You would probably be best served to be able to enforce crate training, especially when you're not at home.

Please note, I've had a dog almost all my life and I'm nearing 50. I speak from experience.

Whether you allow the dog to sleep with you or not, is your choice..but it will be hard to convince the 90 pound adult Lab that his proper place is not taking up more than half your bed, and you have no room to move (if even to get into bed), if you don't start now. I've done both..and with larger dogs, I PREFER they sleep on their own bed or the floor (up to them).

As to your shrub, get him neutered early...I usually did about 3 months, and he may not directly water your bush. It's both a hormonal and a learned thing. My 10 yr old male Aussie still squats versus directs a stream. My Havanese, tries to pee higher than he can reach.

Repeated salt exposure will indeed damage or even kill shrubs, especially evergreens, and grass.

Good Luck with your puppy,labs are such great dogs. If you pick up any book on training every one will say use a crate. What people forget is dogs are den dwelling animals. Crate is not a cage, but his den..

you will probably.. have greater problems with dead spots in the grass .... if he favors single spots.. and returns frequently ...

AROUND a bush.. probably wont matter ... meaning not in the center of the trunks ...

ON FOLIAGE ... can be a problem ... too high nitro will burn such ... but will rarely if ever kill a plant... in bad cases.... simply prune out the worst of it ...

get a spray bottle of bitter apple... or some such.. vet or dog store ...

this is the part you wont like ... spray some in his mouth .. or her ... no harm.. just a Pavlov reaction ...

then take walk around the yard ... when he shows interest in a plant.. let him sniff the bottle.. then spray the plant.. just once.. and with authority.. say ... NO ...

soon enough ... he will associate the smell ... with the reaction ... with the word NO ... and you will be on your way ....

your trainer/breeder ought to be able to suggest some variation of the same ...

it can also be used in the house ...

and try it yourself ... its harmless ... i dont think you will smell it... but you wont like it in your mouth ...

i figure.. if it cant harm me... its no harm to them ...

and do keep in mind.. training will probably hurt you ... more than them.. so be firm... the first year is prime.. in training ... take a class if you have no dog background... its money well spent.. on a 12 to 18 year dog investment ...

good luck

ken

Good points Ken, it's such a shame to see a dog out of control because his handler(s) didn't know what they were doing.

It results in so many otherwise good animals going to shelters, because the owners haven't a clue, and don't realize the puppy going to GROW fast, etc. And then are upset and frustrated that the dog is out of control (when totally their fault).

I took our puppy to the vet today because he didn't want to eat, he threw up, and his #2 was starting to look less solid. They did a test on his sample I brought in, and told me he has a disease called Coccidia.

The woman at the reception desk said that now that our puppy has done #2 in our yard, that Coccidia is in our yard FOREVER. She said to immediately pour an abundant amount of bleach water on EVERY spot he has done #2 on. That would mean spraying that all around our Forsythias! She said if I don't, he will continue to reinfect himself. She said the organism will easily survive the winter outside.

I called the breeder, because we had a 10 day health guarantee and well, we paid a large amount of money for our dog. I'm just stunned he's sick! The breeder was saying that woman at the vet is an idiot, that organism is everywhere, in every lawn in America because it's in mud puddles and bird droppings, and she even said voles have it. She said if I pour bleach on my lawn I will kill everything on it including everything I've planted.

The she said if you want, I can give you your money back and I can take the dog back. What? Is she crazy? This is a member of our family now, not some business transaction. I told her no way! She offered to pay for the vet visit and the Albon.

If I dilute the bleach enough will it still kill my lawn? I don't know who or what to believe right now.

I appreciate everyone's responses so much. I know Crate training is an appropriate way to train. My sister did it with her Bischon. But hearing him whine and cry and paw at the cage made me (and dh) feel like we were imprisoning him after taking him away from his family of 9 brothers and sisters. Our dd was crying and saying get him out mom, he's so sad, look at him.

We have trained him already. He now paws at the door with his little paw when he needs to relieve himself outside. We had another day today of no accidents.

Dh definitely doesn't want the dog sleeping with us in our Queen bed when he's full grown. I just figured when he got too big we'd move him to his own bed next to us on the floor.

We are excited to train him to become the great dog I know he is, but since he's so sick right now, we're backburning doing any training until he's well again.

This post was edited by ilovemytrees on Tue, Oct 14, 14 at 1:46

ilmt,
Veterinarian here; I teach parasitology to vet tech students as part of my job.
The woman at the vet's is wrong; you should speak with the veterinarian him/herself. The breeder is not totally correct, either.

Coccidia aren't 'everywhere', but they are common in environments frequented by their host species - that's how they maintain themselves within a population.
That said, the oocysts don't persist 'forever', and spraying bleach around outside in your yard is not an appropriate approach - bleach is for disinfecting clean, inanimate surfaces/objects - not grass, soil, etc. The bleach would quickly be tied up and rendered ineffective by organic material such as grass, compost, mulch, soil.

Coccidiosis is a common, usually self-limiting, disease of young animals. Most don't develop clinical signs(diarrhea), but some do, and some succumb - but they are in the minority. Once an animal has recovered from the initial infection, they are immune, and do not become 'reinfected'.
Coccidia species are very host-species specific- the species that infect birds do not infect dogs, and vice-versa, etc.

Dh definitely doesn't want the dog sleeping with us in our Queen bed when he's full grown. I just figured when he got too big we'd move him to his own bed next to us on the floor.

==>> have you ever heard to old saying: you cant teach old dogs new tricks ... ???

train him NOW ... not later.. when hes too big for the bed ... and i dont mean DH ... lol ... well.. maybe him too ... lol ...

ken

Thanks, Lucky P, for your response. It was so great for dh and I to read what you had to say because the impression left by the woman at the vet made us think that if we don't treat our lawn then he will ALWAYS get reinfected.

So, before we read your response, dh went out yesterday morning and not only scooped up Mr.Buttercup's (dd named him) #2 with a shovel, he dug up the soil about 2 inches around each spot. He wasn't taking any chances, and then he sprayed a solution of 1 part Ammonia to I think it was 10 parts water, and he sprayed that over each spot. We read that Ammonia was better than bleach for Coccidia eggs.

Hopefully the Ammonia didn't do anything to the Forsythias. Dh sprayed right up to their fencing....

He's doing so much better. He is eating now, and playing with us. It's a huge turnaround!

We are so grateful for your response. No one said it was host specific or that he will become immune. In fact, we were led to believe the complete opposite.

Ken, once we get him out of this potty training stage we won't be having him in our bed anymore.

You seem to really be enamored with your Forsythia...don't take this offensively...they're akin to a weed... hard to kill...I sure wouldn't be concerned about a little dog pee/poo causing them any issue - unless he's constantly hiking his leg on them day in/day out.

Daily removal of feces is sufficient - really no need to be digging/spraying anything. The coccidia oocysts are not immediately infective - require several days to sporulate...so, if you clean up and dispose fecal material daily...problem solved.

Lucky_P, thank you for all your good information.

I would like to suggest that the new owner teach the puppy to eliminate on command. It will help in the future, too. Just google it.

My other comment is, what a strange world we've created, when someone has to apologize for getting the dog she wants from a reputable breeder. Long time animal volunteer here.

"You seem to really be enamored with your Forsythia."

If you only knew..... I am enamored with everything I plant. lol

But in all seriousness, everything I've ever planted, except for one tree, my Golden Raintree, has been eaten by voles. Last year they ate 11 Burning Bushes. The only other thing the voles avoided was my Forsythias. So the last thing we want, is to kill them by our own doing! Now, wouldn't that be iroinc...

Anyway, we've recalibrate our efforts in vole exclusion, and hopefully have taken the right measures to avoid future disasters..

"My other comment is, what a strange world we've created, when someone has to apologize for getting the dog she wants from a reputable breeder. Long time animal volunteer here."

I'm embarrassed to tell people we got him from a breeder. I hate when people ask where we got him, because then I have to tell them.

See, in our county, the Humane Society is overrun with dogs (and cats) in need of adoption. I am well aware of how bad it is, and I know the world would be a better place if those dogs would be adopted out. However, my own personal situation is I needed a dog bred for certain qualities that make it a good fit for our family.

I was at the vet waiting for the stool sample, which took about 45 minutes, because they look at samples between patients, which is understandable...They told me I could go home and they'd call me with the results but it's an hour round trip and then I'd have to go back anyway to get the medicine, so I waited.

And in that 45 minutes I saw lots of dogs. I even saw a full grown pure bred Lab, which was fun for me.. I'm a talker and of course everyone loves to talk about their pets, so I would ask someone in the reception room a question and then they would tell me everything about their pet. I learned a lot about several different dogs. I said to the woman with the Lab, I just got my own lab, do you have any tips? She said no, not really, and I laughed. I thought that was so funny, so honest of her to say. She said she walks it every day, but it doesn't need as much exercise as other dogs.

I saw an old lady, probably in her 70's, and she was being dragged by a boxer. It dragged her in the vet office and it dragged her out. lol It looked like it weighed more than she did.

But one woman came in with 2 dogs. She brought them in one at a time. She was from the Humane Society. We talked a lot. She told me they never get puppies in ever. She said people often brings dogs in once they're out of the "cute" puppy stage. She also said that when a major employer here closed down this year and went South, that they took in a lot of dogs of those employes who no longer had the money to care for them. She said those people were heartbroken to lose their pets..

I certainly understand your desire for a puppy. They're terribly cute and they (hopefully) haven't had traumatic pasts. That's the unfortunate side-effect of unwanted pets. I've taken a pound dog once, and a stray more than once. The pound dog (a chow chow that was only 3 months old), had such a traumatic past that she never ever fully trusted anyone. She was happy for us to come home, would allow about three pats, then she wanted her own space and felt low level anxiety if you invaded it. That being said, she was an excellent dog and an experience I would repeat, but her and my current stray...definitely had issues. It's taken between 1 and 2 years to get the stray able to trust me. I'm just lucky that right now, I had the time to stay home with him full time during that period.
So, yes, the times I've gotten a dog from a breeder, they've been healthy loving dogs immediately. No bad habits, no fears, etc. That's hard to turn down :)
I'm not the most innovative at pet naming, so my current Australian Shepherd retains his birth name, which was 'Arson'. You can imagine my chagrin once driving through the streets yelling 'Arson!' (sigh)
I'm not sure what I'll do when it comes time for the next dog..I'm not sure what breed, nor how I'll accquire it yet.