Our Top 5 Tips for Raising an Italian Greyhound

We are by NO means experts on the subject but we’d love to share our tips in case it might help any new iggy owners out there. First of all, as a disclaimer, every pup is unique and going to have different challenges. While many people believe personality stereotypes of breeds are usually correct, we acknowledge that each dog has their own personality no matter the kind. Things that we will speak to are certain characteristics or traits we’ve noticed about our pup and how we have adapted as dog parents to best serve Adelaide.

Just before we share our five tips… let’s throw out there some of the things we’ve heard about the “typical iggy” (Italian greyhound). Some or all of these may not be true but we’ve heard so many iggy owners experiences so there must be something there!

• iggys have small bladders and can’t hold their pee very well
• iggys are hard to potty train
• iggys can be anxious, shy and aloof
• iggys are Velcro dogs, they stick to you
• iggys have weak leg bones as they grow, so prone to leg breaks in the first few months
• iggys are hard to crate train because they are meant to sleep in the bed under the covers with you

We read about these experiences and devised a game plan to serve Adelaide best.

Let’s get organized. Here are our top 5 tips:

1. Identify your number ONE priority for your specific needs and NAIL IT. For us, we prioritized potty training (specifically pee-pads) because we live in a condo.
2. Get SOCIAL. We signed Adelaide up for puppy socialization classes just 2 days after bringing her home.
3. Have your training methods and resources at hand and always ready. We used Zak George’s book Dog Training Revolution and training videos to help even at 3am when we felt exhausted and lost. It really helped!
4. Safe-proof the house for jumping. When your iggy is old enough to jump up onto furniture, you’ve got to be hyper vigilant about the jumping to prevent injury.
5. Crate/pen training can be easy if you start from day one… we’ll explain more below!

TIP 1: PICK YOUR PRIORITY AND NAIL IT

As people who live in an apartment-style home, we decided that it was most important for us to train our puppy to pee only on the pee pad. We have heard that iggys in particular have smaller bladders and can’t always last very long without peeing. Our game plan was this: allow Adelaide a little freedom, see when and where she wants to pee, and then catch her right before she’s about to go. When caught, we place her in her pee pad-lined pen. This helped us determine patterns. Firstly, Adelaide pees almost immediately after waking up from a nap or sleeping. Secondly, she loves privacy. Her favorite spots to pee are behind furniture or in hidden corners. Lastly, she will sniff like CRAZY right before finding her spot to pee. This is still true to this day when she pees outside or on her pee pad. It took a lot of dedication and consistent practice but we got Adelaide to pee on her pee pad 100% of the time by 4 months.

Extra tips: Puppies will sometimes pee on any carpet or pad-like mat. To prevent this we stayed consistent with the pee pads, and took away our doormat for the time being; as winter approaches, we’ll have to re-evaluate whether she can handle another kind of mat in the house. By the time we went on our honeymoon, Adelaide knew to pee only on her pad and didn’t have a single accident while she stayed at her grandparents (an almost fully carpeted home).

One more pro tip: reusable cloth pee pads. They are environmentally-friendly and have a huge bonus… it’s much harder for your pup to dig into or rip them! We looked for this new solution as soon as we realized a pattern was emerging. They’re easy to wash in the washing machine with bleach. We’re so happy with this option and won’t turn back!

Whatever your priority, choose one and give it your all! We found by focusing on one important task, we really were able to nail it. Any time Adelaide was out of her pen, we kept a close eye and worked as a team to re-direct her to go on her pee pads. We are so proud of her and have started transitioning to going potty more frequently outside. She will still go on the pee pad overnight but the times between her pee breaks have increased and we’re able to take her outside more often.

In some of our research, we heard that iggys have small bladders and often struggle with potty training. This is why we chose to start with pee pads. Some people have suggested that pee pads are too confusing and you should take them out every hour instead. We found though that the pee pads were the perfect thing and from our experience, she still goes potty outside on every walk.

TIP 2: GET SOCIAL

We started Adelaide in puppy socialization classes after just 2 days of being home with us. Our breeder and vet warned us about the dangers of taking a new puppy outside for socialization purposes. It is important to protect your pup from meeting stranger dogs or even sniffing the pee they leave marked on the ground. The challenge here is, how do you expose your dog to the world for purposes of socialization if they can’t risk running into stranger dogs or their markings? We’ve read about it and found that most people say the risk is worth it. When we brought Adelaide home we were extremely cautious bringing her outside and made sure that she didn’t interact with any dogs. The one exception was puppy school!

When Hounds Fly is a school that allows for very young pups to socialize and train during that time before the final vaccination. We are so thankful that we had a safe place to go and teach our Adelaide how to sit, leave it, touch, and play! We were so eager to introduce her to the world and this place was the perfect one.

Adelaide was shy at her first class. There were puppies of all different breeds there and it was her first time to meet a pup that wasn’t an iggy! The bark of a husky puppy got her shaking in her boots. She eventually warmed up though and made some really cute friends! After week one, Adelaide LOVED play time. We are proud to say that our little girl is fearless and while she’s only 7lbs to this day, she’s got the ego of a 70lbs greyhound.

We find that this has translated into all aspects of her life. It’s very rare to find occasions where Adelaide is afraid of something. Her bravery is shocking because she’s so tiny, but we won’t question it! I think that she would fall under the “velcro” category because she loves to follow us around the apartment. This being said, she is also an independent girl. She enjoys playing on her own with toys and even bringing them into her pen/crate to enjoy alone.

TIP 3: HAVE YOUR TRAINING RESOURCES ON HAND

Whatever your training resource is, our biggest tip would be to have it on hand for any moment. Dog-ear your favorite pages, favorite your top videos, and bookmark the best websites. (Hint hint: blog posts like this.) You never know when you’re going to need a quick refresher.

In our first week of crate-training, there was a night where Adelaide cried at 3 in the morning. Ryan woke up to the sounds of her crying and was exhausted. Feeling a little lost, and not knowing what to do, he woke Jess up and they watched a video. The video was about 10 minutes long, and that gave us the confidence that it would eventually stop. It took Adelaide a full hour to stop crying, but then we got to sleep the rest of the night straight through. Whether it was the tips from Zak George or the fact that she just needs to cry for a while, we felt comforted. In the moment, it can feel like these problems will never end, but sometimes you just need to set an alarm for 10 minutes and occupy yourself for that time to remember that these challenging moments are fleeting.

Besides Zak George, we use a book called Training the Best Dog Ever by Daw Sylvia-Stasiewicz and Larry Kay. Their training philosophies are quite similar and we found they work well together. Training the Best Dog Ever has a great checklist of goals and practical ways of achieving them with your pup. Crate training, socialization with dogs and humans, leash walking, and verbal cues are just a few of the skills this book helps you with. They break it down simply and on a weekly basis. They even give you a proposed schedule for your day. There are diagrams and easy-to-follow instructions for basic training as well as advanced tricks. We made sure to have this book dog-eared on our favorite pages for reference.

TIP 4: SAFE-PROOF FOR JUMPING!

Our breeder as well as other iggy owners have warned us about the fragility of iggy legs. One of the things we also invested in was pet insurance. The cost of repairing a broken leg can be around $4000 and it’s something that could happen just from jumping off a bed or getting your iggy’s foot stuck down a couch. While neither of us have ever had pet insurance for a dog before, it seemed the best time to take the plunge.

Knocking on wood as we say it, Adelaide has been very cautious and good when jumping so far. We didn’t have to even worry about her jumping until about 4 months old because she couldn’t jump high enough to get up on the couch. Now that she can jump, we sometimes line the floor with cushions to help soften her landing. Our bed is extremely high, so we only let her onto the bed when she is extremely sleepy and won’t get the zoomies! At the moment, she can’t jump onto our kitchen chairs and table, but we’ll battle that when it happens. Adelaide is very cautious when jumping off something for the first time. She was even cautious when jumping from the last step on the stairs outside our condo building. In these times we watch her and encourage her down by standing or crouching at the bottom in case she falls.

There have been a few instances when Adelaide has accidentally fallen from the couch or a stool. She is usually resilient and gets right back up, but a couple times we heard the “iggy scream.” In these moments she screams at a high pitch, shakes and usually backs away from where the scary thing happened. It is usually when she gets scared because a fall takes her by surprise. When this happens, we come to comfort her and inspect she is alright. We’ve been very lucky and she has always bounced back after these moments. Having a lot of pillows around, especially if you have hardwood floors, would be our biggest advice! Also, just watch your iggy like a hawk. Never let them out of your sight, especially on higher surfaces! Zak George recommends clipping their leash to your belt buckle and having them on lead for the first few weeks at least while they learn the space, we used this technique off-and-on in favor of giving her undivided attention.

TIP 5: CRATE/PEN TRAINING CAN BE EASY IF YOU START FROM DAY ONE!

Before Adelaide, one of the big questions we had for iggy owners was, “where does your iggy sleep?” We have an extremely high bed and were hoping that sleeping in the bed wasn’t the only option for this breed.

We reached out on Instagram/Facebook and created a poll to get real numbers. It appeared that the numbers did not go in our favour. 71% of iggy owners in our fb group admitted that they sleep with their iggy, 15% said they sleep in the crate and 14% sleep in both. Disclaimer: it is perfectly ok to sleep with your pup, it just doesn’t work for us because of our bed height and lifestyle.

In our iggy group, the reasons for sleeping with their pups varied. Some owners said that the crying in the crate was too difficult to sleep through, so after a few nights they decided to bring their pup into bed and the crying stopped. Other owners admitted that they just prefer to have their dog sleep in the bed with them (and that’s totally ok!). Some iggy owners have trained their dogs to sleep in their own beds at the foot of their human’s bed. This seems like a great solution for us in the future but we’re just not there yet with our training.

Luckily, Adelaide took to crate training almost immediately. Our one biggest tip we got was suggested by another iggy owner on Instagram: have a set-up that includes a crate for sleeping, a 4-foot high pen they can’t jump over, and line the pen with pee pads for middle of the night pee breaks. Another great tip is to exhaust your puppy before bed time so that when it’s time for their bed, they don’t have the energy to cry. Our first night was surprisingly perfect. She fell asleep almost immediately and slept through most of the night. She may have gotten up to pee but she didn’t cry. We woke up at 7am the next day when she cried to let us know she pooped. We are still figuring out this morning alarm of hers. Sometimes she cries right before she poops (which would be the perfect time to walk her outside) or sometimes it’s post-poop and she’s telling us to clean up her shit! Literally!

After the first night in the crate, things fluctuated. Sometimes she would wake up at 2 or 3am and cry for seemingly no reason. These are the moments where we’d reference a video or book. On the second or third night, we realized that feeling of fear or guilt when your pup just won’t stop crying. Did we not walk her enough? Did we not play with her enough before bed? Should we give her playtime now to tire her out?

In times like these, it’s so tempting to coddle your pup and reassure them that you are there and the world is not ending. Against our natural instincts, we stayed strong and gave her this alone time. It wasn’t easy, but we watched a Zak George video that assured us that in this moment, staying strong was the best thing to do. Zak George also recommended no middle of the night playtime because it gets your puppy too awake and excited. As sad and stressful as it was for us dog parents, we are so glad crate trained our pup.

After the first week, we stayed strong allowing our girl to cry sometimes and put herself back to sleep. She came back more resilient. The amount of time she cried got shorter and shorter until she slept soundly every night. To this day, Adelaide doesn’t bark and only whines. Her whining lasts maybe 2–10 minutes max now and then she goes back in her bed. She sleeps through the night for the most part other than pee breaks on the pee pads. Another big tip we received was to not make a big deal out of putting her in or taking her out of her crate. If you make it a big party or big punishment, they might make associations with the crate/pen that you don’t want.

A tip from Training the Best Dog Ever that didn’t really work for us was to feed her in her crate to give her a positive association with being in there. Only problem with this was that her first week of eating wasn’t exactly a positive experience. We found that she only played with her food and began shaking when she ate from the bowl. We tried hand-feeding her (another tip from the book) which helped and then gradually got her eating from the bowl or a treat ball. She’s a better eater now, but we just don’t always put the bowl in the crate.

Overall, the crate training went relatively smoothly for us but we kept in mind that Adelaide still needs pee breaks in the night. She is a confident girl and knows how to be on her own. We can attribute this to her personality but also our consistency in training and prioritization of puppy socializing!

We hope that these tips can help any new iggy owners out there as well as any puppy owners who have similar challenges. This was our way of raising our fur baby from 8 weeks until now (almost 5 months at the time of writing this) and we know that we still have so much more to learn. Adelaide’s walking, puppy biting, and excitable energy around other dogs and new people are things we are learning about now and hope to have a better handle on in the future. Stay tuned for all the pupdates in her training journey! Thanks for reading and joining us along this puppy path to doghood.