Hello all, i posted a few weeks back about my nippy little pup. Jut an update to say although he does do it still, its not as often and not hard more like a teething baby chewing for comfort and any nip is usually over excitement and accidental. He is a beautiful pup and although he has chewed, had accidents and woke us up howling at anyhour we love having him!

Just wondering though, he is 10 weeks old tuesday and about to have his last jab monday. What can we do with him to play? We play fetch in the house (which he is quite good at ) and walk him up and down our huge garden but just want to make sure he gets enough stimulation. HE comes to his name, sits, lies down (sometimes) and gives his paw so i am just wondering if any of you had any great 'games' or toys.

My problem i i have VERY little children so his time is limited in the day although in the evening thats 'his' time. So i want to make sure he gets all he needs.

Thanks

Give him a puzzle to work out - a nice raw bone in a box to open - the first one can be easy but next time make it more difficult to open.

We used to use pizza boxes with raw pork ribs inside - the dogs loved them.

But we do the the space to allow for mess.

You can scatter his tea over your garden, he has to use his nose to find all the food which will mentally tire him out quite a bit

You could do the which cup game, get 2 polystyrene cups, place a treat under one, move them around(all with your dog watching) and let your dog fins the cup with the treat.

You can buy doggy puzzles for your dog as well, i've never used one but they look great. Stuffed kongs also give a lot of stimulation(again put his tea in it with some water and freeze or coat the inside with peanut butter/honey/cream cheese etc.

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Owned by Tummel the rottaridgeador and Dante the Italian Spinone

In my experience, working bred Labs tend to be that bit more keen to please, just as a general rule, they almost seem to train themselves to some extent, right from pups. But to be honest, the only thing I would say to concentrate on is playing, getting your pup to come to their name with a verbal and possibly whistle command, and working on manners, so discouraging jumping up, getting them to sit and wait while you put food down etc, but most of all that recall, getting them to come to you. Keep it short and easy for them initially to build up confidence, don't set them up to fail so that they learn recall is optional.

I picked up a 14 week old flatcoat retriever last weekend, she's been with me one week, and the only thing I'm doing other than trying to encourage her to go to the toilet in the right place, is getting her used to her name and encouraging her to recall to me verbally and with the whistle, other than that, nowt else is important. She's fetching a few things, walking quite nicely on the lead to the field which is about 30 yards away, but the main focus for me with any pup is that recall, because it's the one that goes out of the window first when they start to grow and realise there's a whole world out there to explore