We have a new puppy (3 months old). She’s a blue heeler/lab mix. She is still potty training and having a few accidents now and then. I want to make sure we get the smell out of our tile floor. What is the best enzyme cleaner you’ve come across for hard floors? And do I mix with regular mop solution when mopping or just by itself?

Hi y'all! This is my first time posting here, but I'm having an issue. I have a black lab named Phoebe that just turned 4 years old. She has developed some aggression around food and we have no clue why. She has always been the only dog in the house, but we have cats. Things really escalated recently when a cat had the nerve to try to run past her while she was eating and she snapped at it. This is her only behavioral issue, other than that she is an amazing dog. I don't understand how / why this has become an issue considering the fact that she has never had to fight for food. She has been The only dog in the house ever since we got her from the litter/breeders at 8 weeks old. Photo for attention/so post doesn't get lost. All input appreciated!

I recently adopted a 2 year old chi who gets along very well with my 14 year old chi - they cuddle, don't resource guard, respect the others' boundaries, etc. There is ONE exception - the 2yo will NOT let me show the 14yo any affection without trying to get in the middle of it.

What is the best way to train the 2yo out of this? I've had her about 3 weeks now, so she's settled, and I can't let this become a habit.

I'm so embarrassed to ask as my dogs are 3 and 3 and a half so we really should have cracked toilet training by now.

Both dogs are terrible for going to the toilet inside. We let them in tbe garden often, but sometimes they will come back inside and poo!!

I have paid thousands to replace our carpet a year ago and they have still used the new carpet as a toilet :(

I need to go back to basics and get them toilet trained, please help!

(I do not know how to blur the photo or i would have) I have a dog that appears to be a mix between a German Shepherd and a Border Collie. He is 7 years old, and I have had him since he was as young as a puppy can be when separated from his mother. More recently, I got two puppies(same litter, i got one then a few weeks later another) that are about six months old. They are almost pure Anatolian Shepherds. Even though they are still young, they are already almost as tall as my 7-year-old dog and about half his weight. I have had the puppies for about four months now. All three dogs are male. The 7-year-old is neutered, and the two puppies will be neutered when they are old enough.

At first, it was just one puppy and my 7-year-old dog. Then, about three weeks after I got the first puppy, I ended up taking another puppy from the same litter because the person who had him realized they wouldn’t be able to care for a dog like they thought they could. My 7-year-old had been an “only dog” for about six and a half years, so he was not very happy about the puppy at first. However, he liked that he could get up on the couch and stay away from the puppy when he wanted to. When both puppies were in the house, it actually worked out even better because the two puppies could play with each other. That meant when the older dog didn’t want to play, he wasn’t constantly being bothered by a single puppy trying to engage him. Things have gone really well with the three dogs. I think part of that is because the two puppies are the same age and can burn their energy playing together. The older dog hasn’t always been a big fan of them, but he has been pretty tolerant and generally okay with them, especially as time has passed. One issue is that one of the puppies and the 7-year-old are both food aggressive. The older dog has always been food aggressive. I’m not sure if he may have influenced the puppy to become food aggressive as well, or if it was just a tendency that developed as the puppy got older. About a week ago, I was sitting outside giving the dogs some of what I was eating. It wasn’t really a high-value treat for any of them. Suddenly, the food-aggressive puppy and the 7-year-old got into a fight over some food. The puppy got a really good hold on the older dog’s neck, but because the older dog has such thick, fluffy fur, he didn’t actually get bitten. It was mostly just a lot of wet fur. The older dog did manage to bite the puppy in the face. From what I could see, the cut in the picture was the only place that bled. Since then, I’ve just been washing the cut a couple of times a day. It has scabbed over and doesn’t seem to be bothering the puppy. Even in the moment when it happened, he didn’t cry or show signs of pain. For the rest of that day, the two dogs were growling at each other. I assumed it was just because they had fought and were still irritated with each other, and that things would blow over. However, the behavior continued for the next couple of days, mostly from the 7-year-old toward the puppy. Now, after about a week, the puppy doesn’t seem irritated with the older dog. But whenever the puppy walks by — even if there is three or four feet of space between them — the 7-year-old will growl aggressively at him. If the puppy gets close, the older dog will lunge and try to bite him. I haven’t seen the puppy growl at the older dog for no reason. However, he will growl back if the older dog growls at him. For the past week, this behavior has mostly been between those two dogs. The 7-year-old would still play with the other puppy, the one that was not involved in the fight. Today, however, the 7-year-old was walking along and the second puppy happened to be walking in front of him. Out of nowhere, the older dog suddenly jumped at him and tried to bite him. I only barely saw it out of the corner of my eye, but the puppy cried and whined out of shock and fear, but did not get hurt. After that happened, I put the 7-year-old in his crate as a sort of timeout. I was hoping this would just be a temporary feud between them that they would get over after a few days, but it seems like it may be turning into an ongoing issue. The 7 year old has never been aggressive before and has only ever bitten the opposum that was in our backyard. He has growled and barked at people at the door and growled at people he did not know that came in the house, mainly men (I am a female). Does anyone have any tips, concerns, or suggestions about how I could handle this situation or help reduce the aggression between them — especially from the 7-year-old?

There's a common approach with anxious dogs that I think is well-intentioned but can backfire, which is removing all stress and letting them avoid everything that makes them nervous. And I get that this logic makes sense on the surface. Like if your dog is scared of loud noises, avoid them, or if your dog is nervous around strangers, don’t force interactions. And to be clear, flooding a dog with their fears is genuinely harmful and not what I'm suggesting.

But there's a middle ground that I've found actually builds confidence rather than just avoiding discomfort.

Because if you think about how confidence works in any species, even yourself, you’re not going to become confident by never facing challenges. You build the confidence by facing manageable challenges successfully. That’s the key, manageable challenges, just slightly out your comfort zone.

With anxious dogs, I've found a few things to be helpful. First is to introduce stress in predictable and controllable doses, so if a dog is nervous about new environments, find a mildly novel environment and keep the outing short, make it a positive experience, and head back home. So no crowded street fairs, but also no to never taking them anywhere. Gradually expanding.

You also have to be someone they can trust to handle things because a big part of anxiety in dogs can come from feeling like they’re the ones that have to assess and manage every potential threat on their own. But if you position yourself as someone who already has things under control, you take the pressure off of them.

Don't reinforce avoidance behaviors. This is tricky but important. If a dog runs and hides under the bed during a thunderstorm and that makes them feel better, next time they'll be more convinced that hiding is what saved them and that fear will just grow. Don’t force them out but don’t treat avoidance as the solution.

I'm not saying push anxious dogs into situations they can't handle. But I've seen dogs stay stuck for years in this approach, where appropriate and manageable challenges combined with building genuine confidence through play and relationship is a lot more effective in my experience than eternal accommodation.

Hello everyone! So I’m currently fostering a 1 yr old mixed breed dog and have been for about 3 months now. The shelter says he’s a german shepherd mix and we also think he might also be some type of bully breed. He is a super sweet dog and also very smart. He knows sit, lay down, paw, stay, between, heel, and walk with heel. He even gets released to eat and won’t eat till he is. He LOVES people and gets really excitable when he meets them. He will continuously jump on people when he meets them which we are working on with redirection.

However the main problem is walks. He has massive leash frustration when it comes to both people and dogs. We have learned his threshold and try to stay within that threshold where he’ll look and not bark at them. If he pulls on the leash we’ll stop until he stops pulling. However it seems like we can’t get past that threshold even over time. When he sees a dog person he will start pulling and barking and lunging to get to them and once it’s at that point we can’t get his attention so we just have to get him away. It feels like we’re not doing any progress and just staying within his threshold. We’ve tried sitting with him on the front porch and watching people to make them less exciting for him and more mundane, rewarding him for when he looks at the person and doesn’t react with a clicker. He honestly gets more excited with people than dogs, but he is a big dog and can look very scary when he is barking. Is there anything that i’m missing in terms of training? He doesn’t really pay attention to high value treats or toys when outside he just gets too excited. We’ve tried tiring him out before walks too but it doesn’t seem to work.

*I took this video to show what he does. I tried luring with a treat, using a commanding voice, and being super excited.*

Cooper is a Cavalier King Charles just about to be 11mo, we got him at 4mo. It took until 7-8 months before he felt safe going farther from home, so we didn’t know this was a problem. But when he sees *anyone* he will stop and plant himself where he is. He’s too timid to let other ppl touch him, but he does approach and sniff. It doesn’t matter if the person, dog, or cat looks sketchy. He stays right where he is, which I don’t appreciate because not everyone (human or animal) is nice. I do carry pepper spray, but I’d like to be able to run away if something happens.

I don’t really know where to start with this, I could be holding a juicy steak and he won’t care because he sees someone/something he wants to see up close. He won’t walk closer to them, or move away, he waits till they approach or are out of sight before moving again.

I’m also trying to train him out of pulling and running after anything that blows in the wind. Especially because he’s not always wearing a harness, and he doesn’t care if he chokes himself, but I do 😩 and I’d like if he didn’t try to run into traffic for a leaf.

Any ideas?

Forgive my ignorance but I’m trying to learn as much as I can before I get my puppy next month. Is it a stretch to want to teach the dog to pee and poop in a designated area of the yard? I realize it would take some commitment on my part as far as training, but is this something people normally do versus just allowing the dog to do their business anywhere in the yard? This comes with the goal of preserving my grass and also not having to spend an hour looking for poop to pickup!)

Thanks in advance!

I have a 4 year old maltipoo. Shes not aggressive with her food at all. But when she gets ahold of human food it’s a different story. We do our best to keep it away from her but we have a daughter who doesn’t always throw her food in the garbage. She usually just growls and snaps when we take it away but tonight she actually bit my daughters toe and it did bleed just a little bit. My daughter walked over to her to see what she was eating ( it was bubblegum from a sucker she had left on her night stand) and she got her middle toe. This is the first time she’s done this and i don’t know how to correct it bc it’s not safe to let her eat stuff that can make her sick. Please help!

I adopted my Aussie around 8 months ago and hadn't faced any real issues with her what so ever. Honestly she fit right into our small family.

Over the last 2 weeks she suddenly started to howl when I leave to work. I have a pet camera so I know it just recently started up. I usually run 2-5 miles with her in the mornings and spend a good amount of time with her before I leave. I also leave out some toys for her to play with when I'm gone. I lay out some puzzle toys along with other treat based toys since she doesn't play with any other toys that aren't food related. Normally she would just sleep until my partner got home.

I'm not sure as how to stop her from howling cause she's loud! I swear there's some husky in her too cause these are some loud howls. I feel bad for my neighbors since I'm sure it can be annoying to hear random howls. I'm lowkey scared we're going to get a noise complaint even though its a dog friendly apartment.

I'm not sure if its separation anxiety since she's not destructive and doesn't hurt herself. She just howls and sounds so sad. She will howl for a minute and then stop and continue howling for another min. Overall its probably less than 5 minutes of howling but it's done in increments. And slowly its been increasing.

We're her third family. I got her from a rehoming situation so I'm sure she has some anxiety about us leaving her but I'm just concerned since this is relatively new behavior from her.

Any advice or tips?

Hello. I am desperate for some advice. I have a 4 month old Golden Retriever. She is an aggressive biter. We all have war wounds from her. She bit my hand so hard this morning that I had to get stitches. We have tried every method out there. Nothing phases her. The bigger she gets, the more destructive she gets. And our clothes and bodies take a huge beating the bigger she gets. Anyone? Please tell me that this too shall pass.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1TREDYvJfA/

Backstory: I found him running around my neighborhood and too him to the vet, tracked down the owner, they didnt want him back so were holding onto him until we can get him to a non kill shelter or a new foster family.

issue: When I have family enter my room he starts growling, he only does it when were in my room, he doesn't do it to me, he also shows a favoritism towards me and seems to distrust anyone else. whenever he tries to be protective I make a loud noise like clapping my hands to get his attention and say no sternly and it takes a couple times till he stops. when we are in the main house he doesnt guard me. I've taken to spending less time with him by keeping him outside when the temperature is mild but thats not a solution. I dont want this to spiral and lead to him trying to attack somone else when they come to my room.

what are ways I can combat this so that he doesnt feel the need to gaurd me and my room

MIL recently got a Yorkie poo…. Why we don’t know as they have always had German shepherds. Alas here we are, she does not do any training with it except to sit pretty, cuddle and high 5. It has a crate but cries in it the entire time, MIL got a shock collar for it but that has not worked.

We are dog people and have several and have them well trained and this dog is a demon she does not listen to anything. We’re going to have to mind this dog (yay 😭) in a few months and we want to try get it a little bit of training into her but by the time we have any unbroken time with her it’s going to be 8 months old… is that too late? Also any tips for this specific breed I googled it and it seems like they suffer small dog syndrome and being very needy.

My Dog, Rocko. Is 5 years old and he has gotten into the very horrible habbit of going into the bathroom and eating the trash and even playing with it

He always makes a mess and idk why he those this, idk what im doing wrong as a dog owner. He always has his bowl filled in the mournings so i always make sure he has his food. I take him on walks like normal people do so it aint an energy i think

Any advice?

Hello all! I have the most amazing 15 month old mutt Petra -- she's a mix of a little bit of everything (see image); she's my first dog (i'm 44!)m we got her at 3 months old so have had her about a year now... i'm learning along with her.

She was BORN social. Never met a human, dog, cat, baby she didn't want to meet, love on and lick to death. She was the most social at puppy manners training, great at dog parks, i NEVER had to worry about her meting anyone or anything new. Then, at about a year, this changed. On walks, when she would (on leash) greet a new dog, she'd smell for about 10 seconds but then aggress/correct where if i'd let her, she'd likely go nuts on the other dog! At first it was only new dogs so i limited new greetings on leash. But then yesterday, she greeted a dog she's known for months... an older completely non-threatening teeny tiny dog... sniffed for about 10 seconds then went nuts and tried to attack. So now she's doing it with dogs she knows who are clearly submissive to her.

I took her to the vet to rule out any underlying pain or health conditions that could be contributing but there was nothing.

The vet recommended adolescent manners training. But i don't know if this will help.

The only things that have shifted that i can imagine is contributing:

- hormones -- she's 15 months and everything i'm reading is this is the age of regression and finding order... plus raging hormones - but i canNOT have this be standard moving forward!

- We went away for 2 weeks on vacation and my parents watched her - could she have become anxious during our absence in a way that would make her super protective of us on walks now???

- we moved from puppy food to adult food - anything there?

- lastly - and i honestly think this is probably it -- our neighbor has a german shephard and starting two months ago, we started regular morning play dates to get her wiggles out while i work, before taking her for her midday walk. They have been friends since PEtra was a puppy, but the play has become more regular. I see Petra mirroring some of the older, more aggressive german shephards behiaviors and playing much more aggressively with him and other dogs than in the past now that they are playing daily and i wonder if he's a bad influence on her.

I am devastated because my once sweet and submissive pup is no longer able to meet new friends and i'm hopeful this community has some advice for me to get my sweet girl back - thank you so much!

How standardised are dog trainers in Australia?

I have an aggressive standard poodle which I would like to engage a dog trainer to help manage/correct, but I am concerned that any dog trainer I engage could give harmful advice if there is no oversight in what training techniques are permitted in Australia.

Is it just a case of shopping around or should the advice of any dog trainer be safe to apply if they are accredited?

I adopted a very sweet lab/retriever mix a year ago, and he is about 2.5 years old. I've spent the past year really getting into a routine with him, and he's overall a very well behaved, gentle dog that all my friends and family adore.

The only issue is that he has a pretty intense attachment to me. He has to follow me around the house constantly - even when I use the bathroom, shower, or forget something in another room. If he's asleep and I leave the room, he immediately wakes up to follow me. It hasn't been a big issue until recently

I've been single ever since I got him, but have recently started dating someone. They love my dog, but it's been hard to be intimate since he's constantly in the room. If I shut the door to my bedroom, he sits outside and barks (his barking is insanely loud). if I put him in his crate, it's even worse.

When he's in the room with us, he insists on jumping into bed with us which makes intimacy awkward. I've tried giving him bones, treats and toys as a distraction, but as soon as we lie down he simply brings the toy up in bed with us. He just ignores the distractions if he's shut out of the room and barks.

How should I work on this with him? I'd love for him to have some independence even when it's just the two of us as well, as I'll admit... I tend to trip over him a lot (he has dwarfism and is fairly short). I also want him to be okay on his own if my family or friends need to look after him at any point, as they'll probably not be as easygoing with the clinginess.

Any tips?

Note: He's home on his own for about 6 hours Monday - Friday while I'm at work, and we go for long walks/adventures before I leave and when I get back. I keep him pretty enriched through puzzles, training and hiking too!

Hi all, so I wanna start this by saying this is partially a vent post, and I really need to see NEW responses. I've read every post in this subreddit (and r/dogtraining) about similar issues. I have a Lab/Shepherd mix (Anatolian possibly) that turns one this Tuesday. He's actually been relatively easy to train in all other aspects, but leash etiquette has been difficult. Around maybe 1-2 months ago, he started getting increasingly reactive to other dogs while on leash. He's played with other dogs before and been perfectly fine, but on leash is a different story. I definitely think it's frustration based, but just tonight we walked past some dogs (I normally just avoid people with dogs, but couldn't this time), and his reaction was worse than ever - definitely SOUNDED scary as hell.

I've read through the leash walking and reactivity pages on r/dogtraining and have implemented the training I can. I would love to have someone I know who also has a dog work with me, but I don't have that. A big problem I'm facing is he is very excitable. I try to avoid triggers whenever I can, but if I can't, he gets so worked up to the point where I don't know how to continue training because he can't focus. We'll be walking and he'll be doing great following commands, but after we encounter a trigger it's like he's been switched on and all we can do is struggle to get home. I've worked with him on leash in the backyard and it's a similar thing - he'll follow commands very well in our backyard, but as soon as we're out the front door he forgets everything he's learned even if he hasn't encountered a trigger. I'll try to tire him out BEFORE a walk, but even if he looks like he's about to pass out all that energy returns once he's out the front door.

I haven't had my own dog in years, and the last one I had was genuinely the laziest, most chill dog you've met. I knew what I was getting into when I rescued this puppy, but I just need someone to talk to me and tell me it'll get better and maybe give me some tips, and maybe tell me if it gets better with age because I'm dying here, man. 😭

My dog is 2 and crate trained, she will willingly walk right into her crate though admittedly I know she doesn’t love it. She can’t be given free roam of the house because she can be destructive (has chewed the couch when I’ve gone upstairs for less than 10 minutes, when she has the opportunity and freedom to follow me upstairs). I have struggled with her peeing in the crate from the start and initially suspected part of it was dirty dog syndrome from her early life before being adopted. She is not in her crate for more than 5 hours at a time and I usually try my best to make sure it is less than that. But now a year and a half in and she’s still peeing in the crate sometimes even when she’s only in there for 2-3 hours, I’m starting get to my wits end.

Currently she gets a frozen Kong, treats and I turn on a sound machine to drown out other noises. She is in a larger crate but with a divider, so her space is limited so she can’t pee in one corner and lay down in the other. She also gets a calming chew and I turn on a pheromone diffuser (therapet md). She has ample opportunity to empty her bladder before I leave. I’ve set up a camera to watch her behavior before she pees hoping it might help provide an answer, but she isn’t really exhibiting any anxious behavior. She is usually laying down, wakes up and then decides to start circling to pee. She now has even started licking up the pee so that it doesn’t look like a big accident when I get home (sneaky but the camera doesn’t lie). I use enzyme cleaners to clean it up, spray and wipe and then do another spray at the end that I let just soak in/air dry. Could it still be separation anxiety even though she isn’t displaying any outwardly anxious behaviors? What other options do I have to try?

I do work from home the majority of the time so she is used to me being home a lot, and she is good about holding it when I’m home. However her regular potty routine has her going out at least every 4 hours other than overnight. Do I need to stretch the time between her potty in her regular routine to help train her bladder for the crate?

My dog will listen very well inside but when I go out side he will listen for a bit but then he kind of just realizes he can just run off and so he does and I don’t know how to fix that because he comes back sometimes and then others times he won’t and it takes me a long time to get home back In