Category: Top Dog

We brought our puppy home when she was 3 months old. In the three months we've had her she has been very sweet and loving but also a complete nightmare. We have had many puppies of varying personalities over the years and expected the usual struggles and challenges. What we did not expect was a dog who just does not get or understand much of anything.

Her siblings all are trained and housetrained for the most part. But ours is not and it makes us feel like bad puppy owners or dog owners. She will pee outside just fine but she just refuses to poop outside. We've given her probiotics and even pumpkin and made her food mushy in case it was constipation. No, she just refuses to poop outside. We have tried every method. Rewarding with treats. Going out ever 1-2 hours. Giving her one spot to do her business. Making sure she has clean places to go. We are at the point where if she has not pooped she's either in her crate (which she still hates unless she's genuinely tired no matter what we do or how we reward being quiet) or she has to be on a leash and can't go far away from us (which, her favorite way to play is fetch 🙁 and we can only do that outside in the fenced yard now). We can't really spend any real quality time with her. Can't let her nap with us because she could get up and poop on the floor.

She was really respectful of our cat who is fairly dog savvy when we first brought her home and now every time she is hyper and she sees the cat she just wants to jump on, nip, and play with her and the cat is not a fan. Doesn't matter if the cat tries to correct her in the way cats do, she does not care. All commands to leave it are out the window. She jumps up and it takes two very stern commands of "off" to get her to get back down but she'll do it again.

We are legitimately at our wits end. We love her and know she can be a sweet girl when she's calm. But she's coming up on 6 months and is so behind and it's supposed to get worse around 6 months. We have called trainer after trainer and gotten advice and even if we are consistent she just ignores everything and doesn't get it at all. All we want is to be able to play with her and spend time with her without feeling like she's going to put herself in danger or poop in the house.

Like what else is there to do at this point?

I recently just gotten a 2 month old puppy for my 5 month old husky mixed to play with, but when I had went to do a meet and greet it was going fine until a little while later when the puppy had full on attacked my husky. It was a big fight! The vets who were letting us have this puppy saw this and really didn't do anything about it. We thought it would be ok if we just brought them home, and let them relax. It's been 3 days. This morning the puppy got into another fight with the husky and therefore the husky also lashed out on the puppy and they made each other bleed. My family is thinking we should take the puppy back and get another husky. Since our husky we have now is so energetic and bites hard. It may just be that this puppy just recently had surgery to get neutered/spayed, and is still recovering but I have never seen a puppy have aggression before. What do I do?

I have a two year old Amstaff that is sick in the car each time we get in the car. I do not feed her for hours before we are going to be driving somewhere. This can honestly say we can’t drive by 10 houses.

She also has a clip that fits in the seatbelt. It really is tight fit but nothing that would hurt my Olivia.

Has anyone put a dog bed in the back of the car for a dog that will not sit. I just want her to be comfortable. Or any other suggestions?

Thank you!!!