i'm doing well with my JRT pup in every way, but have a problem keeping her happy in the evenings. she is now nearly 11 weeks old. no matter if i play with her for a time, or not - she gets very fidgetty and jumpy in the evenings. it's as if her nerves are shredded, she seems over-stimulated and she doesn't know what to do with herself.
i try having her on my lap - but she cant settle and wants to get down after a short while. i try sitting her on her beanbag next to me with a chew, and she chews for a bit but seems agitated. she shows no interest in her toys. is she worried about making a mess in the house?
in the day she is quiet, calm, happy and gets plenty of excercise, and is on Burns food so not too much protein.

[although in the day she is mostly in the kitchen where her bed/crate is, and has access to the outside yard and garden, and we now go out for little walks. in the evenings she comes into the living room with me where she clearly isn't happy - she still can see and has access to the garden - but i would feel guilty leaving her in the kitchen!] BTW i'm home most of every day.

Hmmm...it sounds to me like she is asking you to stimulate her more mentally at this time of the day.... she probably needs some more training, only short periods, to make her use her mind. Have you tried giving her a kong to have a go at?

Also, you can expect these demanding periods to increase...I remember clearly with Willis that he was like a baby at first, slept in the kitchen in the day, lulled by the washing machine and tumble dryer.................................and then he grew up

You will probably need to reinforce housetraining in the living area, up her "sit", "down", "stay"..and give her a kong to play with, and expect her to get a lot more demanding through the day as she grows :)

....i've a lot to look forward to! lol...

i have been playing and doing bits of training with her in the evenings - totalling an hour or so - before trying to settle in the living room, and was wondering if she was getting either overtired or over stimulated by it all. so i stopped for a couple of nights, though i took her for a short walk last night - it seems to make no difference to her agitation.
she only calms down when i put her in her crate in the living room near me, though i dont want to keep doing this as she sleeps in it for 8 hours during the night...
could she be asking to go to bed early???!

Perhaps she can't settle in the living room because its so unfamiliar? I would bring her crate in, leave the door open, and let her decide...she will/should venture out when she is happy...or you could give her a kong in her crate so she can have a go at that and have a look around? But, before she goes back in for the night, do some training then...so out the crate, train, feed, outside for a good ten or 15 mins then back to bed :)

Try that :)

Lots of pups seem to get very exciteable in the evenings and don't relax much. My own dog was much the same and we taught her to accept being quiet by putting her on the lead and tying her just a little way away from us with a chewie or stuffed kong.

After a while, you can teach them to "settle" etc (which is SO useful!) but it does take some time and you need to do it in short bouts to start and gradually increase....

Lindsay

your post sounds like i could have written it about my pup! (she's a 12, nearly 13 week cavalier - adorable!) we only just got walking this week too.

ruby definitely has a very active evening burst. someone told me that a lot of dogs do, they're naturally wired to be busy at dawn and dusk as that's when they'd have gone out hunting in hte wild - also, that's when there's lots of activity in the house (i too am home alone most of the days with rubes, but family work normal office hours - so of course she's more excited in the evnings - more playmates!)

i have same routine as you too - we spend most of the day in the kitchen, where there's back door to garden & her crate lives. it did take her longer to get used to being comfortable in the living room with us in the evening and i agree, i think part of it was agitation about dirtying the house. (you can't even see our backgarden from the front room!) so i have made an effort to take her outside once an hour in the evenings & if she's agitated walk her back to the kitchen/open the back door lots - so she knows she can go, we will take her. that definitely seems to have helped. the other thing i did was make an effort for a few days to take her for play sessions in the front room in the day - this got her used to it while it was calmer, only me, no tv, then gradually increase the other stimuli - and she had fun games to incentivise her to like it!

also - as chloe said, i think ruby can need something a bit 'different' by hte evenings - we've got into a routine of giving her a kong to play with while mum cooks tea & then afterwards while she's in the front with us too. she loves it, i think it does make her brain work in a different way to a lot of the stuff we do in the day. plus - its a stimulus that doesn't involve getting her really overtired, which definitely leads to grouchy agitated pup :(!

also - ruby now loves retrieving and that was something i mainly taught her (admittedly in the garden if you can face it at 9pm!) while she was having her hypers in the evening (which she's grown out of, to the extent that now she's just active, not a wild beast :D ) at first she'd only do it really well in the evenings when hyper, now we've progressed to doing it in active periods in the day too and sometimes even when she's not that active! but again its a different sort of mental activity plus being a game so maybe try something like that?

as you can tell, i'm no pup expert - only been a doggy person for 4 weeks! - but maybe those ideas will help?

keep having fun with her :)

last night my puppy had been playing with my friend who popped round while i was visiting my grandson and son for the evening. i came home to a tired but calmer pup, who promptly jumped onto her beanbag bed in the living room and just lay down and slept after she went!!
i know my sons used to get a bit wired up around teatime and just before their bedtime [many years ago!] and i think that's typical and quite normal for both kids and pups. so i expect she will grow out of it - and into something else no doubt!

i know that she hasn't been able to work out that when the light goes on in the living room, the garden seems to disappear and she then sees our reflections in the patio doors! the outside light left on helps her see that the outside is still there, but she is still working it all out.
[no puddles indoors for over 2 weeks now though!...oops, i don't think i should have said that....!]