Category: Top Dog

hey everyone, im getting a poodle puppy soon and before that i need to buy all the stuff. this is my first dog so please let me know what the basic essentials are thank you :)))

for some extra details , we live in an apartment on the 4th floor

We did this for the first time today.

I’m wondering what success looks like and how to tell that he’s ready to be out of the crate for longer periods? He is 8.5 months old

He only had access to the living room. We left him with a fun chew and were gone for about 20 minutes. He didn’t have an accident or chew on anything or get into other trouble. But, I do think he was stressed. I had the camera on the entire time to see how he was. He howled once and paced around the room. He did settle & lay down for about 3 minutes. He didn’t touch his chew until we got back.

How do we get to the point where we can leave him for 4 hours out of the crate? I was thinking about leaving him once a week, on a weekend, for 20 minutes. Once he is fine with that, increase it to 30. Continue this until we are at the 4 hour mark. Does this seem like a good strategy? Should we do it more than once a week?

We have a 8 to 12 week puppy (at least that’s what the vet told us) and we’ve been doing a lot of positive reinforcement stuff like for going to the bathroom and also behavior stuff like sitting and waiting and it’s all has been going pretty smoothly. One of the few things that’s going kind of poorly is discouraging him from doing the stuff I don’t want him to do. For example my brother sleeps on the couch and when I let the puppy out of my room in the morning he immediately goes and jumps on the couch and starts going crazy (he really likes my brother) and wakes him up. I’m not sure how to positively reinforce to NOT do this because he’s being immediately rewarded for jumping on the couch by 1) being on the couch and 2) being with my brother. Same thing kind of for outside if we’re playing in the yard and someone walks by he’ll start low growling and half barking and he’s being rewarded because they just keep walking and he thinks he scared them away. He’s not super food motivated and he likes the treats but they aren’t something he’ll try and work super hard for so I’m not super sure what to do. Any suggestions or advice would be super appreciated.

Hi all! We have been crate training our puppy since we got her at 8 weeks. The person we got her from said she was crated there as well. She’s about 11 weeks now. We started with having her crate in our laundry room, and she slept well in there, maybe due to the fact there’s no windows and it’s nice and dark and cool in there. We decided to move her crate to our upstairs office. In the laundry room, the baseboard is electric so we would have to turn it on for her to be in there and my boyfriend thought it was an unneeded expense and we should move her into another room that already has the heat. Well 2 nights now she’s been really struggling in this other room, she barely naps in there now. Maybe only 20/30 min naps, when she was previously napping for 1 and a half hours. Last night she went to bed around 9:30. Woke up around 11:30, and again at 5. We finally just let her come into our bed at 5am bc we so badly wanted to sleep. She slept until 7:45. I’m wondering if I messed up and if we should just eat the cost for having her in our laundry room bc she was sleeping so good in her crate before. Should I try moving her crate into our bedroom? Will she wake when we get up to use the bathroom at night? My boyfriend comes to bed later, will she wake up from him coming in too? I feel like I screwed up by letting her in bed but we were desperate!

A little bit of backstory. I've got a 10-month old amstaff boy, who I love very dearly. We are currently focusing on obedience work and trust exercises, getting slowly started with cani-cross in the spring.

Anyway, for the past 2 months he's started to eat the blankets in his crate.

The first time it happened, he threw up 4 times during the night or when he was crated during the day, ate it all up again and vomited again etc. I finally realised what was going on when he threw up just as I was falling asleep, got him out of the crate before he could eat it and found two quite large blanket pieces in his vomit.

I thought the blanket had some food smells on it from him eating in his crate since this had never happened before, so I just put a washed blanket in there and threw the other one in the wash.

The next day, I'm about to fall asleep and again… vomiting. Immediately get him out of the crate and there's pieces of the new blanket. Removed all blankets from his crate, now he's sleeping on the bare plastic floor and I feel terrible.

I thought this could be because I hadn't given him his mineral supplement for a while, we took a break after doing a course when he was about 6mo and then stopped for a bit, but never started again. Started the minerals again.

Then also thought maybe it's because it's been very cold outside to the point he'll hold his paws up even before he's gotten a chance to pee. We haven't been running around in our yard that much, so maybe he's just under stimulated during the day. Started adding more puzzles to his day and whenever it's warmer than -10°C outside, we put on his jacket and booties and try to get all our zoomies out. I've gone on walks with him when he's wearing his clothes, but even then he'll just sit down at one point and refuse to move, wants to go inside and I'm not forcing it.

Tried to put another blanket in his crate, within 30 minutes he had eaten a piece (a small one that passed through luckily). What the hell am I supposed to do? He looks so sad being on the bare plastic floor of the crate, yet I can't risk him having a bowel obstruction or god knows what. When it's really windy outside, our floors get quite cold and he sleeps in a ball as if he were cold. I'm just at my wits end.

We've been very thorough with his crate-training, he likes sleeping in there and gladly goes in there when he's tired. This has been a very necessary tool in surviving puppyhood, since he does not know how to sleep on his own. He's in there from 10am until max 4pm. He's out from 7.30am til 10am, and then 4pm until we go to sleep around 11pm, sometimes he has a quick 30-60min nap if he's showing signs of being overtired. I do my best to offer him mental stimulation and also have his exercise needs satisfied, it's just very difficult with the cold.

What should I do? I feel like a horrible dog parent, but I just can't risk his health.

TLDR 10-mo puppy is eating the blankets in his crate, risking bowel obstruction and I feel horrible for having him sleep on the plain plastic crate bed.

Those of you in relationships, how do you go about keeping your alone time as partners when you have a pug, especially when they are a puppy?

We adopted our pug ( >1yr neutered male) after folks close to us couldn't keep him, and as we already have a small-breed dog we figured the companionship couldn't hurt. We weren't fully prepared for just how affixed to one single person pugs are. I say this because I want to make it clear that while yes, we threw ourselves into the deep end with a breed we have never had before, we would never give him up. He has only been with us for a little under 3 months but he is a forever member of our family.

We have slowly been able to leave him in a partitioned-off area (with the older dog – no behavioral issues there) while my partner and I run errands, but we have never been gone than longer than a few hours unless one of us stays home since he is still a puppy. If he sees us during this time though (like when we come through the door) he begins his pug screams until he can get to us. You can imagine how this could impact a relationship in more intimate moments.

I've looked around on different subreddits and google results, but haven't really gotten a clear answer besides "just ignore them."

Any advice, tips, tricks, anything, would help greatly. We have a snugglepup plush coming any day now, but would appreciate any and all input.