Expert Answer Support wikiHow by unlocking this expert answer. A good rule of thumb is to choose a dog food with ingredients that you recognize and can pronounce, like chicken, beef, fish, and grain. Avoid dog foods with a lot of additives, colors, and dyes. You can also call the company and ask if a nutritionist is on board and where the ingredients are sourced from to make sure the food is high quality.

Question How do you raise a puppy? Pippa Elliott, MRCVS Veterinarian Dr. Elliott, BVMS, MRCVS is a veterinarian with over 30 years of experience in veterinary surgery and companion animal practice. She graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1987 with a degree in veterinary medicine and surgery. She has worked at the same animal clinic in her hometown for over 20 years. Pippa Elliott, MRCVS Veterinarian Expert Answer Support wikiHow by unlocking this expert answer. To raise a puppy you need to be knowledgeable about potty training, feeding, basic behavior, training, and health issues. Raising a puppy properly is a big commitment, which can be challenging. Therefore its also helpful to talk to experienced dog owners and trainers and get their support.

Question How long can a puppy be left alone during the day? Pippa Elliott, MRCVS Veterinarian Dr. Elliott, BVMS, MRCVS is a veterinarian with over 30 years of experience in veterinary surgery and companion animal practice. She graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1987 with a degree in veterinary medicine and surgery. She has worked at the same animal clinic in her hometown for over 20 years. Pippa Elliott, MRCVS Veterinarian Expert Answer Support wikiHow by unlocking this expert answer. Two factors influence this: one is boredom and the other is bladder capacity. Avoid leaving a pup for long periods regularly as they will get bored. When they have to be left, a puppy can hold on for roughly 1 hour for each month of their age. For example, a three-month-old needs to urinate every 3 hours, so leave a puppy pad out if you are going to be longer.

Positive reinforcement, like giving your dog treats and praise when it does something right, is more effective than punishment.[28] ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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Never hit your puppy or dog. This will treat him to be scared of you and make it impossible for him to bond with you. He will eventually resent you and stop following your commands all together. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 5 Not Helpful 1

Never yell or act impatient with your dog, especially when he is a puppy. If he doesnt understand what you are trying to teach him, be patient and avoid scolding him. He doesnt understand what you are asking him yet and will not know why you are punishing him. Take a break if you are frustrated and try again later. ⧼thumbs_response⧽ Helpful 2 Not Helpful 1

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Training Can Take Longer Than You Think

While you might luck out and adopt a dog who already knows how to sit, stay, and so on — chances are youll end up with a wild puppy who barks, runs amok, and chews up everything you own. So be prepared to show them the ropes, over and over again.

“Teaching dogs to live nicely in our homes takes a lot of work,” Kayla Fratt, an Associate Certified Dog Behavior Consultant, tells Bustle. “Dogs aren’t born knowing the rules of human society […] and they don’t speak our language. It’s a lot of work to kindly, effectively, and consistently teach dogs how to act in our homes.”

Wading Through All The Advice Can Be Stressful

At some point, youll likely have to turn to friends or family for some advice regarding your dog. And thats fine. But be ready to hear lots conflicting, confusing information.

“Everyone will have an opinion about your dog, and some of those opinions will be better informed than others,” Dr. Trimble says. “Make sure you get information from people who are well-educated — preferably veterinarians, behaviorists, and nutritionists.”

Knocking over the trash can is one thing. But dont be surprised, Dr. Trimble says, if you wake up in the middle of the night to more mishaps, such as diarrhea all over your floor — which can very easily happen if they eat something they arent supposed to.

Of course, if that happens, you can simply take a deep breath and clean up the mess without it being too big of a deal. It is important to keep in mind, however, that all aspects of pet ownership arent always easy or glamorous.

What they don’t tell you about raising an amazing dog – Here it is.

Thats right, new parents — your job isnt all that hard. At least not compared to the unenviable task of raising a puppy.by

Raising a baby is hard. At least that’s the word on the street. “It’s the hardest job you’ll ever love!” exclaim well-meaning jerks to the faces of expecting parents who weren’t soliciting opinions. But these same yahoos would never offer such an ominous and unhinged prophecy to a couple adopting a puppy. Here’s the thing, though — when it comes to raising cute, helpless, and needy creatures, raising a puppy is way harder than raising a baby.

Go ahead and call that a preposterous claim. I will assume you have not raised either a baby or a puppy in recent memory. I mean, I get why the myth that babies are harder to raise than puppies might persist. Babies, after all, are demonstrably more helpless than puppies. Seems like that should be harder, doesn’t it? It’s not. Sure, left to its own devices, a puppy would likely figure out how to scrounge in the world and thrive off scraps as a stray dog. I’ve seen Lady and the Tramp enough times to know that as long as a pup can befriend an Italian restaurateur, life’s pretty much a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs.

But that exactly why life is so hard for those raising the pup. New puppy owners live in a world of chaos. Puppies essentially need to have their wild Tramp-ish instincts trained out of them so they don’t turn into wild opportunistic beasties that would bite you as soon as look at you. Puppies need constant play, tummy rubs, ear sniffing and brushing. Puppies require adequate crate time, walkies and baths.

A new puppy will destroy your house if unchecked. They will chew up your furniture and destroy your Ugg boots with their razor-sharp puppy teeth. They will knock over the trash to munch on coffee grounds and used feminine hygiene products. If left unchecked, or not properly attended to, they will poop and pee pretty much anywhere.

And because puppies basically live on the razor’s edge between feral alley beast and fluffy family companion, they need to be trained as early as possible. Pups need to be socialized and taught to sit, stay and to not bite other creatures with a pulse. The whole process can leave puppy parents exhausted, cranky and questioning their decisions.

Sound familiar? Yeah, because that’s what everyone says about raising a baby. But compared to the literal shit show that is bringing a puppy into your home, raising a newborn is pretty relaxed.

Human babies are born helpless. They kind of have to be born helpless. If they stayed in the womb until they were developed enough to scrounge for scraps, it would be, well, horrifying, honestly. And that’s why infancy is often referred to as “the fourth trimester.” Newborns are essentially still cooking.

While you’d think that helplessness would make it harder to raise a baby than a puppy, the opposite is true. That helplessness is exactly what makes babies so comparatively easy to raise. The job isn’t, in the grand scheme of things, as hard as people would have you believe.

For starters, babies are immobile. New parents never have to worry the newborn is somewhere chewing a hole in the wall. They pretty much stay in the place you left them the last time you decided you were tired of carrying them around. Sure, that means you have to be thoughtful about where you put them down, but in all honesty, as long as you’re not putting them in a literal tree top cradle, you’re probably good.

Also, new babies, unlike new puppies don’t have teeth. They’re not going to be shredding their swaddle blanket in the middle of the night because they’re bored. They won’t destroy your New Balance because they smell like delicious feet. That said, their potential to rough up a mother’s nipple should not be discounted.

Also, babies poop in diapers that are attached to their bodies. That’s way better than a puppy pooping on the floor. Because as gross as changing baby diapers are, at least you aren’t going to step in baby poop while you’re drowsily shuffling your way to the kitchen for some coffee. As stinky as diapers can get, you’re not going to have to get on your knees in your bathrobe to get the poop out of the carpet pile before you’ve even had a chance to check your social media feeds. And a peed-in diaper is a thousand times more manageable than splashing into a cold puddle of puppy urine.

When you get right down to it, when you bring your baby home, the largest concerns for typical full-term newborns are that they eat and rest. What’s so hard? You respond to their cues. You pick them up when they cry, feed them when they’re hungry and change them when they’re soiled.

Parents of newborns don’t have to play ball or tug o’ war with their kid. There’s no need to take infants outside for walks. Babies don’t require any special training. There’s no discipline for babies and no need to socialize them. Heck, you don’t even really have to wash them that often.

In fact, the hardest thing about raising a baby is the constant dread parents carry that they are going to screw it up. That feeling comes from the fact that they’ve been told over and over again by thoughtless dopes in their social circle that it’s going to be … so difficult.

That’s not the kind of stress new parents need when entering parenthood. Because believe me, there’s plenty of times after babyhood when the stress is completely warranted. It’s best to save your energy until then and just enjoy those first easy weeks.

And if some dummy wants to ask how you’re coping with the hardship of new parenthood, you can just look them in the eye and say, “At least I’m not raising a puppy.”