Hello,

I have 2 pups, One is now 6.5 months old, and the other 7 months. I've been trying to find a suitable place to re-house one of them. I haven't found them place yet. So I was wondering if:

1) it's getting too late to separate them.
2) if one can't be re-housed, how much they should be allowed to play together, if at all.

thanks

Zack

Hello,

1) I think it's not too late. Puppies are so adaptable.
2) I keep my dogs together; feed separatley, walk or work separately, as much as possible. They get along really well and I can trust them being together all day long.
But things are different, firstly because you intend to keep only one of the puppies, and secondly because they are both too young to be left together unsupervised. Your best choice is probably keeping them apart all day long, and allowing to play just now and then.

Thanks for replying.

My math was off... they are actually 4.5 and 5. So that's good news as I have a bit of time to work with. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

It seems that they are getting rougher and rougher in their play, so Ill take the advice and only let them be together once in the am, and once in the pm.

Interesting that mention that their play is getting rougher and rougher at this age. I was just reading about that last nite in Erik Zimen's book on wolf behavior. The wolf cubs typically get rougher at this exact age according to him, and this is part of their natural development of social skills. They learn more about the social signals that are used to communicate within the pack - he sees some pretty strong play-fighting which often culminates in one of them biting the other very hard in response to the play getting too rough, and he said then he always sees a decrease in the aggressiveness of the play after about 7 mos. old.

 Quote:

Originally posted by Lee Baragona - Sch3FH2:
Interesting that mention that their play is getting rougher and rougher at this age. I was just reading about that last nite in Erik Zimen's book on wolf behavior. The wolf cubs typically get rougher at this exact age according to him, and this is part of their natural development of social skills. They learn more about the social signals that are used to communicate within the pack - he sees some pretty strong play-fighting which often culminates in one of them biting the other very hard in response to the play getting too rough, and he said then he always sees a decrease in the aggressiveness of the play after about 7 mos. old.

If it involves the development of social skills, and they are just doing this with each other (as we require them not to bite us) that must be what people warn about them making their own pack of 2. I see that it's difficult if not impossible to compete over the other dog's attention. I guess this is where their bond with each other will cause problems for us in their training later on. The breeder told me their having a bond shouldn't bother their training/defensiveness, and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt as he probably knows his dog lines(maybe that's irrelevant, I don't know?).

Their bond is rather cumbersome as they must be kept apart, or they get rowdy, and they are focused on each other. Other pair owners have told me they settle down between 6-12 months as well. If that's really the case maybe I will keep them both. As much as I want to give it a chance, I don't want the bond to become too strong then have a problem re-locating them later.

It's a tough call too because they have such awesome personalities and prey drive. The female is an intelligent, "protective"(barking) big suck, that loves to cuddle on couches/beds. The male is very brave, curious, friendly, outgoing little s@$t disturber, and doesn't like beds/couches... so in many ways they make a complimentary set of "pets" for me and my gf.

cheers,

Zack

Hey, Deanna—it is OK to come out of my crate now <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> ??? Is it not too late to bring this thread back? Just making sure...

Originally posted by Zack Johnson:
that must be what people warn about them making their own pack of 2. I see that it's difficult if not impossible to compete over the other dog's attention. I guess this is where their bond with each other will cause problems for us in their training later on.
Well, something happened two days ago that reminded me of this thread. I have two female littermates, almost 13 mos. now. Raising two pups is not something I would *recommend* to anyone and this definitely is not meant to be a definitive analysis--just my personal observations regarding an experiment in progress.

My first puppy was the only one at the time, and by 3 mos he was totally bonded to my and followed me everywhere. The second one (a female) I got when I also had an older female. That puppy did not pay absolutely ANY attention to me for 6 mos. She zeroed in on the older female and never gave her a moment of peace. When I started to get really worried (at around 6 mos), seemingly overnight she did a complete switcheroo and ignored the older female ever since.

Now, since I’m becoming more and more lax with every new puppy, I let my current ones run around together quite a bit (cause I’m lazy and get a kick out of watching their antics, especially the “stalking” game). I also don’t start any serious OB training until they are a year old. What was beginning to concern me was their total lack of ball drive, especially since their mother is INSANE for the ball. They learned early on to chase the mom while she was chasing her ball and then chase each other just for the hell of it. And of course they totally ignored me at every stage, if the other one was around. Only about a few weeks ago they kinda started paying attention to me by interrupting their horseplay and snuggling next to me for a few seconds, without me making any advances. Then all of a sudden yesterday morning they found two tennis balls in the park and started playing. That same evening I brought a ball on a string (another item they paid no attention to) and tried it on one puppy first while the other was in the crate. She did very well, well enough to be used for OB. Then I took the other puppy out, expecting pretty much the same thing. What I DIDN’T expect was to be knocked on the ground and almost losing my hand!!! This morning we went for exercise and I brought two tennis balls along, in my pocket. Instead of doing their usual thing first out of the crate--killing each other--and then taking off, they immediately put themselves in a perfect fuss position next to my pocket and never took their eyes off me.

How do you explain going from ZERO ball drive to catching balls in mid air without hardly missing one—overnight? So to make a long story short, I think that when raising puppies together, whatever is there (genetically) will remain there as far as their future training is concerned, it will just take much longer to bring it out. Patience is the key.