Category: Tips & Tricks

Summer is finally here! Temperatures are rising and we love spending time outdoors. But even though we can quickly cool off with cool ice cream or a dip in the pool, we shouldn’t forget our beloved little furry friend in the process. We at Pupy show you how to enjoy the long summer days with your dog.

Can dogs sweat?

Dogs have a few sweat glands on their paws, but they are not primarily used to regulate body temperature in the summer, but much more to leave scents. The thermoregulation in dogs is done by panting. Through breathing, air reaches the mucous membranes of the nose and mouth and cools the dog by evaporative cooling, so that the body temperature remains stable.

Drink Drink Drink!

Especially on hot days, make sure that your dog drinks enough water. About 50 ml per kg body weight is necessary under normal conditions, on hot days it can be more than double that amount! Many dogs drink sufficiently as far as water is available to them. If your dog does not drink enough, you can add a little taste to the water by mixing liverwurst paste, curd, or similar into the water or by moistening your dog’s food. Please also remember to ALWAYS take fresh water with you when you are on the road.

Never leave your dog alone in the car when the sun is shining!

Even at lower temperatures, the car can become an oven. Even at 20 degrees, the car can heat up to 27 degrees within 10 minutes, at 30 minutes the car already reaches a critical value of 36 degrees. After an hour, it is up to 46 degrees!!!

On a normal summer day, the temperatures rise to about 25-30 degrees, at these temperatures we already reach critical temperatures of about 40 degrees at 10 minutes. This is no place for your dog to be in the car! Leave him during the shopping best in the cool home!

Move the walks to the early morning and late evening hours.

Especially at lunchtime, the temperatures in the summer rise sharply and not only the ambient temperature but also the heated asphalt can harm your dog.

If you have to go outside with your dog at noon, please always stay on meadows or forest ground. You can also test the tolerance of the asphalt by holding your hand flat on the ground for about 2 minutes. Can you stand it or are you already burning your fingers?

Offer your dog plenty of cooldowns.

Whether it’s dog ice cream, a shady spot, or a dip in the dog pool. All of these things you can offer your dog to help him cool down. Special cooling mats can also be accepted by dogs. Just make sure that your dog does not lie on the mat for too long (10-20 minutes maximum) to prevent hypothermia. Also, the coat of your dog should be brushed out regularly or be shortened with certain races if necessary with the dog hairdresser according to the temperatures.

Trust your dog!

Download the Pupy app now to make small daily progress in training your dog!If your dog doesn’t want to walk, exercise, or play on a hot day, that’s perfectly fine. We are also sluggish on hot days. Let your dog decide for himself if he wants to be active or not. Offer him one of our cooldowns, but don’t force him to do one or the other.

We wish you great summer days with your dog and hope you enjoy the tips!

Your Pupy Team

The dog is the best friend of humans. But how can you also be your dog’s best friend? Even if we look at dogs and humans purely objectively, we quickly notice that we are very different. But not only externally there are differences, especially in communication, dog and human speak different languages. How you can still become your dog’s best friend, we show you in this blog post.

Express yourself consistently and clearly.

Dogs understand nonverbal (body language) cues better than verbal (spoken language) ones. This is also why a dog doesn’t understand what we mean by “sit” or “down” from the start. Dogs, however, have a sense of our body language from the start. Studies have shown that dogs, compared to all other canids, have the greatest interest in humans and like to give them their attention. They want to learn to understand us! And this is exactly what we should use when living with our dog.

Pointing gestures are particularly well understood by our dogs. This is probably because dogs have learned that hands are a reliable source of positive things e.g. food, reaching for the leash announcing the walk, playing together, or the like. Puppies can respond to our pointing gestures from a very young age and even interpret them correctly most of the time. Therefore, you should be especially careful when using your hands with your puppy. Show your puppy exciting and great things that are worth following your hand for. This will be of great use to you later in training!

It is important that you consciously use pointing gestures when interacting with your dog and do not “waste” them by carelessly pointing at something that does not interest or even harm your dog. Any bad experience your dog has with your hands can contribute to your dog becoming hand shy.

Meet your dog with kindness.

We, humans, are usually taller than our dogs because of our upright gait. Dogs know full well that height and weight can determine who is the stronger and so they also assess threats. If we approach our dog by being upright and leaning forward at the same time, we present quite a threatening figure. Also, sticking out our hands from above is not a very friendly gesture to our dog. Your hand is the first human body part to fall below the individual distance (that is, the distance your dog perceives as comfortable). Some dogs resist such a gesture, threaten or even bite you. Therefore, it is important that this especially the first contact between you and your dog is on one level. Make yourself small by crouching down, slowly offer your hand to your dog and let him take the last step towards you. This is exactly what expresses respect and is considered very polite by our dogs.

Excursus Recall: We also tend to lean forward when recalling. However, it is better if we lean back slightly and even take a few steps back when we call our dog to us. This looks inviting to our dog and he feels less threatened by our height.

Stay Fair!

Dogs don’t understand exceptions! Today “yes” and tomorrow “no” your dog will not understand. Once your dog has learned what he is allowed to do and what he is not allowed to do, it is important to keep this way of education. Otherwise, you will become untrustworthy to your dog and jeopardize your relationship with each other. Some dogs even react physically to the constantly changing opinion of their human with the learned helplessness. So if your dog experiences constant failure, this failure leads to a build-up of stress hormones and can affect his ability to learn and concentrate. Therefore, consider early enough whether your dog should be allowed to cuddle with you on the sofa or whether he should lie in his basket. By the way, we are real sofa fans ☺️.

Become your dog’s best friend now!

We hope these tips help you out! For more tips and tricks, download the Pupy app now and learn exciting exercises with your dog today!

To make your dog happy is probably the wish of every dog owner. But what determines a happy dog’s life? Is it the walks together? The right ” training”? Or the right food? Maybe also the common play with his dog friends? What does a dog need to be truly happy? With our 3 tips we give you an idea of what makes dogs really happy.

1. The secure base

Every dog needs a home where he feels comfortable. In addition to providing basic needs such as food, water, a place to retreat and health care, it is especially important to build a good relationship with your dog. This includes giving your dog protection in difficult situations, e.g. during a visit to the vet or by shielding other dogs when they harass your dog. In addition, you should distinguish yourself as a bonding partner by engaging in exciting activities. Shared experiences will bond you together and your dog will understand that it is never boring with you by his side. Another important point is that your dog can rely on you. This includes both that your dog can rely on you coming back when you leave him home alone, and that your dog gets clear rules that you enforce and keep yourself. Saying “yes” today and “no” tomorrow will confuse your dog and degrade your quality as a bonding partner. My what you say to your dog and be mindful of your commands!

2. Rest and sleep

Hard to believe but dogs need about 17-20 hours of sleep. Of course not in one piece. The dog goes through short periods of sleep during the day, which should not be interrupted if possible. These sleep periods are not only important for the recovery of your dog, but also support important memory processes, for example, in the fixation of learning processes. Information from movement sequences, events and facts, are transferred to regions of the cerebrum and processed further there. Especially emotional events are processed and stored in the deep sleep phase. In older dogs, the sleep rhythm usually changes. The sleep phases become longer and more frequent than in younger dogs. So for your dog to be happy and healthy, you should give him enough space to rest. Especially young dogs sometimes have to be forced to this happiness. Here we recommend a little forced break after a walk, training or playing together. Often it is enough to send your dog to his basket, after a short protest phase, the rest phase usually sets in very quickly and your dog begins to doze.

3. The parenting

Although parenting is already mentioned in tip #1, it has a special place. Parenting should not be confused with training. In training, behaviors are linked with commands. Parenting serves to explain the world to your dog and to integrate him into your everyday life. It is important that your dog gets the opportunity to get used to the sounds, smells and different everyday situations in your life. This starts with housetraining, continues with the sounds of the vacuum cleaner and other household appliances and ends with staying alone. Also, getting to know limits and the meaning of the word “no”, are important for a happy dog’s life.

Get started now!

For each of these 3 tips you will find suitable training content in our app. If you have any questions about this topic or have any other problems with your dog, we will be happy to help you in our trainer chat. There you can discuss your individual questions with one of our professional dog trainers.

We wish you a lot of fun while implementing the tips ☺️.

There are various situations in everyday life that make your dog nervous. Especially puppies and young dogs have to learn to wait, to handle different stimuli and to relax. Your job as a dog owner is to give your dog the necessary calmness and train it. With our 3 tips, you will learn how to calm your dog specifically when he is restless and establish enough moments for relaxation and calmness in your everyday life.

1 Stay calm yourself.

When our dog is excited, starts whining or even barking, our own blood pressure also quickly shoots up and we let ourselves get infected by his excitement. How often do we tighten the leash or unintentionally raise our voice? In order to signal to your dog that it is not necessary to be excited in this situation, it is important that you yourself remain calm and relaxed.

This can be done by not pulling on the leash and yelling “No, don’t do that!” when your dog barks at the other human-dog team. It would be better if you give your dog a stop signal if necessary, then increase the distance to the other human-dog team and bring your dog back down a bit with a relaxation signal and calm praise. Deceleration is king here! Slow down, talk slower, and breathe slower!

2 Establish rest periods.

Dogs don’t always need 24/7 activity and action. The more you physically challenge your dog, the more he will demand from you. You can compare this to a marathon runner who has to run every day or he will go crazy. It is similar with dogs that do competitive sports with their owners. In order to find the balance here, it is important to plan enough rest periods despite dog sports, common hobbies and dog friends, which are then also actively implemented. Your job as a dog owner is not to overload your dog, especially as a young dog, and to make sure that he has the chance to rest or sleep at least 18 hours a day.

This also means that after a walk or training together, not so much has to happen at home, but a cuddle together, is the better alternative to a wild romp. You can also use a suitable resting place such as a basket or dog crate to give your dog some time out. In the beginning you may have to motivate your dog with a command like “basket” to take a little lunch break after the walk, but after a while your dog will learn that this time-out is very beneficial for him and he will go to his resting place by himself.

We also recommend that you do the stand-by exercise with your dog several times a week. This will help your dog to relax and can calm him down in stressful situations.

3 Find the right activity for your dog’s personality.

Certain dog personalities have a greater tendency to be restless. For these dogs it is not conducive to activating hobbies such as agility, flyball, frisbee or ball throwing. The reason for this is the neurotransmitter dopamine, it creates a real rush in your dog and can be addictive. If you have a dog that is already very restless, you can support him better with a hobby that counteracts the intoxication. Good hobbies include those that require the use of the nose e.g. Target Object Search (ZOS) and the tea bag search or hobbies that require a high level of concentration such as slow controlled running over cavaletti poles or learning new chains of actions through Do as I do.

If you have a dog prone to nervousness, we recommend the following training videos in the Pupy app:

• Relaxing together (in “Puppy Training”).
• Relaxing everywhere (in “Puppy Training”)
• Using body language (in “Leash training”)
• Impulse Control (in “Mind your manners!”)
• Cavaletti run (in “Fun Agility”)
• Isometric exercise (in “Relaxation”)
• “Doga” the dog yoga (in “Relaxation”)
• “Fun break games” (in “Office dog training”)

Have fun relaxing! The Pupy trainer team wishes you a lot of fun!

“How do I find the best dog for me?” – a question that many future dog owners ask themselves. The decisions about whether it should be a big or small dog, a puppy or an adult dog, a breed dog or a mixed breed and whether the dog should come from a breeder or from animal welfare, are not so easy and should be decided in any case with careful.

In this article you will find many tips and ideas that will help you find the perfect dog for life!

Big or small dog?

It’s a question of style, isn’t it? Not exactly, because most of the time there is much more behind the size of the dog than just the visual aspect. The statement “Big dogs need more exercise than small dogs.” is a myth. Depending on breed and personality, the need for movement can vary and can be further stimulated by training. One advantage of small dogs, is certainly that they have less weight. Air travel and also train rides with a small dog are therefore cheaper and certainly more practical than, for example, with a big Great Dane. Big dogs give you a sense of security for it, not for nothing were breeds, such as the German shepherd, Rottweiler, or also herd protection dogs gladly held on farms, they have a lot of strength are robust and deter not only burglars. Also with regard to a common hobby it is worthwhile to weigh up in which size class you want to play. Sports that require a lot of physical strength, e.g. pulling dog sports, are unsuitable for small breeds. With regard to the size of your dog, think carefully about how your everyday life with the dog can look like and compare how you would deal with dogs of different sizes.

Puppy or adult dog?

Of course puppies are cute, but they also mean a lot of work in the early days. Puppies are very time consuming in the first few weeks, so it’s a good idea to take at least 3 weeks of vacation after your puppy has moved in. During this time it is important to train your puppy and make him familiar with your everyday life. Housetraining and staying alone are important things to focus on in addition to building a stable human-dog bond during the first few weeks with a puppy. The beauty of a puppy is that it is unselfconscious and can share most experiences with you. You’ll gradually grow together into a real team.

With an adult dog, you are spared the time-consuming puppy period, but even a dog from second hand or from animal welfare needs your attention in the early days. Although it is usually housebroken, it still needs time to get used to life with you, depending on its history. Especially a dog with a bad history may need intensive training or behavior therapy, you should be aware of this fact. However, there is nothing to stop you from giving a shelter dog the chance to live a new, happier life with you by his side!

Think about which dog fits into your life!

No matter whether puppy, young dog, senior, animal protection dog or race dog, consider, which dog fits into your life! Inform yourself about dog breeds that you like and possibly consult breeders who can tell you more about the nature of the breed. Find out about the dog you like at the shelter and arrange a trial walk to get to know your potential new furry friend better. Also animal welfare organizations from abroad, can advise you on the phone about the character of their protégés, use this information and decide only then for an adoption.

No matter which way you find to your perfect dog in your life, we from Pupy will help you on your way to a human-dog-team!

Contact our trainers with any questions

Download the Pupy app now and use the chat feature to get tips from our dog trainers!

Visits to the vet are stressful for most dog owners and their dogs. Whether it’s the annual check-up or our pet is sick, we automatically suffer along with them. When our dog is not only in pain but also scared, it is hard for most dog owners to bear to see their own animal suffer so much. Most of the time we talk calmingly to our dog, try to pet him, and stand by him. Unfortunately, there is a certain point when fear turns into panic and our dog hardly notices our presence. Our dog’s whole body is busy trying to escape or fight the unpleasant situation. Most veterinarians then react with safety measures e.g. muzzle, collar, fixation by an assistant, or in the worst case, because the treatment does not allow it otherwise, light sedation.

All this does not have to be!

We at Pupy would like to allow you to prepare your dog as well as possible for his visit to the vet, to avoid anxiety, fear, stress, and its consequences. The following 3 tips are especially right for dogs who have already had a bad experience at the vet.

Train with “Medical Training” different treatment situations.

Write yourself a list of treatment situations your dog has already had to go through. Sort the items on your list by the increase in your dog’s stress level. Once you have all the items sorted, begin training a treatment situation in which your dog has shown minor signs of stress. As time goes on, continue with more difficult treatment situations until you have worked through the entire list

Warning:

If your dog reacts with aggressive behavior in stressful situations, or if you notice your dog threatening you during training, start with muzzle training first before training the other items on your list. This way your dog can wear the muzzle during the rest of the training and you and your dog can train together in a relaxed way.

Find a suitable veterinarian

Choosing a good veterinarian is very important, especially for fearful dogs. Vets should be able to recognize stress, anxiety, and fear and take countermeasures if necessary. Veterinarians with the “Fear Free” qualification are specially trained in helping any pet have a relaxed vet visit. Discuss with your veterinarian before treatment, preferably on the phone, what situations your dog is afraid of, so the practice team can adjust to your dog. Some veterinarians also offer a visit without a reason for treatment. Such appointments serve to give your dog positive experiences in the practice and he gets to know the practice team relaxed.

Train a relaxation signal

Relaxation signals can calm your dog in stressful situations and trigger a feeling of security. It is important to condition the signal beforehand in a relaxed situation. The relaxation signal can either be just a calming pat, or it can be associated with a word, melody, or scent. You can learn about conditioned relaxation in our app under the “Relaxation” category.

If you have any questions or comments about this topic, feel free to contact us. Have fun training with the Pupy App!