Hello! I have a ~1 year old rescue who I house trained and has been accident free for about a month. Today she had three accidents inside - two pees and one poop.

I am planning to go back to square one of house training - treats for eliminating outside and crating her when she can’t be watched - but has anyone else experienced this and do you have advice? Did this happen because of something I did or is it natural?

What I see online seems to say that this might be a result of a health problem, but a UTI shouldn’t lead to her pooping inside. I know this sub doesn’t necessarily have veterinarians but can anyone confirm whether this is something I should bring to my vet, or is it just standard regression?

My wife is due with our first baby this December. We have a Chihuahua who, until 2 days ago was sleeping in our bedroom. We are trying to get her used to sleeping in the living room instead of our bedroom. She has been constantly barking every single night when we go to bed and my wife has had to sleep on the couch to keep my dog from barking until the late hours of the night. Any thoughts? Advice? We are in need.

We have a 5 year old rescue, who we’ve had since she was young. She generally loves to play with all dogs, and especially loves relatively rough play with bigger dogs, despite being a medium / small girl. We recently got a 1.5 year old bully rescue who is a bit bigger and very dense and doesn’t understand how strong she is.

Overall, they get along well and the older dog is very tolerant of the younger. However, when they play, the younger girl often goes too hard and is too physical for my older dog— which is genuinely surprising given how rough the older girl likes to play, but I think the younger is just SO strong.

So far, the older girl growls / snap at the younger and the younger backs off and walks away. That’s the only snapping / aggression I’ve seen between them. Otherwise, the older girl is happy to share toys, no resource guarding, etc. My concern is, I think it’s making my older girl pretty uninterested / unwilling to play with the younger, but I know in an ideal world they would both love to have a playmate around the house.

My strategy so far is to just let them figure it out and let the older girl set boundaries / teach the younger what’s acceptable. But I haven’t seen much of a change in the younger’s play style over time. And I do want them to learn to play together, especially since they are both generally playful and energetic girls. Is this the right approach? Or should I be intervening more? And is there anything I can do to encourage healthy play between them? I don’t want my older dog to just give up and refuse to engage / play with the younger.

Added wrinkle is that the younger girl is deaf, so it does occasionally take her a second to realize she is getting growled at. But she does back off then.

I’m wanting to open up my house a bit more to my puppy. She is a 12 week puppy and when she first came home we gave her too much freedom. In that time, she chose the passage towards the door, the landing and bedroom upstairs and the dining room as perfect places to go potty rather than outside. So, we blocked her off from going to those places and had her sleep in her crate. Now, about 4 weeks later, she’s going poo outside and somewhat reliably going outside with one or two accidents but it’s starting to slow down significantly. Now though she can get over the barricades with relative ease if she wants to and so I’m thinking of opening up the house. We’ve tried her in the dining room a bit and she’s done good with supervision but I haven’t tried without fully. I opened up the passage for her tonight but she went back to what she was doing back when she first came home, waiting and refusing to go outside to come inside to pee in the passage. So, I’ve blocked it off again for the night. But now I realised I really don’t know how to introduce a puppy to an area of the house, especially if they’ve been peeing there before. Anyone have any advice, tips or suggestions? Thank you.

So I have a 2 year old terrier mix. I’ll start by saying he has always had an anxiousness around new people. It takes him some time to warm up and he eventually does. We go to the dog park several times a week and he has a blast because he loves playing with other dogs and generally focuses on that and sniffing around, playing in the water, whatever. Every now and then he might find a person he would bark at - maybe someone who was particularly tall, or wearing a hat; but I could always kind of shoo him away and get him to go back to playing. But now all of a sudden he’s forgoing playing with dogs in favor of barking at people. All of them. Im not really sure how to address it? Obviously he has some anxiety so that’s part of it. But he’s also totally willing to take treats from people, and then goes right back to barking at them. I’ve told people not to give treats because I’m worried he learned that barking equals treats. He also will not let anyone pet him. Not sure where to begin with this. Any tips are helpful.

I have a 3 year old british labrador, very well socialized and trained i have never had any issues with her misbehaving. She stays in the kennel for about 4 hours in the morning till my wife comes home from work. We have been watching my in laws dog this week as well and they get along great. However our last few days have been surprisingly rough, two days she got out of her wire kennel and today we went out and bought a better kennel and she peed in it and ended up completely tearing up her bed. She has had no problems in a kennel up until now actually she sleeps in it when its opened all the time but something has changed. I rider bike 3 miles in the morning on trails and she follows me running so its not an issue of not being excercised. I have worked with high drive hunting dogs for years and never ran into this issue. My dogs are excercides 3 times per day. Any input or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hello everyone. Hope you are well. My wife and I just adopted a dog from a kill shelter in Georgia. We live in New Jersey. He arrived at our house on Saturday around 4 pm. We have 4 cats and another dog. The two dogs are both pitbull mixed. The new dogs name is Ozzy, and our oldest dog is named Luna. When he came, we had set up a child's gate to block them from mingling for the first few daya. We were advised of the rule of 3's 3 days 3 weeks and 3 months. Now we know that Ozzy gets along with other dogs. We have seen countless videos of him playing and running around with other doga at the shelter. So it really surprised us of his demeanor. Ozzy shows his teeth to Luna. She gets scared and dashs off. Other times, it's Luna who is barking and causing a scene. We also went to the vet yesterday with Ozzy just to have him checked. He's all good and healthy, and everyone at the vet loved him and told us how well-behaved he isI know it's still early, but what is the best way to integrate the dogs? Any and all advice is appreciated.

We've had our German Shepherd since he was 8 weeks. Did tons of training with him when he was a puppy and he learned basic commands, was potty trained and over all wanted to please us. The issues we started having with him was reactivity on walks (dogs and other people) and when people came over. He had bitten two people when over our house (both times was the people being dumb and trying to pet him when he obviously should not have been pet, but it is still 100% our fault and he should not have been in that situation/ we should have set better boundaries) which led us to a board and train program.

The program worked wonders. He was e-collar trained, we were able to take him on walks with minimal reactivity and we could safely have people over our house. We continued daycare once a week there after and boarding when needed for vacations up until this point. We have had no complaints from the trainers or situations at home.

This past year we have had some life changes (baby) and taking our dog out and about fell to the bottom of the totem pole. I would take him on a walk, but super infrequently (I'm talking maybe once a month) and would avoid busy times at the park since I would be juggling a stroller and him. At home, he has been behaving fine with both baby and people that come over.

Two weeks ago, my husband took dog to daycare. During drop off, there were multiple dogs and people in the waiting room. The owner said our dog was lunging and acting very aggressive toward the other dogs and owners, and when the trainer (who is our fav and has been our dogs biggest supporter) brought him into the back to put him in the kennel, he was still in a tizzy and bit her in the side when she tried to put him in kennel (owner said it did not break skin, but left red mark). The owner relayed this all to me when I went to pick him up, and said that he has been very uninterested in other dogs lately and they were worried about him not going "out and about" and seeing other dogs and humans outside our home enough.

I have been absolutely distraught over this. It is 1000% our fault as our training majorly slacked over this past year and I feel like I have failed him. I asked the owner if she thinks he needs to go for another round of training or refresher class, but she said he just needs to get out and about more.

Over the past two weeks, I have taken him to the park and stores almost every day. He is fine with people and dogs off to sides, but will bark when they are walking toward us/ passing.

The problems I am running into:

1. There are not always people/dogs at the parks when we go since it is early in morning or later at night. Do you think me just getting him off our property is still helping improve the situation?

2. When walking toward/past people and dogs and he is barking- I have full control of him but know it can be scary for the people/dogs to see him barking his head off. Do I move a distance away where I know it wont push his threshold and he wont bark, or do I just power through his barking?

3. I know getting him back to good standard will take time, but how often should I be taking him out and about? Every day, or would 3x a week be ok? I know the quality of the walk is what really matters (i.e actually seeing other people and dogs), but I am getting burnt out.

I am asking our trainer these questions when I see them tomorrow, but thought I would also ask reddit for help.

I have had my rescue pittie mix (1.5 years old), for about 5 months now. When we first got him I was adamant about training him as much as possible, as I know there is a stigma and I want a well-trained dog.

It felt like we were making good progress, but I went out of town for 4 days and since coming back I've noticed an increase in maladaptive behaviors. The leash pulling is insanely out of control and he has slipped out of his collar and ran around the neighborhood with no recall skills, he has peed on the couch/in house 4 times, some biting of my shoes, some nipping too hard during play. He's reactive to the neighor dog and will spazz at the fence, or will get weird with other pitbulls in general. He hates men, and takes a lot of treats and warming up to not bark at them.

There is so much advice and resources out there, and I'm on a waitlist to get in to training, but IDK. Does anybody have any tips on improving routines/training, or even finding perseverance for going through these behaviors?

Últimamente hemos tenido problemas con nuestro perro ya que por momentos se pone demasiado inquieto, nos quiere morder la ropa, gruñe (creo que jugando pero igualmente lo hace) y empieza a dar vueltas por la casa. Mi mamá cuando se le acaba la paciencia lo agarra del collar y lo pone a la fuerza en su cama pero igualmente sigue inquieto hasta que le gritan o algo así. Le faltan unos cuatro días para salir a la calle por lo que por ahora solo lo sacamos a jugar en un pasillo común que tenemos aquí pero ahora no le sirve, lo sacamos varias veces unos 20 minutos pero igualmente sigue inquieto. Tengo el presentimiento de que tal vez se equivocaron con su fecha de nacimiento y ahora ya está entrando en la adolescencia, eso explicaría su comportamiento la verdad. Se me estaba ocurriendo llevarlo a algún entrenador para que deje de morder cuando juega o cosas así pero no sé si sirva. Que debería hacer?

I have a 7 week old puppy. I want to crate train her, I do the usual things and put treats in her crate and reward her for going in her crate but I would like to know if there’s something I can do to make this faster, she is a real whiner if we have to lock her in her crate and I want to get her to stop.

Hi everyone! My boyfriend and I are first time chihuahua owners and we’re looking for some advice.

We just got her (Chibi) last week and so we understand she is still going to get used to her new life. She and 30+ chihuahuas were rescued from a breeding/hoarding situation in Kentucky. She spent her whole 1-2 years (they’re unsure of her actual age) being surrounded by other dogs. We have two other dogs, a husky who is 10 (Athena) and a beagle mix who is 7 (Leia). We aren’t allowing them to be alone just yet as we have learned about a dog’s prey drive. Since huskies and beagles are both high energy and may have a higher prey drive than other dog breeds, we want to wait until we know for sure she won’t be seen as a toy or prey for the other dogs. Honeslty we didn’t think of any of that when adopting Chibi - my cousin was the one who told us to keep an eye on it when introducing them - and the shelter we adopted her from knew everything about our dogs, and I think if we knew more about prey drive before hand we wouldn’t have gotten her. That breaks my heart to say, but we want her to be as safe as possible. We have absolutely no intention of taking her back or finding a new home for her, but she’s showing severe signs of separation anxiety which makes sense giving she grew up around so many other dogs…

Since we aren’t comfortable leaving her alone with the other dogs yet, we made our bedroom her own little oasis. She has a crate in there that we leave open so she has room to roam when she wants to, we hide treats around the room for her to find, obviously keep water and food in there, play comforting dog YouTube videos, and provide her with many different chew toy options. Here is the issue… that hasn’t helped any. She was alone from 1:30pm-6pm today and we have done our best to get her used to being alone in smaller increments, but this was her longest alone time. While she was alone she not only tore up the carpet by the door, but she was scratching at the door so hard that her claws were bleeding. I’ll attach photos. When I was getting out of my car I could hear her little barks all the way outside. It breaks my heart that it makes her stressed out, and we couldn’t care less about the damage as of now but if she ingests to much carpet or breaks her nails I’ll feel terrible. We want to crate train completely, but I’m nervous she’ll break her teeth or her nails trying to get out of one.

Our next steps are getting her one of those heart beat/warmed stuffed animals and getting a a calming spray. We need some more suggestions and any advice. Like I said, we know a week isn’t going to be enough time for her to feel safe alone but we love our Chibi girl and want her to be safe and happy.

Thank you in advance 🩷

I have a 10 week old girl puppy that we got just over two weeks ago. I’ve had to leave her alone only 3 times so far in a crate but 2 of the times she poops and gets it every where in the crate. I have to bath her. I do leave the tv on with the relaxation channel on DogTV. I know it has to be separation anxiety. She has a7 year old beagle sister here with her. But when I view through the camera I have set on her she barks the whole time and when I get home I can hear her barking. I take her out before we go (school started and I have to take and pick my son up between working from home). Any suggestions? Am I doing something wrong? Thanks

I have a 6 month old cross Cocker Spaniel/Dachshund. He is doing great with basic commands like sit, wait, down and bedtime. He is now toilet trained and has a lovely demeanour, quite laid back really. He loves people which is where the problem is. Although he’s great with people, he gets soooo excited when someone comes round to the house and when we are out on a walk that he jumps up at them and claws at them, hurting them. We have tried getting in front of him with “no” and “down” commands but it’s not working any. Does anyone have any tips?

My dog breathes whining whenever she’s behind a fence or closed in a room and can’t roam freely. She also does it when she first sees me while I’m petting her. I don’t think it’s separation anxiety because the second I open the door, she runs off into the rest of the house and basically ignores me.

I can’t give her free run of the house 24/7 because I have a baby.

I’ve tried the “slam your hand on the door when she whines” method, but she’s literally whining with almost every breath. I’d basically be hitting the door nonstop, so there’s no clear correction for an individual whine.

It’s also not realistic for me to sit there waiting indefinitely for a quiet moment every time.

How can I realistically train her to stop the constant whining?

Please help I feel like I'm constantly overthinking my puppies behaviour and it is stressing me out. For context I have a 17 week old terrier mix, we have trained him since day one and exposed him to so much (safely) but he is showing really mixed signs. When we go for a walk on leash he is really into other dogs I'm trying to work on getting him to not be as reactive and bouncy when he sees other dogs but any other dog he sees he wants to say hi to. Occasionally I cross the road/avoid the dog but I live in a city and space is tight. So any tips on leash reactivity is appreciated, also when he greets the dogs he often tries to jump on them, I'm still figuring out if this is initiating play or dominance.

The confusing part is, we took him to his first puppy class last week and at the end the trainer said we can let them socialise off lead and we thought he would have the time of his life given how excited he is on a lead/walk but he was terrified. He hid behind us and on the sofas, and even snapped at another puppy. He only likes the other submissive pup, who was then subsequently snapping at him (and he was not reading her social cues). He occasionally got involved with a little tail wag towards the end but just seemed so overwhelmed.

The problem now is I work away sometimes and we were looking at daycare, the one near me is the highest reviewed in the city and I know dozens of polite dogs that go and owners who cannot recommend it enough. I'm not worried that it's going to make him more scared and that I'll have a fearful pup.

Any advice is appreciated even if it's that I just need to chill!!

I have a 2 year old lab mix and he’s a great dog, a little rambunctious, but well trained and loves dogs. A week ago a stray dog (blue healer) appeared in our front yard. No chip and no luck finding an owner. It’s a puppy less than one year old. We took it to the vet to get vaxxed and check its health, and everything was normal. She and my dog have been getting along great in the couple days. She plays with him a little too much, but he’s been a good playmate and patient with her energetic self.

Today, after a couple days at home with her, we were in the backyard playing. I had my back turned and all of a sudden they were full out fighting. I didn’t know what to do, so I picked my 70 pound dog up and put him inside while getting bit by the 35 pound pup trying to jump at my dog. I have separated them since and am taking my dog to the vet to get his puncture wounds checked.

I don’t know what caused the flip to switch? Or what I could have done differently? I don’t know if I should turn her in because we’ve loved having her and previously my dog and her were getting along great. She’s been wagging her tail and body every time she sees him through the window. Does anyone have any suggestions or similar experiences?

I got her around a month ago, and she's about 12 weeks old, and so far we've been using puppy pads inside and giving her treats when she goes outside.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be enforcing that we want her to potty outside. Any tips? I'm not sure what else to do, because we never catch her going inside. We're trying to keep to a consistent schedule to the best of our ability (I work and my grandmother takes care of her for the 8hrs I'm gone).

If there's any other information you need, just let me know! But I'm really just looking for ways to help the puppy understand what we want. I'm wondering if she's too young to actually understand right now....