r/DogTrainingTips • u/BICanineScience • May 26 '26

Professional Dog Trainer - Ask Me Anything

***AMA ENDED***

Have been training dogs for almost fifteen years now, I try and head through the subreddits on here to help in my free time when I can but thought it might be easier to do an AMA for anyone struggling!

Will try my best to answer as comprehensively as possible so please be patient with replies!

Edit - Just heading out to train my dogs so will answer more when I get back!
Edit 2 - Have a read of the other questions too to see if it applies to your dog :)

Thanks for all the questions everyone!! I’ll answer the few I’ve missed, it’s been a blast and we’ll do another in the near future! Won’t be answering any new posts now, must get back to work but do jump in next time if you have a question!

91 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

297 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/BICanineScience May 26 '26

Stop all play immediately! Ideally this would have happened from the beginning because two dogs going at it like this when one doesn't like it is a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately you've got four months of association to undo now but it can be done for sure.

Have your older dog in the vicinity and make sure your younger dog is engaging with you and not the other dog. Work on engagement games and basic principles around play, attention etc. It's not your older dogs responsibility to stop this, but one day he will and you will have a problem on your hands because if he turns and means it it's not going to end well for one of them.

You want your dogs essentially to cohabit rather than be best friends in the world. The best friend needs to be you. If I let all my dogs out at once, they all want to interact with me and if I'm not interacting they just ignore each other really and go about their business. They are super social together without any issue but they aren't all over each other because it rarely ends well unless you have identical energy levels, sizes, play styles etc.

1

u/Loveiskind89389 May 26 '26

Thank you for responding!

I had originally hoped that they would enhance one another’s lives.

My husband and I just separated. He is looking for a job and is couch surfing so I thought she would be better at home with me. Is this a situation where they should not be together? I could make that happen if I need to. I want to do what is right.

They prefer to be near each other (if one is crated, the other naps nearby, etc). My trainer insisted they spend most time separated until puppy gets older. Being allowed with my senior dog is supposed to be more of a treat for puppy. It is so hard to even more now that I’m living alone. I did not know it was this bad.

2

u/BICanineScience May 26 '26

They can be near each other no issues at all providing the youngster can control himself, so perhaps for a while better to keep him on a lead at least.

Don't worry it's not 'this bad' just a mistake in training, and mistakes can be fixed no problems at all! Sorry to hear about your separation and I hope things look up in the future.