[CocoLatte]

I tried posting an introduction earlier, but I don't know where it went.

I forgot the details I put in it, so I'm just going to make this concise in case it happens again:

Name: Coco, from her colour (parti-apriCOt)
Age: 11-weeks old
Type: Toy Poodle

What's "Latte" for? My friend says she looks like those foam art that you see on top of lattes.

I hope to learn a lot from this community and also share my experiences, which may or may not help others.

 

[CocoLatte]

Here's a picture:

 

[CocoLatte]

Oh, for some reason it's not working.. sorry! And I can't find a button to edit my posts, so these new "replies" keep popping up.

Anyway, hello everyone!

EDIT: The picture shows now and I see the edit button too, yay!
Does anyone know how / if we can delete our past posts?

 

[Asta's Mom]

Coco - thank you for my puppy fix - she certainly is striking. Love the very definite parti face.

 

[CocoLatte]

Nice to meet you and thank you, Asta's Mom!
I can't wait to see how her first groom will look with her parti face; I'll definitely share it here when it happens. Shouldn't be until after 6 months, is that correct?

 

[Dogs4Life]

Welcome to you and Coco! Coco is cute, but it also looks like she has some pretty bad tear stains. I have a dog that also has this issue, and it's very important to keep her face shaved down if this continues (also have her eyes checked by a vet). As you will see on this forum, most people keep the fur on the face short. Also, it's very important for your puppy to be groomed well before 6 months so she can get used to the grooming process. Congrats on the new puppy!

 

[Rose n Poos]

Welcome to you and adorable little Coco!

 

[CocoLatte]

Welcome to you and adorable little Coco!

Thank you!! Nice to meet you, Rose n Poos!

Welcome to you and Coco! Coco is cute, but it also looks like she has some pretty bad tear stains. I have a dog that also has this issue, and it's very important to keep her face shaved down if this continues (also have her eyes checked by a vet). As you will see on this forum, most people keep the fur on the face short. Also, it's very important for your puppy to be groomed well before 6 months so she can get used to the grooming process. Congrats on the new puppy!

Nice to meet you, Dogs4Life!
Also, thank you so much for the advice you have a great eye for detail!

After reading this, I googled a lot about tear stains :'D I have a lot to learn.

Grooming her before 6 months makes a lot of sense to me, since she will be doing it for the rest of her life.

I was a bit confused because the vet said not to bathe her until 6+ months, since puppies can get sick easily (this was a few days ago, when my puppy was sneezing for days and I took her in to see the vet).
Have you guys ever heard this advice before?

 

[Dogs4Life]

Could be the vet is worried about body temperature, but that can be regulated with the help. Coco looks pretty small like my Jasper was when I brought him home. I needed to use a hot water bottle to keep him warm...I brought him home in April and it was still snowing and that didn't help. Not sure what the weather is like where you are! It's fine to bath a puppy under 6 months, but just make sure to use puppy shampoo and keep Coco warm after the bath.

 

[Skylar]

Hi and welcome to you and CocoLatte. What a great name for a sweet little puppy.

It sounds like you might be a first time poodle owner and maybe first time dog owner?

With a tiny puppy like CocoLatte you need to watch for and be prepared to treat her for the possibility of hypoglycemia which can occur in tiny pups, usually under three months. https://www.poodleforum.com/29-poodle-health/257273-hypoglycemia-requires-quick-intervention-toy-breeds.html

I would get some clarity from your vet about the "not bathing" - was it because she was ill? Surely he didn't mean she shouldn't be washed for 6 months - that doesn't make sense. All dogs get into things, especially puppies and need to be washed appropriately.

Read through the posts here about grooming. Your breeder should have shaved CocoLatte's face and sanitary areas at least twice before you picked her up. She should have come home with a clean face. It will help with the tear stains that tpoos and other small dogs are prone to, it's less common in larger poodles and larger dogs. With a clean face it will be easy to wipe under her eyes regularly with a clean damp cloth. You can also research here what people are doing for tear stains - my minipoo doesn't have them so I'm not up to date on current practices.

You'll find that it's usually recommended to keep the puppy's face shaved regularly to help the puppy get used to grooming.............. later on you can decide whether you prefer a clean face or want to grow it out fuzzy and whether or not you can keep the tear stains under control with a fuzzy face.

Are you planning to groom your baby yourself or will you send her to a groomer? Either way she should be going regularly to get used to it. You can leave the beautiful, soft baby coat long, but the face, paw and sanitary area will need regularly trimming. Looks like she needs a puppy grooming session now. Puppy grooming sessions should be short, involve some tasty treats - you want to make this a fun activity.

Have you been working on socializing her? That's important with little toy dogs too so they are accepting of people and other dogs.

Lastly, I love parti-poodles - those markings are adorable. Should be interesting to see what color she is as an adult. I had an apricot tpoo many years ago - she started out dark like your puppy but as she grew, she faded until she was almost all white, just a tinge of apricot on her ears. There are lots of pictures to see how poodle puppies colors have changed. My current minipoo is silver with an ombré effect of light silver paws and she gets darker towards her top knot. People have asked me if I dyed her LOL. When she was a puppy, she was born black with a slightly lighter face.

https://www.poodleforum.com/36-poodle-rainbow/

 

[CocoLatte]

Could be the vet is worried about body temperature, but that can be regulated with the help. Coco looks pretty small like my Jasper was when I brought him home. I needed to use a hot water bottle to keep him warm...I brought him home in April and it was still snowing and that didn't help. Not sure what the weather is like where you are! It's fine to bath a puppy under 6 months, but just make sure to use puppy shampoo and keep Coco warm after the bath.

Oh, I think you're right; that could definitely be what the vet was trying to say and maybe I misinterpreted it.

The hot water bottle tip sounds great; I'll do that whenever Coco needs more warmth. How can I tell if she needs extra heat? Do they always need it, or would I only do it if she's shivering?

Luckily it's summer season here, and the temperatures are consistently 25-30C. The house temperature is also set to 25C (no blasting AC/cold air).

Hi and welcome to you and CocoLatte. What a great name for a sweet little puppy.

It sounds like you might be a first time poodle owner and maybe first time dog owner?

With a tiny puppy like CocoLatte you need to watch for and be prepared to treat her for the possibility of hypoglycemia which can occur in tiny pups, usually under three months. https://www.poodleforum.com/29-poodle-health/257273-hypoglycemia-requires-quick-intervention-toy-breeds.html

I would get some clarity from your vet about the "not bathing" - was it because she was ill? Surely he didn't mean she shouldn't be washed for 6 months - that doesn't make sense. All dogs get into things, especially puppies and need to be washed appropriately.

Read through the posts here about grooming. Your breeder should have shaved CocoLatte's face and sanitary areas at least twice before you picked her up. She should have come home with a clean face. It will help with the tear stains that tpoos and other small dogs are prone to, it's less common in larger poodles and larger dogs. With a clean face it will be easy to wipe under her eyes regularly with a clean damp cloth. You can also research here what people are doing for tear stains - my minipoo doesn't have them so I'm not up to date on current practices.

You'll find that it's usually recommended to keep the puppy's face shaved regularly to help the puppy get used to grooming.............. later on you can decide whether you prefer a clean face or want to grow it out fuzzy and whether or not you can keep the tear stains under control with a fuzzy face.

Are you planning to groom your baby yourself or will you send her to a groomer? Either way she should be going regularly to get used to it. You can leave the beautiful, soft baby coat long, but the face, paw and sanitary area will need regularly trimming. Looks like she needs a puppy grooming session now. Puppy grooming sessions should be short, involve some tasty treats - you want to make this a fun activity.

Have you been working on socializing her? That's important with little toy dogs too so they are accepting of people and other dogs.

Lastly, I love parti-poodles - those markings are adorable. Should be interesting to see what color she is as an adult. I had an apricot tpoo many years ago - she started out dark like your puppy but as she grew, she faded until she was almost all white, just a tinge of apricot on her ears. There are lots of pictures to see how poodle puppies colors have changed. My current minipoo is silver with an ombré effect of light silver paws and she gets darker towards her top knot. People have asked me if I dyed her LOL. When she was a puppy, she was born black with a slightly lighter face.

https://www.poodleforum.com/36-poodle-rainbow/

Thank you so much, Skylar!

You are correct; I am both a first time poodle owner and a first time dog owner.

Thank you for the tips and thread about Hypoglycemia (I clicked on it and read it all!) It was extremely useful information! I wouldn't want Coco to go through that and not know anything about it. Knowledge about possible diseases, preventative measures, and knowing exactly what to do if something happens is so important.

I am currently taking her to the groomer, since I have no idea how to do it. I also decided on a groomer because their experience would probably make her more comfortable and help her enjoy the process more.

It's really unnerving that I can't watch when she's getting her bath / cut though, and that they ask for me to return in ~1h. I wish I could see what happens when I'm not there, so I can rest assured that she is okay.

And yep! I am trying my best to socialize her, so much that I kind of have anxiety ("Ahh, is she going to grow up well? Am I doing enough? What if she has behavioural problems in the future and it's all my fault and I ruined her life/potential!")

I am trying to treat her as much as possible when she has new experiences and is at the groomer's / vet's place. I'm not sure if the treats I'm giving are "high value" treats, though.

How can you tell how much your dog likes a treat? What about telling the difference between the ones s/he "likes" and the ones s/he LOVES?

 

[Skylar]

While many groomers want the parents to drop the dog off and pick it up when ready, there are groomers who allow you to wait or even watch. There are also mobile groomers who come to your home with their own truck. My friend has a groomer who comes and grooms inside her home - washes the dog in her sink and brings in professional equipment to finish the job inside her laundry room.

I used some of my dogs food as treats - I train at meal time that way my dog doesn't get too many treats that aren't healthy.

You can tell when a dog is bored with a treat - they lose interest in working - pull out a new treat and all of a sudden they are interested again.

When socializing you don't always have to feed treats - a dog that enjoys meeting people will find seeing people rewarding in itself and it's self-rewarding.

 

[CocoLatte]

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you for all the tips and advice!

 

[Vita]

Hi Coco! She's so cute!

I'm wondering if your vet suggested no bathing until she's older because she's a small toy, and these often have trouble regulating their body temperature.

Not to alarm you, but in addition it's not uncommon for toy puppies to have difficult relating their blood sugar. This results in a hypoglycemic episode, which is lethal if not addressed immediately, i.e. do not wait until morning to see if it resolves by itself, it won't and the puppy will not survive. This almost happened to my toy poodle Bella when she was 12 weeks old, and if I hadn't rushed her to the vet, she'd have died within a few hours. She only had one more episode of this at 14 weeks but I caught the signs immediately and that was the last time.

The remedy is actually quite simple: Keep on hand a tube of Nutri-Cal which you can get from your vet or much cheaper here, at chewy.com, Walmart, Petco, many pet shops. If you take your puppy out for a day, keep it in your purse. Other substitutes are Karo syrup, just google. They bounce back in minutes! Hopefully you'll never have this problem, but having Nutri-Cal on hand is a great backup plan just in case.

See a vet explain it well in this first video and how a regular pet owner handles it at home in the 2nd video:

 

[Mufar42]

If I haven't welcome to the forum. Coco is a cute puppy. You already gotten good advise,so I won't add anything. Enjoy her.

 

[Johanna]

I was a bit confused because the vet said not to bathe her until 6+ months, since puppies can get sick easily (this was a few days ago, when my puppy was sneezing for days and I took her in to see the vet).
Have you guys ever heard this advice before?

When I was breeding poodles I sometimes bathed them when they were only 5 or 6 weeks old if they had gone wading in their food. It is important to bathe in warm water in a warm place so the pup does not get chilled. I cannot imagine waiting until a dog is 6 months to bathe! They would be really, really dirty by then.

 

[Mfmst]

Welcome to you and Cocolatte! Get her used to having her teeth brushed too. You will be a great poodle mom!

 

[CocoLatte]

Thank you everybody!