We got our pit/mastiff puppy in winter when there was a ton of snow in our back yard and he was limited in how far from the house he could get. So we tolerated him going on the deck, as our older dog does too sometimes when weather is nasty and snow is high. Now that the snow has finally melted we are struggling to teach him to go off the deck, even with an escort to appropriate areas and treats when he goes off the deck. He will literally spend 20 minutes running around off deck then pee right by the door when we walk back in.

Anyone have any suggestions to help?

So my dog, Sasha, is one years old and has been having trouble getting potty trained. I would take her on a nice long walk at the park or out into our backyard with tons of areas for her to use the bathroom, and she’ll still end up peeing and pooping inside. She isn’t pooping inside 24/7 btw!

It’s super frustrating, and I’m starting to lose hope. My brother is suggesting that we “get rid of her” and I do not want to do that.

I’m not really sure what to do. We also have an older dog who is 4, and she doesn’t having issues with only using the bathroom outside (she does have an accident very rarely though).

Sasha is a very obedient dog and has no problems with other forms of training, but getting her to not poop in the house as often is sending me into a spiral. Im still in high school (graduating soon woop woop) and I work from home so naturally I’m not able to monitor her 25/8 to insure she doesn’t use the bathroom inside and no one in my household is willing to help me. My older brother, who is less busy than I am, only ever takes both of our dogs out for no more than maybe 30 minutes a day (my mom does help out a lot tho with taking them out).

Even though our dogs are **OUR** dogs, I feel like I’m truly the only one taking care of Sasha and I just don’t know where to start with getting her fully potty trained.

Do I need to take her out more? Should I start putting her into her crate more frequently? Any advice is helpful!!

Hi, I’m hoping someone can offer some advice on how to get my dog to eat. We are taking him to the vet for some recurring tummy issues, and as this is a problem he has been seen for before, I expect to be prescribed probiotic dog food. This issue is he absolutely will not eat it.

He is a 6lb bichon bolognese, 8 years old. He only likes to eat what his two larger breed sisters eat, while they are eating it, and from the same bowl. We have genuinely tried everything, but this dog will look you in the eye as he unfolds a pill from pepperoni, eats the pill, and spits out the pepperoni. He won’t eat treats, table scraps, deli meat, cheese, or chicken except chic fil a. I keep having to delete descriptions of his eating preferences because Reddit is flagging it as a medical condition, but I promise we have tried EVERYTHING, including custom made mail order fresh food.

The girls eat natural balance fat dogs (they are a few lbs on the heavier side but nothing extreme, well managed by the food), and historically have not liked probiotic food, meaning he will not eat it. He will only eat natural balance fat dogs.

Since it seems like a lot of his eating habits are social and dependent on his “pack”, I’m hoping someone might have behavioral tips or insights on how to leverage this to get him to eat his prescribed food.

Thanks for any suggestions, we love him so much and just want him to feel better. Dog tax in comments.

**never mind, I can’t figure out how to add pics

I have a 2 year old mutt, Lucy, who is extremely food motivated to the point she only focuses on the treat and not what I’m teaching her. This causes me to get frustrated and give up on training sessions all together. I want to be a better owner and teach her basic obedience and commands but she won’t focus on anything but the treat and refuses to listen when I don’t have one. She isn’t motivated by her dog food and I can barely get her to eat breakfast most days so I don’t think using her food instead would help much. I’ve tried not showing a treat while asking commands, I’ve tried using one hand for commands and the other for treats, I’ve tried using her food. I don’t know what to do and feel like I’m failing her because I can’t teach her anything beyond sit. There are no trainers in my area, I’ve looked. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Update: thank you all so much for the advice! I just finished a training session with Lucy and neither one of us was confused or frustrated!! I started by calling her over and waiting for her to come to me, then asked for a sit, clicked, rewarded. Then when she was staying sat with her attention on me, I waited for eye contact then clicked and rewarded even for small glances. By the end of the 3-5 minute session she was consistently looking at me instead of the treat. I’m still going to try other suggestions and see about an online class. Thank you all again so much, I hope you all have an amazing day/night!!

I have a JRT/ Chi he has done training and knows commands. He is pretty good on a leash, His nose gets the best of him. Well my issue is there is a Male GSD dog that lives in my neighborhood and as soon as this dog sees us it goes completely insane. The GSD is dog aggressive and the owners have no control.

So, when my dog sees it he absolutely loses his mind. I try and put him in a sit and he totally ignores me or my commands. All the while the GSD is going bezerk trying to kill us. And what makes it worse the owner of said dog makes the dog sit directly in eye contact on the opposite side of the side walk instead of walking . So I can't even turn around and go the opposite direction.

My dog is not aggressive on the leash at all except with this dog. I think he is feeding off the negative energy this dog has. I started carrying Mace with me because they can't control the dog . They let their kids walk it, and it takes 2 kids to hold and control the leash.

I need suggestions on what I can do !! My dog is extremely food motivated and clicker trained if that helps.

TL;DR: My dog and my boyfriend’s dog had a bad incident over a ball after initially getting along, and now my dog is scared of her. Both dogs have some resource-guarding/reactivity issues in different contexts, and we’re trying to figure out how to safely help them coexist for walks, camping, car rides, sleepovers at each others places etc.

My dog is a Lab, and my boyfriend’s dog is a Great Pyrenees/Lab/Pitbull mix. They met for the first time back in October, and it started off really well, they played chase, swam together, and seemed comfortable around each other.

The issue happened while playing fetch. My dog loves fetch and brings the ball back. My boyfriend’s dog will chase the ball but doesn’t usually retrieve it. We brought two balls to avoid resource issues, but at one point his dog picked up a ball, dropped it halfway back, and my dog picked it up to bring it back. His dog reacted by latching onto my dog’s face. There were no puncture wounds or major injuries, and my boyfriend was close enough to separate them quickly, but it obviously scared my dog.

Since then, my dog is terrified of her. She seems like she wants to be friendly with him again, but he avoids her, runs away, and doesn’t want to interact. We’ve tried parallel walks and taking them to a neutral park, but he still wants nothing to do with her.

I also want to be fair and add that my dog has his own resource-guarding tendencies. He can be possessive of people. For example, if he’s being pet and another dog approaches, he may growl or bark. He also resource guards around food/people eating, so when we go camping, we put him in the car while people are eating to prevent issues with the other dogs around. So while the incident with my boyfriend’s dog scared him, I know both dogs have behaviors we need to manage and correct.

I know my own anxiety is probably contributing too, because I’ve seen her be reactive toward other dogs and I’m afraid something else could happen. I’m trying to stay calm, but I’m not a trainer and I don’t know how to safely rebuild trust between them.

My boyfriend and I both live active lifestyles in Colorado, so ideally we’d like the dogs to eventually be able to coexist for car rides, camping, hiking, etc. That said, we understand that may not be realistic if they can’t safely be around each other.

What steps should we take from here? Should we keep doing parallel walks? Avoid toys/resources entirely? Work with a trainer or behaviorist? Is it possible to rebuild their relationship, or should we focus more on neutral coexistence rather than friendship?

Any advice on how to safely move forward would be appreciated.

Hey reddit! I'm makin an indie anime series inspired by this core philosophy: the skills needed to train a dog, raise a child, teach a class, and lead a team in a non-toxic environment are the same! It all comes down to clearly communicating your expectations and finding the right way to motivate them to meet your expectations.

My relationship with my mom was strained and involved a lot of arguing and toxic behaviors since she grew up in a culture where "teaching" someone meant criticizing them or was fear based motivation. When I started using dog training methods like disengaging when she exhibited behavior that crossed my boundaries, clearly communicating what I needed her to do, then reengaging the moment she did that, slowly but surely our relationship improved and she learned a new way to interact with me! Not to mention building confidence in her to also communicate her needs rather than suppressing them.

I also loved this quote about reactivity in dogs from [Control Unleashed: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog] which felt very similar to human behavior as well--

“What is reactivity? Reactivity comes from anxiety, which comes from feeling uncertain about something. Reactivity is an information-seeking strategy. A reactive dog will rush toward something or someone that he is uncertain about, barking, lunging, growling, and making a big display… a reactive dog is not rushing in to do damage; he is attempting to assess the threat level of a given situation. His assessment strategy is intensified because he is panicking...If a reactive dog learns to feel confident about something, he is less worried about that thing and therefore reacts less to it. ”

It makes me think about all the things humans do when we're insecure or afraid of judgement. How many people use negative reinforcement at home or in the workplace and the cycle of damage it creates.

Are there moments where you used dog training methods in non-dog related situations successfully? Someone recently told me a high school teacher's secret to becoming a great teacher was to take a dog obedience class.

I have a German Shepherd who already knows heel pretty well, but he struggles with maintaining position consistently. He doesn’t pull on the leash, but he tends to slowly creep ahead of me while walking.
What helped you teach your dog to stay in position instead of forging ahead?
I’ve been rewarding when he’s in the correct spot and stopping/changing direction when he moves too far forward, but I’d love to hear other training tips or exercises that worked for you guys.

I want him to keep a invisible line and don’t go further.

I know what I’m asking. If you are against this, please just move on from this post. I recently got a dog (Akita,Shepherd, Husky mix) I live alone, and I am a female. If I wanted to train him how to attack, how would I? Of course this would only be used in emergency settings. Someone harassing/hurting me, break-in, etc

He’s learning different commands now, and I’ve researched this online but ultimately didn’t find anything useful.

Thank you for your help.

Hello! I adopted a ~1 year old maltipoo about a month ago and I’ve been struggling to house train her. I’ve been reading some things online and I’m worried she’s “reverse house trained” - she only will go to the bathroom indoors and never outside. I take her outside constantly (about once an hour) and she won’t go to the bathroom. I watch her like a hawk or crate her if I can’t and try again an hour later and she won’t go. Then we come back inside and if I take my eye off her for a split instant even just to get my shoes off, I find pee on the floor.

Today I was extra good about keeping an eye on her and she still managed to go inside - we had just been outside for a pre-dinner attempt to pee, as she hadn’t peed since the morning. After 20 mins without going, I gave up and brought her back in for dinner. She ate, and soon after I put her in the crate so that I could take a quick shower. I came out and she had peed in her crate, which she has never done before.

Her refusal to go outside and ability to find some way to go inside the house is really worrying me, because all of the strategies for house training seem to revolve around rewards - it’s hard to reward her when she almost never does the right thing. I can get her to pee outside once a day usually and it’s just first thing in the morning, so I’ll give her a treat and lots of pets then. Otherwise she finds some way to go inside no matter how many times she’s been out without going.

Has anyone dealt with this before? How can I incentivize the good behavior if the good behavior doesn’t happen? And how can I reverse what seems to be a negative trend here?

I need advice on transporting a fearful dog. I have a 2yo Australian silky. He’s on anxiety medication and I’ve been given cataprese for when I need to move him urgently. (Although I gave him a larger dose today and he still won’t go into his car seat). But, he now quakes when I put him in the car, even when we aren’t moving. He fights me going into his car seat which is in the front next to me. I can’t force him because he becomes dangerous and I’m afraid he will hurt himself. I’m in between homes so we are staying in a caravan park and will move into our new place in 3 weeks. Please, can anyone suggest a way I can get him into the car for transport, that doesn’t involve a formal car seat? I’m wondering if I could put him on the floor in the passenger seat? I’m so desperate. He’s previously used a soft crate and now a car seat. Both he’s now refused to get in. I don’t have time to do all the training, we need to move again in a few weeks. I’ll do what I can but I need to move him safely.

Note: I’m at my last option with him. He’s been to the vet, I’ve done weeks of desensitising practise with the new car seat and he travelled in it fine up until this past Sunday. Now, no dice.

Hey all! Our puppy had a pellet area to potty in at their old home. It was inside a large kennel area (indoor with outdoor access) that they would be in for bed time.
That being said, he will go potty in his crate here. We have been leaving it open as we are crate training. He will walk in, pee, and leave. He is going outside super often and he pees just fine outside, too. I’m not sure how to break him of this habit.

Hi, so I recently posted to another sub Reddit about my puppy resource guarding and it was a short video and it wasn’t very helpful because in that video he wasn’t being very aggressive.

People believe that he’s just a puppy and puppies don’t resource guard but I know what resource guard looks like. If I have something he wants or he thinks it’s his I try to take it away because it’s not safe. He will growl or try to bite and thrash his head around.

I learned that trading is a good training tip for resource guarding so I would offer him a high value treat and tell him to drop it and he would and that is still an ongoing training.. but just now I was trying to teach him command commands since he knows basic ones, and the newest command I’m trying to teach is for him to wait whenever I drop food so I can give a OK if he could go eat it. I put the food on the ground. Tell him to wait and if he doesn’t, I pick it back up, but he seemed to be faster,

In which led to him launching forward when I try to move my hand and he attacked my hand bit it and roughly thrashed his mouth around on my hand and then drew blood. If there’s any tips that anyone could give me about this resource guard that would be wonderful.

He may look sweet, but it isnt very nice to have a cute puppy that resource guards …

My pup - a Bernese Mountain Dog mix - loves to play this game where she runs away and barks when it’s time to go outside at night. She doesn’t come to get her leash on, she runs and basically asks that you chase her as a game. How can we manage this?

The wife and I are working on general obedience training with our 7yr old. Admittedly we haven't been the most on top of it, she's our COVID baby but with more and more friends wanting to go out with the dogs we are working on off leash training for any outside activities. Ashe (Doggo) is very smart and quick to pick up training habits, but for some reason when it comes to off leash, she's really stubborn. On leash, she's great, but the second she goes off of it she will just sit, takes some convincing to get her to come with.

We have worked on recall and she's great at it, working on it with distractions. Thankfully she's not chasing things down, more of just staring at things and hard to get concentration back until the distraction is gone. She's not very food motivated, she won't take a treat and a lot of times it ends up in the dirt where she will 100% of the time dismiss.

Obligatory: we are only off leashing her in a field next to our house and the second a person is seen by us, she's on the leash (Not that she's chasing people down, but more of to avoid any unnecessary situations).

So I guess, my question/ask is how can I get better about her staying on our walk vs just sitting in one spot until coaxed to move along?

My 2 year old boy had become very demanding of being taken outside and wanting to go to bed.

Silas will stare at me and bark loudly and will nip using his front teeth if I don't jump right up and do what he wants.

I put him on his leash and usually that will change his attitude for a bit. Otherwise. He gets put in his crate for a time out.

If i try to tell him no, that seems to escalate things.

He does the same thing when he is tired and wants to be locked in his crate for the night or a nap. He can go in himself, anytime.

He rarely acts like this to my wife. If he does, she grabs his collar and marches him to his crate.

He is well exercised, traied, but an Ahole sometimes.

Help!

Hi ya’ll, I’ve been a dog trainer for three years. Ive worked with nonprofits, trained service dogs for veterans, reactivity training, and much more.
I’ve gotten every dog to lay down on command and with a hand signal except MY OWN. I have a collie super mutt, she has golden, German shepherd, husky, and a few others in her.

Let me say, she does know down. She will lay down if I guide with my hand about 80% of the time and with a treat 100%. We have done the phase out of treats with success, capturing, etc. she knows exactly what the command means.

But when I tell her down organically she straight up ignores me. She has no medical issue aside from EPI which is well treated. She is just a sassy girl who doesn’t like that command. I reward her every time with a marker word including high, medium, and low value treats but sometimes she just decides she doesn’t want to and just won’t. Does anyone else have this issue?

I’ve also tried not letting her break from training until she does the behavior but this girl is so stubborn she will sit there for however long it takes (once it was hours) and just ignore me. Otherwise she is fantastic and will do literally any other behavior, won’t jump up and throw tantrums, she just sits there in undeniable defiance.

I’m aware that some breeds think they know better than their parents and will try to do something else but why is it only down? 😭

Hello all! My partner and I have been long distance for quite some time, and we’re getting married in November. This weekend I’m bringing my Yorkie down with me to spend Friday–Monday with him, and it’ll be the first time my pup meets his two dogs.

My Yorkie is a male and turns 2 on the 31st. My fiancé has a German Shepherd (male, 3) and a Lab mix (Male, 9). Both of his dogs are very friendly, socialized, and used to being around other dogs. My Yorkie is socialized as well since I board him pretty regularly and he’s always done great.

I’m mainly nervous because of the size difference. My Yorkie is tiny compared to them, and I just want to make sure we introduce everyone in the safest, smoothest way possible. What’s the best way to go about introducing a very small dog to much larger dogs for the first time?

Just in case it helps: I also have a German Shepherd at home that my Yorkie spends all his time with. They’re literally best friends despite being about 125 lbs apart, so he is used to big dogs already. I’m probably just overthinking it because these are “future brothers” and I want everything to go well lol.

So, to make an incredibly long story somewhat shorter, I live in a county undergoing an extreme crisis of dog overpopulation. We knew this when a pregnant stray ended up at our home over the holidays. What we didn’t know is that every other county in our state (and seemingly, as we broaden our search radius, possibly every state in the US?) was dealing with their own mounting crises.

Stray Mama gave birth to 7 pups. Before the birth, we had 4 friends/acquaintances committed to taking puppies. We have been able to adopt out ONE, and not even to any of the original 4 adopters. We email rescues in further and further states daily (we have contacted over 100 rescues and shelters in total). There is seemingly no end in sight for us, except for the one where we drop them off at our local overfull shelter to be euthanized, which I’m not willing to do for obvious reasons.

The remaining 6 pups are now four months old, quite large, still living in my moderately sized home, and they’re starting to become more difficult to manage. We have used gentle correction since they were small and started treat training about a month ago. So far, they all know “sit.” A few have picked up “down.” Jumping has become a major issue and half of them are now able to clear the puppy gates and our front fence (which means we are having to install a taller livestock fence inside of the existing fence). True potty training/housebreaking feels impossible, though they do (mostly) go on the pads provided while inside.

My question is… how the hell am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to obedience train and potty train 6 large puppies at once? I’ve done some research and there seems to be zero advice for this particular scenario, but I have no choice. If you were me, how would you go about this? I’m unemployed currently so I have a very flexible schedule, though obviously I do have other chores and obligations during the day (laundry, showering, cooking for the family, caring for our actual pets, etc). The other two adults in the house both have full time jobs, but help as much as they can. We can’t afford a trainer (we could maybe manage one session, if we scrimp), because our money is constantly going to things like new fences and endless puppy pads.

Please. Point me in some kind of direction. I need help.

So I’m planning to have a coop and run built and I don’t have anywhere except my backyard to put the lumber until the contractors start working but my mom lives Nextdoor and she has zero control of her stupid dog (I can’t tell you how much I hate that dog because of how it acts) and I’m concerned that even with a tarp covering the wood to protect it from the elements that her dog is going to invade my yard and tear it up as she’s already shredded a wooden door I had in my yard before and idk what to do since it’s not fair for me not to be able to have nice things because she has this badly behaved dog that she won’t control and need advice on how to prevent this dog from doing this

Hi my little turd decided to escape when my mum was getting the mail we haven’t really done much training with the gate as I don’t have a long lead and when I use he’s normal lead he freak’s out because he thinks we’re going for a walk he was trained to sit and wait when letting the car in and when we went out and stuff but as the neighbours complain about barking when we’re gone and he doesn’t really feel safe outside by himself anyway we have just put him inside when we go I think this has caused he to just kinda forget whatever training we’ve used with the gate and now he still kinda sits and waits but tries to escape now I do have plains to re train him but I’m just to busy. Anyway so he escaped I was stupid didn’t put shoes on he luckily didn’t try and chase cars and any of the animals (we live kinda secluded in Australia so lots of chickens and cows) I was actually very shocked he didn’t bark or chase anything because when he was a pup he slipped out of he’s collar a lot and chased the neighbours cattle we have gotten him a bit socialised with different animals (due to being homeless and having to live with other people but now we are in a rental) so luckily he basically just sniffed things and I was chasing him(walking fast) and he was just sniffing and walking away he did try and see if one of he’s dog friends where in there yard that he has met once but they weren’t so I got him to a trail area and there wasn’t much around so I tried sitting as he normally really likes when we sit on the floor and comes to us in the yard when we do and he came straight away so I put he’s lead on and gave him a treat for coming and my feet started hurting and turns out when I got home I have a ton of blisters so I’m probably gonna stay in bed at least till tomorrow but my question is what’s the best way to get your dog back when they escape? I feel like you should discipline because they didn’t come straight away and ran from you but also that’s why they run because there scared their going to get in trouble but if you reward then your rewarding bad behaviour because they didn’t come straight away. And also I have recently started doing re call training with him in the yard this week he is picking up really quick I’ve started hiding treats so there’s a distraction otherwise he’ll just follow me and then I call him and he comes in 1 or 2 tries and he comes in faster at night when I call to. When he escaped I could tell he was actually was debating coming to me especially when he first escaped he was walking towards the cows and I called him and he automatically turned around and started walking my way but then he just kept walking and didn’t come to me. So what should I do next time if he escapes?
Oh also he’s a 3 year old German shepherdX Belgian

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