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<\/p>\nA VERY honest woman has shared the mistakes she made as a first time dog owner that has left her frustrated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Britt, from Orange County, California, in the US, is the proud owner of a very sweet Golden Retriever called Winston – or Wince.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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But being a pup owner for the first time isn\u2019t a choice to make lightly and Britt discovered a few mistakes she made after bringing him home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And in a bid to educate people online, she took to her social media account to reveal all\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posing in the back of her car with Wince, she told viewers: \u201cAs a first time pet parent, I do not claim to have anything figured out, so I wanted to share the four mistakes I think I made in the first year of my dog\u2019s life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Britt explained that the biggest mistake she made was never allowing her puppy to be on his own to entertain himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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While puppies tend to sleep<\/span> a great deal, anytime Wince was awake Britt felt the need to play with him or training him.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I feel like this really caused him to grow up to be an adult dog that doesn\u2019t know how to settle and constantly expects entertainment and engagement from us,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhich has made it really, really hard to just relax around the house.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The second mistake she thinks she made was taking Winston to a dog park.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n While they\u2019re great for teaching your furry friend to socialise with other pooches, this can also lead to a few issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n Britt explained: \u201cWhen he was around six months old we started taking him to the small dog park that was in our apartment complex.<\/p>\n \u201cWithin a month, we had multiple incidents where dogs<\/span> were basically attacking him or on the verge of attacking him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The third mistake she made was focusing on training Winston to do tricks instead of teaching him useful skills like recall or settling down.\u00a0<\/p>\n Britt said Wince picked up on how to sit, stay, and more, but she wishes she\u2019d taught him how to settle instead.<\/p>\n She continued: \u201cThis last one is the fact that we expected our puppy was just going to simply grow out of certain behaviours.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFrom our experience, they do not simply grow out of behaviours, if anything it gets worse as they get older as you continue to reinforce these behaviours.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThen they get bigger and these behaviours just escalate on a larger scale.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Britt added that Wince was a \u201cmouthy puppy\u201d and they didn\u2019t do enough to redirect this behaviour, which they\u2019re now still working on.\u00a0<\/p>\n TikTok user @whata_bout_winston ended the video by adding that she\u2019s doing the best she can and that no puppy is the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the caption, she wrote: \u201cLet's be real, I had to narrow it down to just 4 but the list goes on and on\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n People flocked to the comments section to share their thoughts as one person wrote: \u201cWow! You just described my 18 months old Golden boy. I made the same mistakes that you just mentioned. My Golden is super sweet but still so mouthy.\u201d<\/p>\n Another shared: \u201cWe made all the same mistakes. I wish we would have socialized him without meeting every human and dog we saw. Now he thinks he needs to meet everyone\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n While a third added: \u201cThanks for being brutally open and honest. Too many pooch parents that think their precious pooch will out grow undesirable behaviours.\u201d<\/p>\nMost read in Fabulous<\/h2>\n
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