The most alarming advise they gave us to not walk them for the first 6 months, and after that, only a couple of hundred yards max as they can suffer from hip dysplasia quite badly. Also, no jumping, no stairs, and only exercising them in the garden for 5-10 minutes at a time.
I always find advice like this is rather silly. We've got a miniature Dachshund and was basically told the same thing, no jumping/climbing stairs due to spinal issues. When a dog greets you its natural instinct is to want to do so at face level, which of course means they're going to be bouncing a lot. I also think it's quite a sad existence if they're not allowed to bounce around a bit. We do try and avoid him using the stairs, and will carry him up/down if needed.
Thanks, yeah he's awesome.
He's currently 6kg, which is at the bottom end of what a 8wk old male should be apparently. The Purina bag say 1.5-3 months 115-230 g per day. We're feeding 150g split over 4 meals. Plus a few treats.
Last night, we are at the dining table near where his cage is with him in it and he didn't make a noise. He slept through to about 2am before we heard anything. I guess he wakes up as he needs a wee then starts to get a bit distressed/lonely.
We left a dim light on for him, maybe that helped a bit.
His poos are quite inconsistent. He's on the food Jan sent, and we're feeding at the same times, hopefully will get better as he settles.
One mistake we made quite early on was letting him nap in the evening, which meant when it came to bed time he wasn't tired in the slightest - cue a sleepless night for me.
One major thing i always came across when researching is that all dogs like routine. We crate trained ours from the beginning and although it took a good few weeks for him to settle into a routine, he's been pretty much spot on ever since. You also need to be persistent, he did used to bark a little after putting him to bed, but you've gotta learn to ignore it, otherwise he'll know that all he needs to do is bark to get some attention.
His poos might be inconsistent in part due to anxiety, i don't know if anxiety is much of a thing with your breed, but i know it's quite a big thing in ours - mainly separation anxiety. He absolutely hated being left alone, but has eventually grown to accept that you can't be around him 24 hours a day.
We had a similar problem with ours regarding the jabs, local vet didn't stock the same brand/type that he had for his first jab. I took the choice of restarting his jabs, because the vet was local (and well rated) and figured by the time we'd found another vet with an appointment, it'd be at least halfway through the window between jabs. I wasn't sure also if it meant he'd have to have the same jab in 12 months, which would have meant registering to a vet that you might not necessarily use, but are only doing so because of drug availability.
I sympathise with you for the timing though, trying to socialise a puppy whilst we're in lockdown is likely to be challenging. Have you got other friends/relatives with dogs? - i think you can meet 1 person in an outdoor space, could be worth doing that even if you walk along 2 meters apart, it's just about getting him used to other dogs.