Hey Everyone!

If you've been reading my blog this past couple of months, then you'll know that I have a puppy, called Wallace.
He is a Dogue de Bordeaux and is now 16/17 weeks old!

A lot has changed since getting him and since his last update.

Sleep
For me one of the biggest improvements, or at least one I appreciate the most, is that he no longer cries on a night, he just gets straight into his bed, no trouble and goes straight to sleep, for a couple of weeks when we first got him, he would cry and cry, bark and howl for us for hours, it was exhausting, this would happen till late at night, then he would wake up at 4AM and do the same, cry, bark and howl.
Due to this behaviour,  he would sometimes end up sleeping upstairs with us, but we had to quickly put that to an end since he kept going under the bed and getting stuck, he's now also too heavy for myself and my mum to carry, so we can no longer carry him up and down the stairs, we don't want him to walk up with his own legs, as we don't want him to damage them, he's growing rapidly and he's still very much a puppy, which means his joints and bones are still developing, also, his breed are prone to joint problems, that's why we don't let him climb the stairs, to prevent putting strain on his joints.
But now at 16/17 weeks, he goes to bed around 22/23PM, we let him out to pee/poop, he climbs into his crate without any fuss at all ( His crate is very large, he has a lot of room to move around, stand, he has his bed in there, along with pillows and blankets, the crate is also big enough to have room for his water bowl) and as soon as he gets in there, he gets comfy and goes straight to sleep, no barking, no crying.
So, he used to wake us up at 4AM every day, now he wakes up around 7AM, 8AM, occasionally later than that.
When he does wake up, sometimes he'll bark, but more often than not we wake him up, as we're all getting ready for work.
Once he's up, he'll pee outside, have his breakfast, then he'll snuggle for 10 minutes, then we'll make him go outside again, but this time he'll poop, then he'll want another snuggle, then he'll go back to sleep in his crate for a couple of hours, and that's his morning routine, eat, poop, then more sleep.

Mess

When we first got Wallace, he was a little unpredictable with his mess, we'd let him out in the garden, then he'd come into the house to pee, we got him puppy mats, he'd pee on them, sometimes he'd pee next to them, then he'd rip them up, so we got rid of the puppy mats, because he was just wrecking them and we really wanted to encourage him to only pee outside, and that just happened eventually.

When we first were encouraging him to sleep down stairs by himself, when he'd bark till the early hours of the morning, we'd come downstairs to pee, and sometimes poop, which wasn't pleasant for us or Wallace, at this time we wouldn't lock the cage door, as we didn't want him to view the cage as punishment, but his own little area that is his, so the mess would be in the hallway, as on a night we would make sure all the downstairs doors were closed and that the stairs were blocked.

And it just stopped one day, he was clean all night, he would be clean all day, we'd tell him to go in the garden and he does his business straight away, I don't know if something clicked in his brain, but he was finally doing it,  all his pees and poops were done outside and it's great, he gets a lot of praise for this, however, he does still have the occasional accident, but that not very often and he looks really guilty and upset when he knows he's made a mess where he shouldn't have.

He has a poop routine, which is about 10 minutes after every meal and once before bed, he poops a lot.


Food

Wallace has 3 meals a day, treats and occasionally we'll give him a small supper.

He has breakfast when he first wakes up, dinner around 13/14PM, and tea around 17/18PM.

As he stays up rather late, sometimes we'll give him a small bowl of extra food.

The food we give him is a brand called AVA, which our vet recommended to me to give my other dog Tilly, as she has stomach problems, AVA is really good for dogs as it doesn't contain shit, like cereal, cereal is in most dog foods, some dogs do benefit from cereal, but most family dogs will not, cereal will make them unhealthy and fat. AVA is £66 for two 15KG bags.
We also get him the tinned dog food for him too, that is also AVA, we mix the meat and biscuits together. Wallace 100% enjoys the meat the most.


The treats Wallace has are also low fat treats, he currently is also having treats that contain oils for sore gums, that'll help soothe them, as he's teething.

Teething

The time that all puppy owners dread, teething.

Wallace is a saint in comparison to Tilly, Tilly was a chewing machine, she destroyed so much with chewing, rugs, walls, furniture, baskets, shoes, anything she could get her teeth into.

Wallace has only chewed one of the door frames and two wooden handles that are on the chest or draws in our living room, and that's it, yeah, it's annoying that he's destroyed them, but that's all he's done.

He has hard teething toys for him to bite hard onto so he can relieve the pain and pressure in his mouth, we got him the big bone from Nylabone, this is an extremely large hard bone, we got Tilly one as we'd buy her 'indestructible' toys and she'd destroy them in minutes, however, she's had this bone for 3 years and it's very much still in use, she still chews it.
So we decided to get Wallace one too, and he loves it as well, this bone cost £15.


Biting

The one thing I wish he'd stop doing, and that's biting, I think it's because he's teething, but he loves to bite, not at all in a nasty way, some times he's playing, other times he just wants to chew due to teething.

Wallace is not aggressive in the slightest, but he can't seem to grasp that he can't just chew people.

Temperament

Wallace is a very needy puppy, yes, he is learning to spend more time by himself and not needing us to be constantly around, but if we are around we have to give him attention, he will bark until we do so, either we play with him, or stroke him, he doesn't care as long as he is center of attention.

He greets everyone with open paws, he's so excited to see everyone and anyone, I love coming home from work and walking into him bounding towards me with his tail wagging like crazy.

He is constantly wagging his tail too, you look at him, he wags his tail, you talk to him he wags his tail, you play with him, that tail will be everywhere. Such a happy puppy.

He loves playing with other dogs, he gets so excited to see them whilst on his walks.

He loves complete strangers, if you walk past Wallace without acknowledging his existence, then he'll be personally offended.


Humping 

Humping is Wallace's new thing, he loves to hump, he humps me, my mum, my brothers, my boyfriends, heck, he even tries to hump the side of my laptop whilst I'm blogging.

You'll push him away from you when he's trying to hump,  he'll just come straight back for more, the other day he tried to hump me 5/6 times in row, Aaron moved him away from me each time, but Wallace didn't care, he'll try to fuck your girl in front of you.

Walking

Wallace loves walks, we can't take him on long walks due to his breed, as they have bad joints and bad breathing, to prevent Wallace having these problems, we don't walk him far.
We take him to our local field, we let him off the lead and he doesn't go anywhere, he just walks right next to you, he has no interest in running off.

He doesn't pull whilst walking, and he also sits before crossing the road.

The one thing Wallace doesn't do on his walk is pee or poop, I'm not sure why, but he doesn't go whilst on his walks.



I feel like that's everything I can update you on, he's been wormed and fleed, the vet says he's healthy and that he'll be a gentle giant once he's older, yes, Wallace is going to be a big dog.
I'll share some pictures, ages ago my boyfriend took some pictures of him for me, these pictures aren't that recent, and Wallace has changed a lot since, but I'll also include some more recent pictures!