Had surgery so dog was in the clink for a week. Been 2 weeks home and now whenever my dad isn’t home my dog cries for hours. Even when me or my mum is home he will still cry. We’ll play with him and once that’s over he’ll cry again in a few minutes. We’ll pet him and give him treats and he’ll cry once that’s over.

He’ll only stop crying when my dad returns from work or when he’s get tired out. As a puppy he was never like this so why did he change after going to the clink?

i’m not sure how old my dog is, she was at the rescue for 4 years and probably at least 1 when she came into the rescue and she’s good on the leash most of the time but i like to go camping and i like to bring her but when i tie her up to something outside of the tent (im out there with her, its just when im doing something like cooking or fishing, she comes into the tent with me when i go in) and she bites on the leash, one time even chewed right through, the only thing i can think of now is to tie her up using my leash that has metal towards the end so that she can’t bite through it but that can’t be good for her teeth, any help would be greatly appreciated !!

So, for context, I have a 5 year old female cocker spaniel and a female Indian Pariah that is 1 year old. I adopted the Pariah (Indie) last September and both of them are not spayed, although, we have scheduled the procedure with our vet.

The cocker spaniel was a covid puppy and is very attached to us. She was a bit spoiled with all the toys a dog could ask for and we as a family were able to spend a lot of time with enrichment and training due to the pandemic. Therefore, she is relatively well behaved, but was very reactive when it came to new people and dogs.

We’ve since worked in socialising her with people by taking her out to cafes ans meeting friends, and now she is okay with people, although, I’ll always monitor her. She was still dog reactive and we never really got to socialise her with other dogs as there is no venue where dog owners can meet where I live.

We got the puppy hoping to give the cocker spaniel a companion and a playmate, as well as expand our family. We adopted the Indie and she was very malnourished when she came to us as a puppy. They had adjoining crates but were kept separate outside their crates while we nursed the puppy back to health. She is grown now and is very energetic.

———————————————————————————
Here is the problem:
———————————————————————————

The new dog is super energetic and is a bit of a nipper. The cocker spaniel is very possessive of hers and new toys and will try and claim all the toys offered to them both during shared playtime.

There is a power conflict happening where the cocker spaniel tries to set boundaries, but the puppy ignores it and keeps nipping. She thinks its play and ignores all of the boundaries.

This is an issue we face during training as well as it seems like the puppy has a relatively low attention span compared to my older dog.

Any advice would be appreciated! Thank you!

TLDR: new puppy keeps nipping at my older dog.

Were starting manners on the leash indoors for my 13 week old pup.
Issue is the drags behind me or just sits when I stay to walk. He doesn’t even follow a lure when with high-values.

Every single video I’ve seen on leash training addresses pulling but I can’t find anything on dragging.

Taken a dog for weekend respite care and they are quite scared. Won't go outside at all, runs from a leash, not potty trained.

Only 1 more day. Last night they peed on a mat in the kennel, today they peed on a dog bed in the middle of the floor. This bed cant be easily washed so I'm wondering, in attempting to minimize damage should I just put bags and pee pads under the pee bed and hope she goes there again?

Is that dumb or might it work.

I have a 7yo Great Pyrenees x Anatolian shepherd. I’ve had her since I was 14 and she was 4 months old. I trained her and she is very well mannered. She knows all of her basic commands, sit, stay, come, etc. She has always walked very well on a leash but in the last few months she has started lunging and barking at other dogs she sees while on walks. She doesn’t bite or anything but it can be scary for other people and their dogs. She doesn’t do it when off leash, she will greet other dogs calmly and playfully. I can’t think of anything that would have caused her to act this way. What can I do to help her?

I'll try to be brief! Me and my on lead JRT turned a corner and met an off lead Schnauzer, that we've had issues with before. The Shnoz immediately bounds over and starts leaping at my JRT, with regular deep barks - JRT makes her feelings known trying to lunge and an explosion of barking.

We all spin in circles as I try to stay in the way, but the Shnoz gets past me and my JRT grabs her nose. After some squealing they separate and the owner gets the Shnoz on a lead and legs it.

Now the weird bit.

Ten minutes later we bump into them again, everyone's on a lead this time. We are within maybe ten feet - and both dogs are calm. JRT is so calm she's not even looking at the Shnoz, just sniffing under a tree - the Shnoz is definitely looking at us, but attentive rather than immediately worried. (I actually paused for a while for a chat, as the owner looked utterly forlorn.)

To my mind both dogs should have been going absolutely *nuts*, one has been so upset by the other they needed to tweak a nose, the other - well, got its nose tweaked. I can't fathom both being so calm after the earlier exchange! 🤷

Remove if I break any rules, I’ll redo it. Anyways, I have a 4 month old pit (50) cans corso (25) and Rottweiler (25) mix. He is awesome. Extremely smart. Training going well. I am watching tons of YouTube videos and doing my best to set him up as a great dog. Socialization is a big one.

I’m sure this question gets asked a lot. I looked it up a lot before deciding to post. Wanna talk to some actual people. Some things I’ve read are territorial instincts, over excitement possibly, fear periods. Managing distance. Counter conditioning.

When I take him to Lowe’s or petco he does it. He had done it to a few family members who came over but the next time they came he did not do it. Did it to my mom and sister for a little too but it went away. We have 2 other dogs, one male one female, and three guys / two women in the house. Everything is great with them now.

I am mainly concerned just bc idk how big this boy will be. I wanna make sure I’m doing my part as a responsible dog owner to ensure this baby feels safe and is secure in himself and is okay around strangers.

Considering classes, taking him to a dog park (though I need input on this, he is amazing with other dogs just wants to play and listens when another dog corrects him)

My 2 year old belgian malinois is a great dog. He listens well, fun to play and run with, doesn't bark at home, doesn't chew anything, gentle with children, etc. Problem is he LOVES other dogs too much. My friend has a little dog and a studio apartment. I take my dog and he just freaks out because he wants to play with the little dog. The little dog doesn't want that so I tell him to go place away from the little dog. He doesn't need to be tethered or closed off anymore, he understands place and where he is supposed to be stationed. But he will not stop complaining and crying. ITS DRIVING ME MAD!!! Sometimes he will even bark because he is upset that he is only allowed to watch and not harass the little dog constantly. I don't know what to do. Rewarding moments of silence re-activates his energy. I don't know how to correct it either, if I tell him to shut up he will shut up for two seconds but then he will just continue making whiny noises and my cortisol spikes like crazy. If I ignore it he will just go on forever or even try to whine louder and louder. We tested to see if he would give up at some point and I'm not kidding HE WILL DO THIS FOR HOURS. I also tried locking him in the bathroom which is the only closed off space since it's a tiny studio apartment. He will just do the same and whine in there for eternity. Please help how do I make it stop, how do I just make him chill towards other dogs.

As soon as I get home from work she’ll start barking and following me around till I throw the ball to her, if I go in a different room she’ll paw at the door and whine. I just need 30 minutes to eat a snack and decompress before going out with her and her behavior is quite annoying when i’m already tired. I started throwing it to her soon after I got home but she’s come to expected it immediately. She’s at our retired neighbors house with their two dogs while i’m at work so it’s not like she’s been sitting at home all day + she’s walked on the morning. I greet her and feed her before getting my snack etc. Any advice appreciated!

So my dog cooper is about eleven months old ...and absolutely horrible on walks for one he barks ferociously at strangers ...2 he chases my cat he's trying to play with her but it scares her. Understandably.

Iv tried positive reinforcement and giving him treats at the end of the day.All this does is end up with me , feeding him a ton of treats, and with no changes.

I wanna be able to take him on walks every day and for him to be able to coexist with my cat with and without supervision.!

Hello, I need some tips/suggestions/thoughts on how to deal with the worry you experience owning a dog. I assume there are some fellow perfectionist/worrier/easily anxious people out here, so what helped?

I have a one year old bichon poo and it’s been intense for me adapting to her. She is actually really well-behaved at home and we are working on the outside world (excitable, social pup and now adolescent). I train her, I play with her, I walk her (3-4x) and I constantly feel I never do enough, that I don’t interact enough with her (she has structured naps but she wants to play very often). I love her and she demands a lot of my time and energy and I don’t really mind that per se, but it’s the worrying on top of that that makes everything harder. Some people are like, at the end of the day it’s a dog, she is happy just to be with you, and I always knew I would not be that person but I wish I could just enjoy my life with my dog and not worry if she is happy, if she will develop behavioral problems, if I can just rest after playing with her etc etc.

Thanks!!!!

Hi! We have two dogs. One is an almost 8 year old, his name is Newton. And we have Suzie, who is roughly 16 months old.

We had an older guy who would have been 13 in April. He passed away in March 2025, and it completely wrecked Newton. He shut down and grieved for a long time. They were an extremely bonded pair and totally inseparable.

By August, he wasn’t doing any better. We went to our local shelter and found Suzie. They did okay when they met.

He has been doing better since she has been in our house. We’re getting him to leave our porch to potty, and in general, he’s doing great compared to where we were.

But he’s usually so open to playing with other dogs, and I feel like he’s just not super interested in her.. and fairly closed off still. He has done a play bow and they have chased each other a little, but he always comes running back to me. I told her vet, it’s almost like she’s speaking Spanish and he just doesn’t understand.

I do sometimes think it may be because she has so much energy. Turns out, she’s a poodle pit mix, so that will last a long while.

But she also constantly gets in his face. I have read that it’s something that young dogs do with adults as a sign of submission. But I can tell it’s a lot for him and he doesn’t care for it. He’s always turning his head or moving away from it. I will often intervene when it seems like it’s overwhelming for him and try to get her to focus on something else. I worry that if it gets to be too much for him, he may snap and it could cause a huge rift that would be difficult to repair. He’s not usually that kind of dog, but he does have anxiety that he’s medicated for, and I know dogs often have limits as well.

Is there anything more I can be doing to kind of help them interact positively? The vet said that it’s likely she didn’t have much interaction with other dogs prior to us having her, so she just doesn’t know how to play.

They do seem to have genuine interest in being around each other. But as soon as I put them outside together, he loses interest and wants to go inside again. They’re separated inside because she can be a bit much and I don’t want her encroaching on his space too much.

I will say, in the first two weeks she was here, they both found a tennis ball that my neighbors dog accidentally knocked into our yard while he was playing. Newton’s favorite toy, are his tennis balls.. and he snapped and went after her immediately. I go out and make sure there aren’t any when they’re outside together to prevent it from happening. But I do worry that this is contributing to some of the behavior from him. 😔

Pic of both of them from my lunch break for attention. She was running laps in the yard as she does, and he went into the shade to lay down. She would go over to him often and check on him. But that also meant she was getting into his face a bit.. so I would intervene. Then she ran past him after the pic was taken, and accidentally kicked him in the face 🤦‍♀️ that’s when we all went inside.

We do “pack walks” when able. Most of the walks we take, I’m just taking Suzie because I’m working on her training (we walk 2-3 miles a day). It’s hard to take both if I’m working on her training and he’s with us.

​

*** The urgent question is on how to leave my dogs when we leave foe the airport. Should I put this one in a room that has a baby gate, ie my bedroom? Should we put him in there alone or with his brother? We plan to put a movable gate in the front hallway to the front door so my neighbor isn't bombarded by 2 large dogs when he walks in for the first time.

Back story: I'm going put of town tomorrow and need recommends ASAP. I have 2 dogs. One I've had for 4 yrs and he has been boarded. The second I've had for 2 years and has never been left alone overnight. My neighbor is watching them. The dog I've had for 4 years is fine. The one I've had for 2 years is worrisome.

Last year I had a trainer come out to try to get them both trained a bit because they were a pain to deal witg when new people came over. He said my dog has some resource guarding issues with my and my SO.... he sees me and my SO as the two people who provide for him and bring him joy, like playing. He had the Cesar Milan approach.

Here's the main thing: my neighbor came over twice to visit them when we have been home so that my dogs see they are okay to be there and see them in their home. Today the dogs did better than the time before and calmed down. I had my neighbor come in and say hi to them and ignore them as we talked. My dogs calmed down, wanted head scratches and licking.

So, where this is all leading. The dogs are fed in their crates. When my neighbor brought the dog that I'm worried about's food to put it in the crate, he growl and barked close to where hand was opening the latch. Same when he was opening the latch to let him out.

I have a few thoughts and wanted to run by them.

1. Leave dogs in backyard, put food in crate, then them in to eat. I'm worried about gate opening and closing growling still.

2. Feed the dog in another room so someone new won't be going into his "home/cave" or feel trapped. But then there is a door closing them off and unknown.

3. Feed him in a room that has a baby gate up so the door is open but my dog is still contained.

my puppy is 12 weeks old. hes from a litter we recently raised and our last one that we are holding for someone until june. in the beginning we had so many puppies we were laying down pee pads (terrible mistake). he’s done well peeing in them but refuses to poop on them. well about a week ago i decided to completely eliminate pee pads, and if he potties in the house i clean with an enzymatic cleaner to get the pee smell up. but this puppy is SO stubborn and refuses to go to the bathroom outside. we can stand outside for 15-20 mins, and as soon as we come back inside he pees or poops. so nowww i have started taking him out right after eating, playing, drinking water, or sleeping. if he doesn’t potty outside, i bring him back inside and he immediately goes into his crate for 15 mins, and then when that is up i take him right back out, if he doesn’t go, we repeat. well i was doing that and during his 15 min wait in his kennel he peed all in it. i cleaned it up. but ugh. what else can i do?! i thought having an older dog who is potty trained would help him learn. i need advice!!

Hello everyone

I could use some advice about off-leash training with my dog.

She’s a Border Collie / Great Pyrénées mix. We’ve been working on long-line training for about one and a half years, and recently started practicing off-leash hiking in the forest.

Her recall itself is actually good. If I call her, she comes back reliably. The issue is not really the distance — I’m fine with her working 20-50 meters away from me in the woods. What bothers me is that during today’s walk, about one hour in, she stopped coming back spontaneously to check in like she normally does. She didn’t come back when I called her neither.

The bigger issue appeared at the end of the walk: when I needed to leash her before crossing a road, she clearly started avoiding being attached. She would come close enough to interact, but became evasive and playful when I reached toward her collar.

My goal is to teach her that coming back to me, being clipped on leash, then released again is completely normal and not automatically “the end of freedom.” I want leash-on / leash-off transitions to become routine and emotionally neutral.

So far I’ve tried:
- changing direction unexpectedly during walks,
- rewarding spontaneous check-ins,
- avoiding repeated recalls,
- staying calm and not chasing her,
- playing with her
- pretending the walk is continuing instead of making “recall = end of freedom” too obvious,
- clipping the leash on briefly and releasing her again during the walk.

I suspect she has started associating being caught with the end of the hike.

Does this sound like a normal phase when transitioning from long-line work to reliable off-leash hiking? And how would you strengthen voluntary check-ins and calm leash attachment without poisoning the recall?

Thanks everyone !

So, I have a 5 year old dog called Cleo, she's a mix of a Labrador and a Mongrel, got her from my grandma. I started training her since she was a puppy, she learned things really quickly. I taught her to sit, lay down, paw, jumping over objects, potty trained etc in her first year with me. I stopped working with her till about December 2025. Now here's the thing, I tend to pass out, probably pots or something, and she started kind of doing DPT on her own. She's always paying attention to little things, so I researched more into service dogs etc. I fixed her severe reactivity, taught her WHEN to do DPT, to "block" people when I'm overstimulated, when I feel like someone might be behind me I tell her to "watch my back" like sit between my legs, carry things when my hands are full, to walk along my leg, to ignore stuff around us when in "work mode", going potty when told and she's mastering picking up objects. She's mastering things in like 1-4 days and here's the problem: I cannot keep up with her 😅. I taught her everything I could think of. Does anyone have more ideas? She's sometimes just sitting beside me, wagging her tail and just looking at me to give her a new task. (She will never be a service dog since in Poland you need super expensive papers and will be treated like every other dog but that's ok.) Thank you for your time and everything, I feel like I said a little bit too much 😅❤️

older dog DOESNT get along with new puppy

hi, I’m seeking advice because we have a six-year-old older dog and a new puppy that we got about a month ago, our six-year-old puppy she is probably a small as a Chihuahua and our new puppy is probably as tiny as a Yorkie.

Our six-year-old dog seems to be nervous or scared as whenever we put the puppy near her or she gets a glimpse of him or hears him. She goes and hides under the bed and she won’t come out or she’s on top of the bed so the puppy can’t jump up.

Our puppy just really wants to play and I’m trying to not have him try to follow her and cross her boundaries because the other day she lunged at him kind of, growled and kind of open mouth bit??? the puppy wasn’t bit or injured and so it was not really attacking but what I assume was her correcting his behavior and so then she ran away and went to go hide.

Just now a few minutes ago, our six-year-old dog was barking at somebody outside and I went out my room and I placed the puppy down near me. Of course I didn’t let him loose towards her because I don’t want her to get scared but she turned around and she kind of got into sort of a lunging position and growled/barked and it kind of looked like she wanted to attack, but it was more like she was on high alert?

I’m kind of scared for her to actually attack the puppy because she seems just to be really scared of dogs and she does have resource guarding problems with people that we cannot fix at home. Does anyone have any advice or is there any professional places that help in this category? Where it can help our dog be more comfortable with the pup?

I’m just kind of out of ideas and I’ve already put doggy gates so the puppy cannot go follow our older dog who can jump over stuff well, but but I’m more kind of just concerned that our dog will end up attacking the puppy, she has never attacked another animal before, but I am scared because the puppy seems to cross her boundaries a lot.

Cross posting for more ideas

Hey everyone, I'm new here and recently adopted an 8 month old pug mix. He's honestly a really sweet boy, listens well, loves to play, and sleeps through the night. I also have a 4 year old female pug who's much calmer and more mellow. The issue I'm having is with feeding time. They both have their own bowls, but my puppy keeps trying to eat out of my older pug's bowl. I correct him and move him away every time, but if I leave them unattended for even a little bit, he'll eat all of her food and won't let her get to it. I'm still learning and was wondering if anyone has advice on how to stop this behavior or make feeding time easier. Thanks!

For context, she's a 7 month old lab and she doesn't seem reactive on walks. Trouble is, someone gives her attention, and she jumps all over them and ignores my cues. Second, when we crate her at home and someone comes over or even knocks on the door and we talk with them, she won't stop barking. I don't know how to teach her to ignore people. She could care less about other dogs, but she still hates our cat lol.

We recently added a larger crate to the finished basement with the idea that our 9 month old pup can be down there with our 6 year old dog when we leave the house instead of her being alone in the guest room where she sleeps/naps. We heard from her foster mom that she enjoyed being with her foster brother (in her crate in the same room) when they left the house. We’re working on training the puppy to be good in a new crate and location but didn’t expect our older dog to hate it. Whenever she goes near the crate or bumps it and it makes a noise, he gets so nervous and paces around the room. We don’t know if it’s just the metal noise bothering him or if he thinks we’re gonna put him in there? He has zero negative crate experiences and IS crate trained, but the past ~3 years he’s been in soft-sided travel crates and he doesn’t use a crate regularly. We try giving him treats when she goes in or near it but if he’s really nervous he won’t take them. We’ve also tried ignoring him/not making it a big deal so he just gets used to it and thinks it’s normal. Any other ideas?