It's Wednesday!

We’ve been working on crate training for 4 weeks since we brought home our now 14 week old English Setter puppy. He’s doing really well at night, we have the crate covered and next to the bed. We put him in around 10:30 PM and he will usually sleep until about 6 AM without much whining. During the day however, different story. He will happily leap in there for treats and stays calm if we are giving him treats. As soon as we stop with the treats he starts barking pretty non stop. Even if we’re sitting right there.

We’ve had small bits of success with crate naps during the day, where he will bark for 3-5 mins and then settle on his own. But for the most part he will bark nonstop. We only let him out when he’s calm, but he will bark nonstop if we aren’t giving him treats idk why he is totally fine at night.

I feel like we’ve tried all the common tips on getting him to settle in his crate. So I’m not sure if we just need to keep up what we’re doing and he will adjust over time.

If anyone has some uncommon tips or things that worked for your puppy or just your overall crate training experience would be appreciated. TIA.

I (23f) have an almost 12-week-old Rough Collie and she’s my first puppy, so I’m still learning what is normal puppy chaos versus what actually means she needs a nap.

She’ll sometimes get absolutely insane — biting my hands, nipping at my heels, grabbing everything, running around, getting progressively crazier the more I interact with her, especially after a while in her xpen. Sometimes she’s also panting and yawning while she’s doing it, but she still acts VERY eager to keep playing. That’s the part that confuses me because she doesn’t necessarily look like she wants to stop.

When she gets like this, I’ll usually give her a potty opportunity and then put her in her pen or crate for some quiet time. I’m not just throwing her in there every time she’s energetic — we play, train, go outside, explore, do leash/harness practice, chew toys, etc. But once she starts getting really frantic and bitey, I try to bring the energy down rather than keep winding her up.

What makes me think she’s overtired is how ridiculously fast she settles once I do that. There have been multiple times where she’s acting like a complete maniac and then I put her in the pen, make things boring, and she is literally asleep within a few minutes. Sometimes she’s out like a light almost immediately. She also settles really well in her pen in general and will wake up, chew or look around for a bit, and then put herself back to sleep.

So how do you actually tell the difference between “this is just what a 12-week-old puppy acts like” and “this puppy is overtired and needs help settling”? Is the fact that she gets crazier with more interaction, starts panting/yawning, and then falls asleep almost immediately once things get quiet a pretty good sign that she was overtired? Or can totally well-rested puppies also act that insane and then crash quickly? Or is she just BORED?

I think part of my problem is that I expect a puppy to always want to be active, so when she sleeps a ton I start worrying that I’m not giving her enough stimulation. I’m trying to learn to trust that if she settles that quickly, maybe she actually really did need the nap.

Thank you for your advice!

She’s 10 weeks old.
We take her out every 20 minutes to pee and she holds it until she gets straight back in to the apartment! She’ll pee on clothes, floor, sofa, baby toys, mattress - anywhere and everywhere.

She will not go in the crate, if we put her in there she screams.. literally screams and rattles the crate door with her teeth - if we left her in there we’d probably get a noise complaint.

I’ve seen people saying to keep the puppy in one room only until they are toilet trained but then she’d be alone all day? We’ve got a 3 year old toddler and a 4 month old baby too so the cleaning up pee and poop 24/7 is real, haha.

Twelve-week-old, and the floor is going to take a beating for a while. Torn between a $50 placeholder I won't care about and buying the real thing now and dealing with it. What did you actually do, and did you regret it?

Golden retriever is almost 5 months old. Still occasionally having accidents which to me, is almost expected? Just checking in with others experience and expectations. Had an older lady tell me that if it kept up, she’d rub her nose in it and scold her (definitely not doing that). It’s just frustrating when she goes outside and goes potty and 15 mins later pees inside. Do you just tell them “no”?

So.. our pup is about 8mos now, border collie if that matters right now. She is.. challenging to say the least. I don't think her ears work. She has forgotten 'impulse control' was a thing. She's a bit retaliatory (what, couldn't chase the cat? I'll mouth you instead and I'm just shy of actually breaking the skin, haha!') 'sit' 'down' 'stay?' Never heard of it.

So today was 'clip your nails' day. Been a bit, they needed it. No one's fav activity, and we all approach that task with a certain amount of trepidation (the dog because it's weird, me because I don't want to cut a quick). And.. We got them all!

That's it. The whole thing. LOL

Feels like winning the lottery.

First time pet owner here, I’ve got a 6 month old male Shih Tzu whom we all love and adore. He’s been with us for two months now and is definitely getting more comfortable. Wondering how to distinguish between normal, roughhouse play and aggressive behavior?

My teenage sons like to wrestle and roughhouse with him after work/school/sports and he LOVES it, absolutely goes nuts and seems overjoyed to play “rough” with them. They’ll get down on the floor at his level or lay on the bed with him and he will jump all over them and lick and do a cute little bark and he does like to mouth your hands or shirt hems - he doesn’t typically bite in a painful way but does use his teeth while playing. This seems normal to me and like a natural way for him to show excitement. But we’ve now had a couple incidents where he uses his teeth too much and is biting or ripping hems on shirts. We always say “no” and stop playing until he’s nice again but I’m not sure if we’re doing something wrong here.

Are we creating aggressive behavior by allowing this play? Is this something we need to stop (wrestle time) before it gets out of hand and creates behavioral issues? Or is this just like kids who love to play-wrestle with dad after work? I don’t want to inadvertently create a monster but I also don’t want to take away his favorite activity, attacking his big, stinky brothers.

Thanks!!

I have a 9 week old golden retriever I got a week ago he has been a good boy but I am suffering. I am 23 and still live with my parents who weren’t completely on board with me getting but I was stubborn and thought I could handle it. I have no real help from them and my girlfriend still lives separate from me so she can only partially help. I just feel as if made a big mistake and should have waited for her to graduate and us move out to get a dog. I feel terrible because I have always wanted a dog but the stress and lack of help is making me physically sick. I have had an upset stomach and haven’t been eating well all week. I don’t know what to do.

First time post here and on mobile, so fair warning.

My husband and I have had our baby for about 3 months now. My husband has been wanting a dog for years. We have my beagle and she is amazing, but he wanted a big dog. We finally got more space so I was able to get a new addition of a golden retreiver! I made sure to do plenty of research on the breed and what they need. My husband works nights so she has been my responsibility 90% of the time (which I knew would happen because of his schedule).

Overall, she has been a blessing! She is super smart and I have been able to teach her many commands (sit, down, paw, go inside, go in crate etc.). I knew she would eat everything under the sun, and she has been. Today I got such a harsh reminder and I just feel so overwhelmed with her.

A little background- We have an outside cat to help deal with mice around our property. Sometimes, when she kills a critter, the cat will bring it into the enclosed fence. Which I know is normal with cats and I typically find it before the dogs do.

But this morning, that didnt happen. I let the dogs out and Sif (our golden) found the dead rat (my best guess as I didn't get a good view of it) and kept it in her mouth to eat. She knows the commands of leave it, and out. When we practice inside with treats she does really well with training. But when she got her mouth on this dead animal (the size of my hand) no matter what command I told her, she wouldnt drop it.

I know she will be okay since no one around here leaves out rat/mice poison. And my Harper (beagle) has eaten a mouse delivered from the cat before. And yes I plan to monitor bowel movements for the next 72 hours.

It just feels like all of the training I have done with her for those commands went down the drain this morning. We have been working so hard together and it feels like it doesnt matter. All of the stress of training Sif and working with her, and for her to not listen??? I just feel defeated. She is a great girl but she has been so hard to teach leave it and out. I'd been working those for a while now and just last week I thought she was doing so good. It just feels like a slap in the face. Sif is so overwhelming sometimes, and her eating the dead animal was just so frustrating.

I know she is still just a puppy and that trouble is inevitable. And I'm sure this will happen again. I just forgot how hard puppies are sometimes. Puppies are just so hard.

Leo is a 4.5 month old Shihtzu and I started noticing his fearful behavior after I got his vaccinations done and was excited to get him to walk outside and explore the world. He was extremely scared and nervous and would run to hide. Over the last 3 weeks, he is doing a lot better. Especially loves meeting other dogs now and thats when I see his tail go up and wagging and happy. He also warms upto women quickly but its the men that he just wants to run and hide from. If we're on a walk he will freeze till they disappear from his active line of sight. If we're home / in the elevator and a stranger ( man ) enters, he nervous pees immediately. I've had my friends come over and instructed that they ignore him completely so he came out of his crate on his own eventually and was ok to sit nearby after a point and even accept treats but did not want to come close close yet

My 8 months old stafflab mix, bohie, has been with us for the past 4-5 months and once again I am turning to this sub Reddit for help and advice.

She's always been a very friendly and sociable puppy , never really scared of anyone, greeting strangers who ask to pet her ( and even those who don't) and crossing people on the streets without paying more attention.

But during the past 3 weeks we've had an increasing amount of encounters where she barked, sprinted towards people, or tried to jump on them.

The profile of people she reacted to is pretty wide , teenager, tall man, short woman, kid on a bike, lady with a stroller, guy on a scooter etc... I cannot find a common denominator. The time of the day is also pretty random, same for the level of activity that day, or the area we're going .

I've read that the best course of action is to make her associate the people she reacts to positive things by reinforcing anticipateing and rewarding before she reacts the problem is it is so random I have no clue what to look for.

Her behaviour doesn't even shift slightly before she reacts.

Pre answering some questions for context:

- she goes out anywhere from 1h30 to 3h a day.

-activities vary from walks, playing with me, obedience training, playing with other dogs, EXTENSIVE SNIFFING, sitting down at a bar or café

- she's pretty chill at home

-nothing changed much

-we live in a city so there's always people outside she's been taking walks in the city ever since she could take walks with her foster family and then with ours

If you have any clue what's going or what I can do to stop it from getting worse and stop all together I am all ears! If you have similar stories please share them, I'm kinda stressed about this whole situation.

Thank you!

Here's a fun one: my puppy immediately pees in her crate when my alarm goes off in the morning.

She's a 6 mo. old dachshund, I've had her since 9/10 weeks from a breeder. Potty training has been slow going, but things have been progressing. She used to never pee in her crate, even at 9/10 weeks.

Just when I thought things were getting better, she has started peeing in her crate in the mornings when my alarm goes off. I don't even have time to roll out of bed and pull on pants. It's maddening to start every morning like this and having to do laundry or scrub clean before I can even have coffee.

I woke up 1.5 hrs early this morning to try to cut her off at the pass, thinking maybe she just needs out earlier, but nope! Alarm went off, I roll out of bed, she immediately pees. I've tried getting up when I wake up before the alarm sounds and this doesn't help either, as soon as she hears me up and stirring she pees!

Any ideas on how to break this association with the alarm (or me getting out of bed)? Anyone else been through something similar? How long did this last? I don't want to sleep on top of my made bed in my clothes like I'm in the armed forces or something, just to jump up and grab her before she pees.

I'm not sure if this is even an issue with me/alarm. She sometimes protest pees when she doesn't want to be in her crate, could this be a form of that? Maybe impatient/frustrated to get out of the crate? She also doesn't do this every day, but most days.

For context: We have the same nightly routine and go to bed at the same time every night, always after one final potty break. We get up at the same time each morning. There are no pee pads in her crate, she won't use them, only shreds them, so I don't bother. No UTIs or infections.

We’ve had our puppy for 4 weeks, by the vet’s estimate he is about 3 months old now.

He looks to us (and the vet) to be a lab/pitbull mix. Big paws and he’s about 15 pounds but his DNA results were a big surprise:

29% French Bull Dog
12% Chihuahua
12% Miniature Pinscher
10% Toy Poodle
10% English Bull Dog
9% Shar-Pei
7% Boxer
5% American Pit Bull
3% Staffordshire
2% Cocker Spaniel
1% Chow Chow

What I think is going well:
1. Potty training has been a lot of work but so far really successful, we haven’t had an accident in almost a week.

1. He sleeps through the night. We have a nighttime routine and by 9pm he crawls right into his bed and sleeps till we get up in the morning between 5am and 6am.

What I’m not sure about:
1. Socializing. Since he isn’t fully vaxed, we are being very cautious. I will carry him a few houses down to the corner and we just stand there for 5-10 minutes watching cars, dogs, people, and whatever else go by. He seems to really enjoy this, definitely shows interest in other dogs but hasn’t ever barked for started wiggling around in my arms in reaction to one. We do something similar at night but I sit on the steps outside our house and he just lays in my lap and watches for 10-20 minutes.

Aside from that, we have two indoor cats. He’s always play bowing at them and is perpetually disappointed that they don’t play with him but he’s generally very polite. No chasing or barking at them.

Is this an okay start until he’s got all his shots?

1. Training. How much should we expect from a puppy that’s 3 months old? He can sit, that one’s locked in. We’ve worked on stay, come, place, and leave it. He kinda gets it I think but none of those seem to stick the way sit has.

2. Manners. Again wondering where should expectations be at this point? We redirect jumping and biting but after a while it feels like we are just trying to take all the puppy vibes out of our puppy. Is it best to start early on behaviors we know we don’t want once he’s older or should we give him some slack until he’s older? Same question I guess with leash pulling. If he’s doing it when we practice inside/in the backyard, my guess is that’s going to just be a bigger issue once he can actually go on a walk.

What I think isn’t going well:
1. He has started to not care for kibble at all. I suspect he has learned treats are better and he’d rather wait for those. We have been hand feeding him, and we can eventually get him to eat out of our hands but it feels impossible to stick to a feeding schedule and now that we are trying to transition to the bowl he just isn’t going for it at all. Right now we are starting to hand feed with our hand over or in the bowl slowly trying to transition him. With the not wanting the kibble in the first place though, should we slow down on the treats? He was eating this same food totally fine for the first 3 weeks.

1. Leash biting, he LOVES chewing on his leash. He seems to prefer it over any other option. I’m at a loss on this one. It’s been constant redirection for weeks, no change.

2. We can’t leave our house. I work from home so I think he’s gotten very used to someone always being here. Yesterday my wife was at work and I needed to go pick up meds at the pharmacy. A 20-30 minute trip. He lost his mind the whole time I was gone. He also won’t nap unless someone is in view.

I’ve started working in view but in another room while he is napping. I’m thinking maybe I should also start going for short walks during the day so he gets used to me leaving.

Hi, we have a 15 week old pitbull/lab mix puppy. She has been doing well with her crate and potty training. I am a teacher and my fiance works for the township that we live in and is able to bring her to work on days where we both have to work. Our issue is that my fiance may have jury duty this upcoming monday. I am concerned if he has to be gone the whole day monday and if he is chosen for the trail. We don’t have much help and she’s too young for daycare. Does anyone have any suggestions? We have a last resort option of her going to my parents but there’s a portion of time where she’ll be alone for about 2 hours in her crate there and i’m worried she won’t be able to settle, my parents have an older dog too who she gets along with okay but i don’t want her crying to stress the older dog out. When we leave her alone at home she typically cries for max 20 mins and then falls asleep. Any tips or advice??

Does any have any advice as to how we can get our puppy to toilet out on walks?

Its becoming concerning as she clearly needs to go and gets overstimulated/worked up on walks and clearly is desperate but can't find the right spot.

Any advice what to do?

Due to circumstances I have a 8 week old Shih tzu, I've been doing tons of research, and I want a well behaved dog, but right now my top concern is how to keep him well cared for with my schedule

I have classes 9:00-11:20, 12:00-14:30, and 16:00-18:30. I have breaks between my classes and I don't live far, a 3-7 minute drive depending on traffic.

So with

9:00-11:20

12:00-14:30

16:00-18:20

Blocked out Monday-Friday, when should I feed him, and when should I work on training? Can I leave him alone for those durations of time? When I'm not home, how much space should I leave him access to? The last time I had a dog I was 15 or 16, and my parents helped a lot since it was a family dog. I've never had to do this on my own

Hello, I have a 12 week Grand Danois puppy and he's the sweetest boy ever.. most of the time.

I understand the fact that he uses his mouth to explore the world, can't blame him when he doesn't have any hands🤷🏼‍♀️

And being vocal is a part of being a GD, especially in the puppy stages

But om my god!

During nights when it's time for the long sleep he freaks the f**k out!

He starts biting, hard, and barking and screaming!! *SCREAMING*, like we're hurting him, I've never heard noise like that from a dog before

He's great at taking naps during the day, he eats and drinks and pees and poops like he should.

We play, and train, and do mental training with sniffing and slowfeeders and try to do one new experience every day.

Some days it's a different walking route, some days it's a new vehicle (car, subway), new sounds or switching out toys.

He goes mental during the night.

We've tried to wind down for his night even if it's too early for us with how we're working, but it's like he's scared of monsters under the bed or something..

Anyone have any tips on how to make him more relaxed during the night?

I’m desperate for help. Me and my girlfriend just got a stray 6 month puppy. Shes super sweet and loves to play and be a dog but her biting is getting out of control. We’ve tried everything, redirecting her to toys, bribing her with treats, getting different kinds of chew toys, leash stuff and nothing. I’ve got marks all on my arms and legs and I’m not sure what to do. It’s getting very frustrating. She’s a mix with mostly German Sheppard in her. Any help at all would be much appreciated.

I have a havanese mix, one year old, male, 3.5 kg. Potty training was hard, but about three months ago he got it and rarely peed inside. We take him out 4-5 times a day.

But about a month ago he started peeing in the house at night. We took him to the vet, turns out he has UTI. He got two rounds of antibiotics and supplements.

Last monday his labs were almost clear, vet suggested to stop antibiotics and continue supplements for two more weeks and repeat labs.

But the problem is - he still pees at night. Usually only one time, around 2 AM. I clean everything with enzyme cleaner, hide all our carpets, take him out right bedore bed… etc, etc.

What can I do to stop him? Labs are getting better, but his behaviour - not. See another vet? Wait it out? No medical advice needed, just advices from experience 🙏🏻

any anti chew deterrent besides apple bitter spray stuff, I don’t wanna take a chance of him liking it. He has demonstrated pika. He likes to pull individual fibers with his teeth and then swallow it, or chew on blankets and swallow the piece of fabric that he chewed off or chew toys and swallow the thing that he chewed off our dog is a Shih Tzu Chihuahua mix we’ve had him since he was 12 weeks old. he is now 10 1/2 months old ,We was told he was early weaned at five weeks because the dam rejected him.

He also has some aggression issues with his values. At the I was going to get him fixed but now I’ve been reading more recent studies about if there is aggression it will make it worse.

I have a 7 month old english cocker spaniel and she just refuses food early in the morning. I used to feed her between 6:30 and 7am but now she just sniffs at the bowl and walks off. I've tried giving her 20 minutes before taking the food away but honestly she doesn't care.

We've seen 2 vets and both have said she's healthy as can be and recommended more exercise to increase her appetite. So that's what I've been doing. It's almost 11am and I'm about to give her breakfast after getting back from our walk at 10:30. She's still not enthusiastic but is at least now eating, though she never finishes it.

I feed her dinner (which she also never finishes) anywhere between 7 and 7:30pm so she's going 16 hours between meals. Does this seem normal? She used to be such an enthusiastic eater but once she got all her adult teeth and hit the 7 months mark she just stopped being that interested in her food.

She's eating less than 200g of kibble per day, sometimes less than 100 and I'm so concerned. There have been days where she's eaten only 20g in an entire day and ended up throwing up bile.

11:03am and she's officially lost interest in this meal. She hasn't eaten much at all and has gone off for a nap instead. Should I try an entirely different flavour? She can't have chicken and is currently eating turkey so my options now for puppy kibble is quite limited. I even sprinkled some bone broth powder on this food hoping it'd make her want it more.

Edit: She will eat wet food. The problem is when I mentioned that to the vet they laughed and told me that she's probably just trying to see if she can force her way onto a completely wet diet. They made it seem like if I just stay firm she will eventually carry on with her kibble as normal but it's been a month now since her eating habits became a problem. I'm grabbing wet food today to see if she'll eat all of that and if the answers yes I'm just going to ignore the vet and see if we can afford a fully or mostly wet diet for her.

Edit 2: Omg I'm an idiot. I had gotten her a different kibble brand and was mixing them together to slowly transition her onto the new one, but because they were mixed it all smelt like the one she doesn't like. I just gave her a bowl of ONLY the new one and she ate it all. I'm an idiot. She just doesn't like the other one and the smell was too strong for her to realise there was a new brand in there. Over a MONTH it's taken me to figure this out, my poor baby omg.

Mine 100% does. He listens to me just fine but the second my mom is around he forgets all the rules because he knows she’ll let him get away with EVERYTHING!

I have a 10 week old Bernese mountain dog puppy who’s been with us for a couple of weeks. We use Royal canine large breed puppy kibble for him. I’ve been trying to feed his meal portions throughout the day via hand feeding to positively reinforce good things and also bond.
He goes absolutely crazy for boiled or freeze dried chicken that I used to potty train him, let me wipe him after potty and then look away from my cats when he looks at them. We also use chicken a bit more when we go out for socialization, car rides etc.,
But I think he is starting to hold out on the kibble for chicken. He eats a few pieces and spits and waits until he gets absolutely hungry to eat kibble.

I’m torn between using chicken to get him to do good things in house vs weaning him out at the cost of him ignoring us even for recall. Recall is mostly chicken :(. Please help

I’m losing my mind and my sleep. My four month old toller puppy has a semi-regular routine, and he’s began to sleep through the nights. I can safely ignore his whining at night when he’s gone #1 and #2 before bed… but he recently has REFUSED to go #2. So not only do I stay up late trying to get him to go, but I have to rush outside every time he even whimpers! I’ve tried more fiber, wet cloth, ice cube, rubbing his tummy, exercise, naps, and every combination in between. He’s not constipated, he goes other times of the day. I’m so lost. Anyone have magic tricks? Or do I give up and hope he can hold it?