Category: Top Dog

Hello,

Just bought a bag of hills science large puppy and i noticed a small tear in the bag after i fed my puppy 10 grams added to his old bag of royal canin. The kibble feels crisp and normal that way but the outside feels a bit fatty if that makes sense. The crust of royal canin is dry in comparison.

Anyone use hills can say if this is the normal way these look?

her is a few pictures

https://ibb.co/QjcFfHbZ

https://ibb.co/9mCm21sm

https://ibb.co/N6s53x2p

This monday I took him on his very first walk, he is 4 months old, will be 5 on the 20th. It was a long walk, me and my girlfriend took him to a park nearby and he had loads of fun, honestly I think he did really good (It's my first dog though so I have no point of reference). I've been talking him on walks every day since

However, his behaviour at home has gotten way worse and keeps worsening, the only thing that calms him down is going on a walk, then he'll be fine for the next few hours. Biting, jumping, barking for seemingly no reason, it's a mess. His behaviour while on the walk has also gotten worse, but I guessed this would happen, he was probably so stimulated and distracted during his first walk he couldn't even think of misbehaving, he still jumped and barked at people/dogs but he does a lot more pulling now and picks up a lot of garbage, he also just up and took his harness off yesterday right next to a busy street so that was really fun.

All that is very annoying yes, but I think probably the worst part of it all, is how ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE it is to put the harness on him. I get it, he'd probably rather not have it on, and he gets really excited when he sees it because he knows he is going on a walk, but he completely loses his mind, he seems aware that he has to stay still because he tries to sit down but he can't contain himself.

I walked him on our backyard a few times before and it was difficult to put it on him but not nearly this much. I would put a treat on the ground and tell him to stay still, then i'd put the harness on him and once I was done i'd let him have it, it worked alright and a couple times he actually did it perfectly. But now, he won't listen to anything, he'll bite our hands and the harness and fight us with all he's got. It takes so long to get it on him, especially because when putting it on he always grabs it with his mouth making it so it can't close, I take it out of his mouth and he just grabs it again. It's impossible, the only way to do it is restricting his movement fully, closing down his mouth and holding his head. I know it's not comfortable, I know it will probably only make him more and more neurotic, but there's legitimately no other way, if I don't hold him down to put the harness on he just won't go for a walk. Will he ever realise that he's only ruining it for himself by fighting us? Will he understand that if he just chills out for a second he gets to go out quicker? What can I do to get him to calm down.

My sweet little pup is just over 3 months. A few days ago, she was spooked by a loud car w/o a muffler during our walk. She was terrified and bolted while still on-leash, yelping and scrambling all over the place. I've never seen her so scared, and it was painful to watch.

Once she was calm, I noticed that she wasn't putting pressure on her front leg. Hoped that it was a sprain, but figured better safe than sorry.

Took her into the ER an hour later and got the news we were dreading. She fractured 3 bones in her leg. They put on a splint but rec'd seeing an orthopedic specialist ASAP to decide if surgery was needed.

We took her in the following day and luckily, no surgery needed. However, she's going to be in a splint and cone for the next 4-6 weeks.

Pre-fracture, puppy blues were already hitting pretty hard. She had JUST started becoming potty-trained and making big strides otherwise, but things were still rough emotionally and behaviorally. A lot of crying and feeling overwhelmed.

Fast forward to now. Wow. This is a whole new world of frustration, sadness, and helplessness. My heart is breaking for her. I’m so worried this is going to mess things up for her at such a key developmental stage. She can't play or be active at all. It feels like she's regressing in many ways, especially potty training. And who could blame her?

I feel like I don't know the right answer for anything anymore. Every hour is a rollercoaster, and I can't imagine a few more days of this, let alone weeks.

Selfishly, I feel completely drained and done with it all. Everything in me knows that this was impossible to prevent and that it's not her fault, but I can't help my ugliest feelings coming out sometimes. It's hard not to feel guilt for it all.

With all that said: If you have any advice or even emotional support, I'll take every bit of it.

My sweet girl

Age: 4-5mo

Breed: Unknown

We adopted her at 6wks.

She knows her name, comes when called, and sits on command, but even months later, she panics every time she’s put in the crate, she poops in the crate, pees in it, she’ll bark for hours straight if left in the cage, she pees and poops inside, and she chews on everything / digs holes if left alone. She bites and replacing the bad thing with a good object like a toy isn’t working. She’ll drop the toy and try to bite your hand or some other “bad” object, even with several different options for toys.

I’ve been giving her positive reinforcement whenever she uses the restroom outside, immediately marking the behavior and rewarding, it doesn’t seem to be making the difference. She has an older dog in the home (GSD) that of course is already sufficiently house-broken but she isn’t emulating that behavior at all; I’m used to training GSD’s who pick up better on what another dog is and isn’t doing.

I’m tired. We can’t go anywhere without her using the restroom in the crate. We can’t leave her out because she’ll pee or poop wherever she likes, we can’t leave her outside because she’ll dig holes and eat rocks and destroy things.

She can’t be left unattended at all, even for short periods of time, we constantly have to helicopter around her and stop her from doing the next “bad” thing.

Feeling very, very defeated and need advice.

I got my puppy in November. At first it was rocky, the puppy blues hit hard. But after training and consistency, we made it through. Now he’s a happy little 5 month old guy (he’s a Pitbull mix). Last week I broke my foot and I can’t independently take care of him for at least 5 weeks. I’ve been staying at my parents house instead of my apartment, and during the day my little guy stays with my grandma. Ever since I broke my foot, I feel like my bond with my puppy is weakening, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve played with him to the best of my ability, nap with him, try and train, but he seems to like my parents and grandma more than me now. 🙁

We are trying to figure out crate training our miniature poodle puppy. He's 18 weeks old now as the breeder didn't want to sell him over Christmas, and she wanted to leave him longer with his mum as he was the only puppy in the litter.

We've been working through positive associations with the crate. He's not heavily food motivated, he barely eats enough of his kibble as it is. The only treat that he likes properly is chicken. Over the last 5 days I've managed to get him happy and comfortable to go in on his own. I did have to take the cover off though as his favourite thing to do is chew on anything fabric. He's not interested in a Kong at all, and even the toys he likes outside of the crate he doesn't have an interest in inside the crate.

We did try to leave him in his crate to see how he found things, he didn't take it well. He was jumping around biting the crate, whining, barking, howling and eventually made himself vomit. We don't want to reward his whining, so we know we can't put him back in there again as otherwise he will notice the pattern.

We reckon he does have some level of separation anxiety too, as he goes mental if left alone more than a few minutes generally (though yesterday he managed 10 minutes just fine, sadly regressed today). Ultimately I think the issue is he doesn't know how to settle on his own. In our house he's only ever slept on us.

Has anyone got any tips on how to get the puppy to stay in the crate willingly for longer than 30s, and how do I help them settle? Is it just more slow progress or is there something I should be doing? He currently is sleeping very lightly, so lifting him up when he's asleep and putting him in the crate isn't an option, I've tried.

Brought home my 8 week bernedoodle yesterday and just curious about crate training and if I'm doing anything wrong and how to approach tonight. I want to do positive associations.

He has one crate in the living room, but no direct eyesight to our bedroom.

We did small spurts of crate training yesterday during the day with kibble and it was fine. He would usually come right back out. When it came for a longer crate nap, he settled within 1 minute. He stayed in 20-30 minutes before waking up .However, if he wakes up he doesn't really tell us. He just shuffles around, no whining. I think the crate may have been a little too small for him. I started covering maybe the 3rd time he went in.

At night (same size), he slept in the crate from 11pm-6am. I played brown noise (as opposed to white noise) He did not cry but did hear him shuffle around in there and maybe even play with a toy? No accidents.

Today made the crate slightly bigger and I think it's better because he can step all four paws in and turn around to get his crate training treats. During the day he's tolerating again 20-30 minutes and just shuffling about when he's awake.

For tonight, should I continue with what I did yesterday?

Need some advice! My spouse and I will be moving across the US with our two dogs. While they are small (18lbs and 12lbs) they seem to measure slightly taller than what is allowed in cabin on most flights (they are about 13/14 in tall and most requirements I’ve seen cap out at 11in) so now we are faced with the decision of checking them into cargo or plane hopping/driving.

We found a flight service where you can fly with them on your lap if they are small but it only goes a few states at a time. So we would have a 2/3 hour flight one day, 2 hour flight the next day and then a 9 hour drive to destination (probably broken up into 2 chunks)

Or we could check them into cargo but there are no non-stop flights so they would be in cargo for 9+ hours with no bathroom breaks presumably.

Neither of them has flown before or experienced anything like this. Is it better to have them with us in cabin/driving but over more days? Or get the traveling out of the way in 1 uncomfortable day?

Hi everyone,

I’m preparing to set off on a long journey walking across Europe. I’m planning to do it with my dog over the course of 3–4 years, visiting every EU country, camping with a tent, etc.

I’ve started to plan the route in more detail, and after my starting country the first one will be Romania. I’ve seen several times that people warn you to be careful with the shepherd dogs there. Many say you should watch out for them, avoid them from a distance, and so on.

I don’t have any issues with my own dog, but I would really appreciate any advice or tips on how to handle the situation in Romania, especially regarding the shepherd dogs.

I have been fostering a rescue for the past two weeks and have unfortunately grown very attached to him. I say unfortunately because he gets really aggressive towards other dogs and the community I'm in has a lot of other dogs. I cannot keep him if I he goes berserk every time he sees another one. He's 4, is a great pyrenees, and has not been neutered.