Category: Top Dog

Hi everyone, looking for some advice (and maybe reassurance!).

We have a Labrador puppy who turns 20 weeks old this Friday, and toilet training has been much harder than we expected. We’ve been really consistent — taking him out to the garden as soon as he wakes up, after meals, after naps, and after playtime.

He’s had a couple of accidents on our carpet, and now he seems to actively prefer going there. He does circle beforehand, but it’s always on the carpet. As soon as we see him start circling, we take him straight outside — but he often just runs back in and tries to go on the carpet again. Sometimes this cycle repeats multiple times, and it feels like we’re getting nowhere.

When he toilets outside, we give lots of praise and high-value treats immediately, but it doesn’t seem to be fully clicking yet.

For extra context:

• We tried toilet pads, but he just rips them up.
• We also tried bell training, which unfortunately didn’t work for him.
• Very occasionally he will tell us he needs to go out, but it’s rare.

A few questions:

• Is this normal for a nearly 5-month-old Lab?
• How do we break the carpet preference?
• Are we accidentally reinforcing the run-back-inside behaviour?
• Should he be signalling more reliably at this age?

We’re trying really hard to set him up for success, so any tips, reassurance, or things that worked for your puppies would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!

My bf and I just got a free 6-month old puppy from a friend of ours.

She’s a shiba inu & a precious baby!

The only issues are that she’s going through a lot of adjustments. She has no vaccines, but has a dewormer so far and has been an indoor puppy using bathroom mats in a fenced setting. Walks have been challenging as I’ve been short leashing her and getting her used to walking without dragging herself. We did get her a crate recently too, and I did try welcoming her to her food and water inside the crate so she doesn’t feel punished. I did ignore her cries until she stopped, which had me unlock it.

We’re taking her to get fixed with vaccines at the end of the month. Meanwhile we’re waiting, I believe she’s going through a heat cycle simultaneously while getting used to our home and our cat. She ragebaits the cat a lot while also wanting to play with her, and our cat gets along with dogs most times except for right now. Cat has no anger toward us luckily. On top of that, puppy has a stubborn behavior not responding to commands and sometimes her name. We try giving positive reinforcement, but sometimes she can be a brat and refuse treats.

I’d like some help with what to do.

I have a 4 month old Portuguese water dog puppy. She’s an angel besides the biting. Typically she’s been taking about 1.5-2hr naps every 2 hours or so throughout the day. This week she started sleeping sometimes 4 hours at one go. Is this a miracle and we officially hit a new sleep schedule or is she sick? Behavior is totally normal during the day and she did just get her last shots about 10 days ago so we’ve been going on walks around the neighborhood but no large exposures that she didn’t have before. She’s also teething. Just feeling anxious and need some reassurance 😅

My little dog-ter is a Chihuahua-terrier mix (18 weeks), an adorable but fierce landshark, and (as would be expected) extremely excitable. Has anyone seen a correlation between their choice of dog food and their dog's mood/excitability?

We're deciding where to land with her diet moving forward, and any help would be appreciated. 🐶🥰

Not sure what to tag this. I have a 9 month old GSD/Husky/Mountain Cur. She's beautiful and sweet and smart, and is in the middle of training with me but is doing well. I've had her about a month and a half. I have wanted a dog for a long time, and my partner and I talked about it on and off periodically with no real seriousness, and than suddenly over the course of December, we went from talking to owning. There is no issue with the pup, the issue is me and trying to balance my life. My partner and I are both nurodivergents and get easily over stimulated, and as you can imagine, a 50% husky pup can easily set that off. I walk, play, train, and do brain games between 1.5 to 2 hours a day with her, plus cuddles and weekly exposures/outings. She also goes to doggy daycare a few days a week. I love taking care of her, I love training her, I love snuggling with her. The problem is this: I don't know how to work, manage my household, have a social life, and raise a good dog all at the same time. Im not trying to be dramatic, but I literally collapsed on my kitchen floor two weeks ago from being so tired. Like out of nowhere knees buckled and it took me 5 min to be able to stand again. Puppy has been dealing with Giardia, and while meds have helped, it's still rare for me to get a full good 8 hours. My job is remote, but very mentally demanding, and I also do the cooking, grocery and other shopping, and most of the day to day cleaning. My husband jumps in when he can, but he just came back from a pretty traumatic event a few months ago and I'm hesitant to lean on him. I have a lot of friends that are very pro dogs, that all talked about how they would help, but now that I've had her they all sort of disappeared. I don't blame them, they've all had very legitimate reasons for not being able to hang out/help with pup, but I'm dying. Also, she's been very expensive between daycare and various vet things do to her being sick. Im confident this will reduce in the next few months, but for now I feel stretched in every direction. I will not give up pup, I love her and I'm excited to meet the dog she will grow to be, but I don't know how to balance the day to day and my mental health. I just feel I have no time and when I do, I just want to sleep. :/ help!

My puppy is called Buddy, like the title says. He is a 7 month old German shepherd puppy. About 6 days ago he sprained his paw. We called the vets, but were told to keep an eye on him instead of bringing him in. He was limping and constantly giving us the sore paw. He stopped eating his puppy food when he started limping, he took chicken and treats so we thought. Let’s give him chicken while’s he’s not feeling great. So this goes on for about 4 days. We even tried putting his food up a little higher thinking it might be hurting his leg if the bowl was on the floor. Nope. So my Mum had the idea he was getting too used to good food. So today we gave him his puppy food in the morning he didn’t touch it. We later gave him a bone he normally loves and he picked it up for a moment then dropped it and forgot about it. Mum tried giving him more later, but he still isn’t touching it. He’s still limping a little, but that’s getting better.

He’s not even eating our cats food. (I know he shouldn’t eat the cats food, but when our cat leaves some, he’s usually like a furry dishwasher 😅)

What can I do, he isn’t eating his biscuits either. I can’t afford to get him to the vets right now.

Mum thinks he’s just being fussy, but he’s a bit depressed too right now.

How can I help him eat?

Thank you.