The Puppy Diaries at 11 Weeks

Herbie’s been here a month tomorrow. One whole month already! The time has flown by and we’ve all settled into life with Herbie. I am enjoying sharing puppy updates weekly as it is a chance for me to capture what we’ve been up to and think over how much Herbie learns and changes every week. I hope you’re enjoying reading along and coming on our puppy’s journey with us.

You can check out last week’s update here, or pop to here for all puppy posts.

Herbie the Miniature Dachshund at 11 Weeks Old

Herbie is loving the Easter holidays! The kids have been keeping him busy and the Husband had the long weekend at home. The poor pup is going to be so disappointed come Monday when he’s just got me again!

Training and Behaviours

Housetraining seems to be improving, Herbie is definitely choosing to head outside when he needs the toilet now most of the time. There are still accidents, though, as you’d imagine, so I am trying to make sure that we don’t let Herbie down by being too complacent around this as he starts to get it. I know much of this is still down to us helping him to get outside at the right times.



Crate training hasn’t made much progress this week. With so many people around all of the time, Herbie will always choose to nap with one of us rather than in his crate. I am planning to move his crate around and work hard on this one next week when the kids go back to school.

Our clicker training this week has been ‘sit, ‘stay’, ‘leave’ and then ‘heel’ as we have also started lead training with him. His training sessions have been taking place inside and outside to make them trickier and more interesting for him, as there are more distractions about. He is doing well so far. He is very food motivated, so training with treats works well with him.

We have now given Herbie access to everywhere downstairs, and so far, so good. He seems to understand that the kitchen is where he plays and the living room is for naps and cuddles. He can now go into my office, too, but hasn’t paid much attention to anything in there (including the guinea pigs).

Herbie definitely knows that sitting down nicely and calmly is ‘please’ and he waits for food, treats and toys this way. He is a well-mannered pup! He has also been jumping up us less as we have worked on four on the floor, and he only receives things when he is like this rather than jumping. We do need to get this behaviour working for things like the washing machine and dishwasher, as as soon as these are opened he jumps straight up to get into them!

We will be off to our first puppy class next week, so I’ll let you know next week how we get on.



Out and About

We haven’t been out that much this week. Herbie has been to visit family, to our local town centre and to a pet shop. In all cases, he was adored!!! This weekend he will be able to go out and about on the ground, so I will be socialising him in all of the same places we’ve been to again, but from his new vantage point. We are really looking forward to taking him out for his first walk this weekend, though of course at this age it needs to be a short one.

Fun and Favourites

For Easter, we bought Herbie a snuffle mat. I have found that if we put kibble on it, he is as interested in eating the mat as he is in eating the kibble! However, when it’s got something that he adores on it, such as chicken or cheese, he snuffles around in there for ages!

We are making good use of our recycling, offering Herbie plenty of enrichment games using it. For example, we packed a plastic box with upright toilet roll tubes and then dropped hot chicken into each of the tubes for him to work out how to get to it. He figured it out very quickly, he was very motivated! We also gave him a taster test tray using an empty egg carton and popping different foods into it underneath balls of paper. He loved snuffling to get to each of them and then shredding the paper.

Herbie has had his first water experiences. He went in the paddling pool and had his first bath. He wasn’t too keen! In the bath, I distracted him with a spoonful of Dairylea whilst he was being bathed and that seemed to do the trick. He wasn’t in any way distressed in there but he wasn’t keen on staying in there either! He did, however, love being towel-dried! He didn’t need a bath and probably won’t have another for quite some time as I know it’s not good for dogs to have lots of baths, I just wanted him to experience it during his socialisation window.

You can now pop over to my Amazon Best Buys for Puppies store now for recommendations of products that have worked for us or that Herbie has loved.

What do you think of Herbie’s week?

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