Hi,
my name is Rhonda from New Zealand. (If anyone knows any good puppy schools in West Auckland we'd appreciate some help with that)
My husband and I got our pup Max about 3 months ago - Rottie, English Pointer cross. He is a handful, and we love him to bits but he does some weird stuff.

He likes to grab anything material - socks, towels, clothes, his rug - and give them the shake of death. He also does this with his toys and he seems to prefer the ones that he can whip himself with.

Also he likes to put his mouth around what I can only call his knee, I have no idea what else it could be called. He doesn't bite it - usually - just puts his mouth around it.

He tends to pull things into his crate when he's left alone. Whatever he can reach goes right in there, including the sheet we use to cover it up.

He loves to eat everything, and I mean everything. If we let him he'll eat tissues, letters, tinfoil, dirt, rocks, grass, cat poo, plants, bits of plastic, tv remotes, cell phones.

Now this is our very first dog ever, and I really just want to know if we should be worried about any of this stuff. We tell him no and "yuck" when he's eating stuff he shouldn't and shaking stuff he shouldn't, and mostly he listens. I just really hope that he'll grow out of it so he can actually be trusted not to kill himself by eating bad things.

Thanks for reading
Rhonda and Matt

Hi, welcome to puppy world. I have a rotti, the whole shake thing, 100% rotti
took ages to stop boston stealing socks of the radiator. and yes he pulled his sheet into his crate etc. he still has a habit of pulling all his bedding out of his crate, shaking it to death and leaving it on the living room floor.
as for chewing the house, be firm. i got a spray and did all electical cables etc, and reinforced this with NO! and a gentle smack on the bum so he new right from the off to leave the sofa and wires alone.
and yes everything gos, my boy even had a used condom once, only looked away for a second, looked back and saw the end going down. The spermicides made him terribly ill. Hes had a purse, 3 slippers, one boot, 1 mobile phone, brand new dvd box set of the shield!!!!!!!! read the dtuff on here about bitter apple training and a leash when in the house.
oh and also eds dvd on raising a puppy and basic ob. expensive but well worth it. forced my mrs to watch them (hehe) and she learnt so much, as did i for that fact.

rott pups have a amusing habit of picking up there toys/bones and walking over to what they are not allowed to, lying down. you think they are chewing thier toy but really thier being sneaky little devils. Thought this was jsut my devil dog but found out a common trick. They now better so if you catch them out a firmer correction.
as for the knee thing, well you got me there!
learn about drives as well, i have germna short haired pointers as well, very sim to english. very hi prey drive in some of them, mix that with a rott and wow. any chance you could post a pic.
enough from this caffine head.
Andrew

Hi Rhonda, welcome to the board.

Yep, sounds like a puppy to me. It is up to you to keep him from getting a hold of all those things in the first place or you could run into some very serious health problems. Do you keep a drag line on him when you have him out of the crate? I would start training both the "leave it & drop it commands", they really do help.

I would highly recommend that you get these two DVD's to start with, (Establishing Pack Structure with the Family Pet and Your Puppy 8 Weeks to 8 Months).

Good Luck,

Not just a Rott trait. It's a prey drive characteristic. The shake is part of "kill the prey". Prey drive = chase, catch, kill, eat.

Whipping himself on the sides with whatever long object, great fun. My dog loves to do this with this ball http://www.leerburg.com/730.htm and has loved it since he was a pup. Just make sure you stay out of the way! When they get going fast it hurts like heck to be hit with it.

Also, what Peggy said about keeping him away from things that will hurt him.

Sounds like a normal puppy to me, too. My puppies also pull things into their crates - as did my adult shelter dogs the first few months. I have found that if you just keep re-covering their crates and keep things away from the sides, they eventually stop.

Your dog sounds 100% NORMAL. I've mainly experience with adult dogs, but I've had some that were chewers who did learn which items they could chew and which they could not. It all boils down to proper management - crate when not supervised, leashed otherwise. The dog will not intrinsically know which objects are dangerous - you have to teach him to chew on TOYS ONLY.

I've heard that this starts to sink in better after they have teethed (6-7 months old).

Oh and I'd like to see a photo too!

Hi guys,
thanks for the replies and the encouragement. It's nice to know that the weird things he does aren't just him. We definitely do keep him on a leash when he's out of his crate. He would be getting in trouble all the time otherwise.

In the middle of writing this post we had an incident, I now have bite marks and scratches up and down my arms as he told me what he really thought of my discipline. It was meant to be a cheek grab and a low but firm no and turned into all out war. And now he's going a bit psycho on his toys - it rained today so no walk for him, he's got serious energy. Also he is teething right now so extra frustration for him. Though he doesn't seem to care very much, he still wants to play tug and will quite happily chew his toys, spit out a tooth and go right back to chewing with no drama. Except grossing me out with getting blood on the toys.

We do have the DVD "Your puppy 8 weeks to 8 months" and "Basic Dog Obedience" Though Ed makes everything look so easy, when it goes wrong for us it's hard to know why or exactly what was different.

And I finally figured out how to put a picture on, so here he is, looking cute and innocent.

My Mastiff/Dane did the grab her knee thing (while groaning and talking) alot when she was a puppy, she still does it some at 9 years old, she will also grab her tail. I've seen other pups do it to. I think it's either an entertaining thing for them, something like kids chewing on a finger when they are bored, or an extension of submissive pretzeling.