Hi all I'm kind of new here. I used the search function to look up how often you should be playing with your puppy and nothing of the sort that I was looking for came up. So I decided to maked a post.

Well I'm a stay at home (work at home) guy. So right now my puppy is 10 1/2 weeks. I usually play with her almost around 5-6 hours a day. Is this excessive or a good amount? She sleeps a ton more but of course she's a puppy she's growing! Thanks for the advice just wanted to know what you guys all did with your family member



That's our little family member. Wife & I are excited to hear your guys thoughts on this situation!

Also wondering how often is solo play okay with them as well? Just playing by themselves I mean.

I don't think there can be such  thing as too much play. Too little, yes, but not too much.

It is much more important to think of how you play with your puppy as opposed to how much. Playing is fun but is also critical bond building , trust building, and life lesson time . You are primed , with this much time around her, to get off on the perfect foot with her and your relationship.  Once the razor sharp teeth start on your skin you'll know she likes you and is bonding to you. Use this to start teaching her boundaries,  bite inhibition , and that you are in control of these interactions,  not her.  

Getting your growing Husky to learn appropriate uses of teeth on skin is one of the most difficult life lessons you'll teach her.  Remember to frame it in your mind as social interaction and bonding rather than biting or aggression.

You are fortunate to have this much time with her. Don't sweat over it being too much. Just use it constructively.  

Oh yeah, and she looks like a sinister bat dog

She's so gorgeous.

one other thing real quick it is important that she does have alone time and she learns that it's okay to be alone at some point. eventually you won't perhaps be spending as much time with her and she's going to have to be alone more often but it is a good idea to practice now while she's young and get her used to it.

with having you around so much while she's young she might be more likely to develop separation anxiety later when things change suddenly

I've been already prepping her for the separation part. I have a designated room for her & we've already built a timely schedule for her. For now since she's so young I'm trying to develop her into a sociable dog while learning to be independent by herself. I do the whole go into another room while leaving her in a crate for a while. She cries for a bit but eventually it dies down after an hour or so. Once I know she's quiet I come back in about 5-10 minutes later when she's calmed down.

The whole biting thing though is another story. She's quite rambunctious when it comes to nipping at people. So far I've had to use 2-3 combined methods on her to get her to stop. She's still doing it of course since she's teething but im trying to make her understand biting is a no no.

Thanks again for all the info seattlesibe

Welcome to the board! I'm new at this, too, Jae. From what I have read and been told by our trainer and breeder, you don't want her to think biting is a no-no, so much as hard biting is a no-no. This breed bonds through biting, mouthing, gnawing, etc, and they need to be able to mouth people gently and be rewarded for that, but be kept in check when it gets too tough. You only have a short window of time to teach bite inhibition. If you ban all biting, she won't know what is acceptable and what it too much. This could have dire consequences in the future. Of course, I may have misunderstood your post, so please forgive me if that is the case and you already are aware of all of this. Nonetheless I will post a link to some good info about mouthing and puppy biting in case you have not seen this site yet. It has helped us a lot and I hope it will be helpful to you, as well.

http://www.dogstardaily.com/taxonomy/term/160

Enjoy your little one!

I have to use so many different methods with her to make her understand that biting is a no no.

So far I've done things in the process of (if it ever escalates)

1) a firm no
2) a no with my hand on her muzzle closing it gently saying no firmly while looking into her eyes
3) a firm no with my eyes straight into hers
4) a no and then my attention finally diverted away from her
5) a no with my attention diverted & walking out the room while i close the door behind me

she's beginning to learn that biting is a no no but god damn is it taking forever haha

[quote="jaewonlol"
she's beginning to learn that biting is a no no but god damn is it taking forever haha [/quote]

Wait until:
A: You are trying to get a human infant to sleep through the night or
B: You are trying to potty train a human 3 yr old...

Not ready for a child yet but one day we'll have the joys of it.

All I know is the ignoring method seems to work the best with our little pup. The only problem so far is that I can't take her outside to run around (we don't have a yard) and I really want to be able to go to parks and just let her run freely with the other dogs.

I've been thinking of purchasing a bike or scooter so she can tug me when she gets older but I heard that they have to be at least a year old or so?

It's more like 16-18 months around here for recommending structured exercise with pulling and running on concrete.

I too stay home with my girl, and what others have posted is great advice. Some things that you can do (that worked for us) is start training, leash, and basic commands. Tiring the mind helps to tire the body, it also helps in building a bond, trust and respect. Also using toys instead of you will help in the biting issue, Miya taught us a game when she was young, she would hold a toy in her mouth and then I would push her around like 2 huskies playing, it focused her baby teeth on a toy and yet still interacted with me, as she grew I incorporated training into it, whenever she dropped her toy I would give a command, such as sit, then give toy back as a reward, and continued on with the game. It helped to keep her focus off of biting on me, with the commands interspersed it would get her to settle down and not go puppy crazy. I also, when teething, would hold her bone, or chew, whatever I gave her to eat and help with the teething. I did this as a bonding time with her, but also to help her with any type of food possession that may occur as she grew, she still will bring a bone to me and at times offer to share with me. The ignoring method, walk away while she times out, was the only solution when she was out of hand, I felt that was the safest, most non discipline way of controlling that. I never wanted to punish, by me walking away it was more like a disappointment to her that the fun was going away vs me saying no, or holding her snout, or other methods. The only other reaction that worked was by me yelping when she bit me too hard, she didn't like me saying ow, and eventually picked up on it. It is a long process for sure. I know what I did may not work for everyone, it may be an odd way of doing things, but I wanted Miya to be a rambunctious puppy that she was, just one that didn't think I was a husky to chew on. In doing so, for us, I think it built a better mannered dog, and trust, love, respect and a solid bond between her and I. Of course ymmv, best of luck to you and your beautiful new pup.

Btw, I play with my girl probably as much as you since we got her, always have. But we also give her her space to do her own thing, which I think is important. Some one else mentioned separation anxiety, you want to avoid that for sure.

@MiyasMomma

Yeah I try to give her, her own time to do things around the house. She's free to go from room to room (we have 2 empty rooms as of now in our 3 bed/3 bath) So basically she gets those rooms to herself. We designated one of them as her "den area" with her Crate being in there.

I've been getting more and more into training with her but it's very sporadic probably 3-4x a day for around 10-15 minutes each session. Then we play & I make her play fetch to give her some of that much needed exertion of energy. She's really a joy to have.

The whole biting thing has gotten a lot better even though it's only been about a day or two. She's beginning to realize that biting too hard = her daddy walks away into another room and closes the door. Meaning no attention for her

But it's brought us closer cause now she loves to sleep/lay at my feet or on top of it (not sure why but she likes too lol)
Usually she sleeps in her crate but if she doesn't like in the morning I just let her out and she uses the bathroom then comes to my feet/in between my legs to curl up and sleep again with us in the bed (with the wife & I).

I adore her to death and I just hope I'm properly raising this pup.

Any other commands I should teach her as well? She's got these down to a tee so far
- Sit
- Lay Down
- Stay
- Come Here
- Go Home! (crate)
- Potty
- Give Me! (drop the toy in front/by me)
- *click of my tongue* Nala! (come to me immediately and sit in front of me)


I'm not sure what else I can really teach her but if you guys have any ideas shoot me some!

~Edit~

Also! I know after she gets all of her shots she's allowed to roam freely with me to the parks & everywhere since she'll be vaccinated. But I just feel terrible that she's stuck at home with me during this time because she isn't vaccinated fully. (She's only 12 weeks coming tomorrow when she gets her next set of shots).

What can I do to help her exert more of that husky energy at home? We already do a ton of stuff at home
- Fetch (we have a long hallway so we run through there with her)
- Playing with her toys with her like another child husky would
- Absolutely no tug of war (I don't want her thinking it's okay to to be aggressive since it enables them to allow their wolf like canine instincts to come out so this is a no-go)
- I train her 3-4x a day for 10-15 minutes at a time
- We jog together in the house/rooms a little together

I don't know what else I can do. I don't own a yard so I can't just take her into our yard and just let her run freely. I feel like I'm not allowing her to be more healthy.

Idk how other peoplewill feel about this comment but I felt the need to share my story of how I stopped the biting. Okay so I'm pretty new myself and my girl is almost 5 months old. I was able to stop the biting very early. This is going to sound awful but when she bit me if bite her ear. Nothing hard just squeeze my teeth on her ear until she would let it a yelp. Only took about 2 days when I first got her at 8 weeks old for her to get the message. She will still mouth when playing but she knows the limit. Best of luck and I do wish I could play with mine as muxh as you do =)

With commands....leave it is important to train as in "drop it" then "leave it", "enough", the commands can be endless as long as you use the same words repetitively. Miya knows check the mail, let's get breakfast, shake, other paw, speak (last 3 are good for people socializing), watch me/them, shhhhh, she knows names of different toys and treats, move over (lol), find a spot, wait, inside, outside...........if you haven't start leash training, it can be done inside. As I said above you can incorporate commands with in playtime. If you have the time, try increasing training to 6 times a day for the 15 minutes, and every month increase duration by 5 minutes. Also if you only have time for 4 times a day, encourage wife to train the other times, I'm presuming she is "your" dog primarily, but I think it's important that all family members share in that responsibility so that when you're not around she will mind your wife. My neighbors are a good example of not sharing, their 3 year old husky seldom listens to the wife, so he's a handful to her, and husband is gone frequently. hope that helps some.

@MiyasMomma
We initially wanted our baby to be my wife's dog primarily but she never trained a dog before (I used to train a breed called Jindo's but Husky's are soooooooooooo very different).

Well it just seems the more I spend time & train, teach, and develop our puppy. The more attached she becomes to daddy (go figure right). Only thing is I try to train her 3-4 times a day for 10-15 minutes like I previously stated.

I'm just trying to get her to adapt to certain commands first then we go onto the next set of commands. For now she's doing excellent but hopefully we move her on soon.

My wife doesn't like to train her as much (we're both avid video gamers so she loves using her empty time on the computer). As for myself I'm a stay at home (business owner) who works from home. So I have a lot of time to spend with our baby. Only problem is I can already see the behavioral problems she's going to build when she gets older. Like listening to me more over-so then my wife.

I just wish I could get my wife more onboard for this since she was the one that wanted our puppy more than me. I didn't really want to get another dog because it hurt enough when my previous dog Max died. Lived with him for a whole 14 years and I never wanted another dog so it was really hard to get her. But we just connected she walked up to me and looked at me and just sat at my feet. None of the puppies responded to her like that so wife wanted to get Nala.

I just hope she can come on board with me soon before our puppy is going to realize more and more that I'm the alpha per say :\