My new 5mth old GSD and I are in week to of getting acquainted. While I am waiting for several of my new videos to arrive, here are a few questions I am pondering.

1. Potty area size? I have a pretty large back yard for living in town, so the first few days I was content to walk Judge and let him potty on a strip of dirt about 5ft wide that runs around my whole perimeter of the rear yard as long as the grass was avoided, but now I am thinking I should narrow his potty area to a specifec 'strip' of that dirt and not give him 'rights' to the whole area. How large an area should I narrow this to?
2. Because we are still working on consistent potty issues and Judge is still learning our home, how much should I allow him to roam without a leash or line. Since finding the Leerburg sight and reading everything I could find, I have pretty much only let Judge out with me and on a line(30ft). He does great going potty exactly where I lead and also is learning to play ball and fetch with the line on. I have let him run free only a couple of times briefly, to avoid any unwanted potty mistakes or chewed up childrens toys etc. When we are not together playing/working he is crated in garage, which he has responded ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC to. I never knew a dog could be trained to a crate, much less actually be 'happy' there, but he loves it. He will be in house eventually, BTW.
3. Very loose stools. I know many things can cause this but let me throw out what I was thinkin may be the possible problems.
a. New food. But he has been on it for 1.5 weeks though?
b. Bones. I gave a few knuckle bones for inside crate that he has been working. Bad idea?
4. Training priorities. I have hesitated to try to do much here because I am really expecting to get many answers from the videos (8to8/BDO)when they arrive, but what are the 1/2 basic things I should be focusing on every day? So far it's only been potty on the leash in correct area and fetching, which he was already fantastic at.
5. What exactly would define what I want from my dog? My goal is that he will be a protection dog for our family, but many of the things I read here that say protection seem to be talking about a 'working level' dog. I want a dog who is trained to a 'very' high level, even to biting etc., but is what I want considered a working dog or just a well trained obedience family dog? Difference?

Thanks for any insight,
Greg

Greg, welcome to the form. I can't answer all of your questions but here are my 2 cents.

1. My dog has a potty size area of about 10x30, he does fine with this area (and I have 3.5 acres total)
2. I would NOT let your puppy roam without a drag line at all until the puppy is more mature and won't be tempted by the kids toys. As a guide, my dog will be 2 in February and about 6 months ago is when he got the privilage of being off leash but always being within eye sight. No toys have been sacrificed that weren't offered by the kids.
3. Connie will probably have some good ideas about the soft stool. A week isn't a long time for a puppy to get used to food and it depends on the type of food you are feeding...I won't get into that.
4. If you search the site you'll find TONS of information on working lines and what that means.
5. You have to define what you want from your dog. What do you mean by protection? There are TONS of more experienced voices on this forum regarding protection. But if you want a dog that will bark at strangers that's different from a dog that will decide on it's own what a threat is to you and your family and actually engage.

Hope that helps.

Knuckle bones can create loose stools in pups. In fact they seem to effect my 3 yr old female the same way; so I don't feed them. I give my 4 month old pup ( & adult dogs) marrow bones for recreational bones. They enjoy getting the marrow out of the middle & chewing off the scraps of meat still left on the bones. They don't really chew up the bones themselves just kinda suck on them when the marrow is gone. I don't leave them to chew on the bones, I pick them up after a short while after they get all the marrow out...I don't want any broken teeth from trying to chew up the bones. This process takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on how many bones or how large the bones I give them are. My pup is not allowed off line,even though the yard is fenced, but to eat bones he is free to roam my 10x 20 kennel. Good luck with your new pup.

Hi Greg. I may be overprotective, but even though I feed my 6 mo old GSD a raw diet which includes bones (raw chicken wings & turkey necks), I won't let him chew on any bones if he's in the crate while I'm gone from the house or can't keep an eye on him. in case an emergency should arise. He doesn't like bones in his crate anyway He'll hold the bone in his mouth until I let him out; he won't chew on bones in his crate.

I give beef marrow bones but take them away as soon as he gets out as much marrow as he can. I heard a loud "crack" one day, checked the marrow bone and saw that he had actually cracked, broken off, and swallowed a small piece of bone off the end, a triangle shaped piece. At first the worry was he had cracked one of his teeth, didn't see evidence of that though. So I don't feed these dense hard bones unsupervised.

Teaching him to "come" would be a good start, always when on lead so you can guide him to you if he doesn't come right away. You might want to let him get more adjusted to you and yours before starting training of much else, another week or so. Sit (for a treat) is also easy for a dog and doesn't put much stress on them...these are just my opinions.

Greg,

My GSD is almost a year old now, we've had him since he was 9 weeks old. Our potty area is about 25' x 25' or so. When he gets into waste disposal mode he wanders around about half of it getting inspiration.

At nearly a year old we still keep a line on him. My son has been experimenting with taking the line off in the house, with good results. But outside, if he decides he wants us to chase him ... we leave the line on him.

We had loose stools. Following advice we read on this forum we started giving him about 1 - 2 tbs of raw pumpkin with his dinner every night. It helped a lot. We've changed foods on him a couple of times and learned to gradually introduce the new stuff over a week.

Can't comment on bones.

Using treats as motivation and no corrections, we taught him "come", "sit", "down", and "crate" in the first two weeks we had him. But we also had to teach him the meaning of "no". That took awhile.

More experienced people than I should answer your last question.