[Saca523]

Hello Poodle Forum-

My husband and I are new poodle owners, we got a standard poodle puppy in the beginning of September, we loved her so much that we decided to get a second standard poodle puppy. We were able to bring her home a week ago.

Indigo is a white and cream (or very light apricot) standard parti poodle, she is 6 months old today.
Cricket is a solid cream standard poodle, she is 9 weeks old tomorrow.

My husband and I moved from a townhouse to a house with a yard with plans to get a dog. He is allergic to dogs, but also loves dogs so we decided on a poodle. I have always had big dogs so we decided on standards.

We both have absolutely fallen in love with this breed. I can't imagine having any other breed of dog, not only because my husband would be miserable

 

[Raindrops]

Welcome to you and your lovely girls! Two puppies must be quite the challenge but they are both darling.

 

[lily cd re]

Welcome to you and your pretty girls. Poodles are just awesome on many many fronts, however that doesn't mean they are particularly easy dogs. Persistence, patience, calmness and clarity in your expectations are all super important for them.



You have given yourselves quite a plateful. We raised two puppies at the same time 11 years ago (Lily and Peeves). It was very hard and often wildly stressful. You should look up information (plenty here) about litter mate syndrome. Puppies don't have to be actual siblings to become more bonded to each other than their people. They just have to be close in age. Make sure you both spend separate time training each puppy and that you both spend separate time working with the two puppies at the same time and that you all four spend time working together.

 

[Newport]

Adorable! Thank you for sharing about your puppies.

 

[jojogal001]

The puppies are beautiful! I have one of those too but a mini. You are so brave raising 2 pups at once! I know I couldn’t do it.

What lily said is good advice. But take it further. Make sure each puppy has their alone time with each of you - for affection, loving, lap time (if you allow that) and play. I don’t separate my dogs for that, I just allow (at times each day), each one on my lap by themselves for a while. We also have family time where all 3 dogs are on my recliner, couch or bed with me all at once. And during the day, I will play with one, then another wants to play, and finally one will stop and get in their bed. I think, over time, they have learned this routine and just follow it before I have to tell one of them to wait.

And like lily said, training each on their own time. Maybe even take them outside and for short walks each without the other. They sure can get where they think if the other goes out the door that they get to go too. It can be a fight to stop that. I call that the bungee cord effect lol.

Congratulations on your first pup and also on your 2nd! If you get overwhelmed at times and need advice, there are great people here to help you figure out how to handle things.

 

[EVpoodle]

Welcome to you and your puppies!

You are a much more patient person than me to raise to puppies at once.
Just make sure that they each get their alone time with you.
They are very cute!

 

[Skylar]

How adorable. I love seeing the two puppies sleeping on the couch together.

It’s a lot of work to raise two puppies, especially to avoid litter mate syndrome. My ex-neighbor and two puppies with litter mate syndrome, and it sometimes lead to problems.

 

[rkj__]

Hello, your dogs are so cute!

Indigo reminds me a bit of my dog, with a bit of colour in his ears, and the same colour collar.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[PeggyTheParti]

So cute! And I know exactly how you felt. Peggy's approaching 6 months and I find myself researching puppies constantly. I think it's pretty common, especially if your dog is bonding more tightly to one of you.

(Peggy is OBSESSED with my husband.)

 

[Saca523]

Thank you all for this awesome advice, I hadn't thought about the bungee cord effect but we will definitely be sure to keep that from happening. We will often keep the older dog inside while the little one goes potty because the older one distracts the younger and we want her to learn that we potty first then we get to have fun and play. But I will make sure to have staggered walk start times as well.
We do allow them to sit in our laps, I thought I had learned my lesson with my last dog as I had let him sit in my lap as a puppy and he thought he should still do that when he was 90lbs, but I guess I didn't learn it very well because they both get lap time. We let them pick who they want to sit with, they usually split their time between the two of us pretty evenly and trade off who is sitting with which person often waking from a nap and moving to the other person just to keep napping.

Before we got our second we had decided that we would take turns working with each dog during our training sessions switching off each day. We want to do agility (but they need to finish growing first ?) and possibly have them certified as therapy dogs so we started as early as possible with formal classes and working daily at home. They also go with us to as many places that are dog friendly as possible, we want them to be exposed to as many different situations as possible and as many ages as possible. Family dinners with my husband's family are wonderful for this because our nieces and nephews range in age from a few months to almost teens.