Category: Top Dog

My aunt has a puppy about 14 weeks old. She works a full time job with a slightly irregular schedule (house cleaning, some days off, some days early). Because of this, she’s found it difficult to enforce a crate routine, or much of a routine at all when she’s gone throughout the day. Along with this, she hasn’t been able to properly potty train the puppy.

I have my own puppy, her sibling. I’ve had a very flexible schedule and because of that, have been able to crate train, potty train and maintain a routine. So I have some experience but have no idea on what kind of advice or help to offer when the puppy is frequently free roaming within an enclosed space during some hours of the day.

How should my aunt go about potty training? I assume she should stick to enforcing after she gets home from work. Honestly I don’t even remember how I taught my puppy.

Our fox terrier is 14 months old. We love her to bits and we had another fox terrier before her. Typical for the breed, she is very stubborn and independent. Sidebar: She has actually come a long way since the early puppy days. I do recall posting here about excessive puppy biting (thankfully that phase is over with) but her poor recall drives me crazy. But let me clarify, her recall is perfectly fine when there are no distractions and there’s a treat involved. But as soon as there’s some distraction, it’s as if a switch is flipped. She will not and cannot hear me. Today she was running around the backyard with a walnut shell that she had found. She was crunching it and eating it (I think). No amount of calling or demanding or begging worked. I even had a treat in my hand. Really not sure what to do at this stage, especially since she actually knows recall!

I guess my main worry is that she could get into a dangerous situation and that her stubbornness could be fatal. 🙁

In the middle of crate training and she loves it at night but in the day she is super restless (we don’t want to force her in the crate). We started out taking puppy out after naps for toilet and then a play for 5-10 mins, then some training for 3-5 mins, then a puzzle game or other sniffing play and then we try a frozen Kong or a lick mat in the crate but that just seems to hype her up some more!!

What are we doing wrong?! We originally use to do longer play but thought she was getting too over stimulated and restless what is everyone’s go to play/calm routine for a puppy?

Thanks

My puppy (10 months now) has always been really excitable when passing other dogs. Thankfully she’s never been a big barker, but she loves to start jumping, lunging, and pulling when another dog is within 15 feet or so on walks. My partner and I have been working with her day in and day out to curb this behavior since adopting her at 3 months and no dice. Until finally. I’m not sure what clicked, but now we can reliably lure her with treats to our side when passing other dogs. No more jumping or pulling.

To anyone out there who is feeling really defeated and like you failed as a dog owner for whatever issue you may be having, stick with it. It WILL get better!

We’ve had Beau since the beginning of December and he just turned 6 months old. No idea what kind of dog he is because he’s a rescue, but people have said he might have hound, pitbull, Rhodesian ridgeback, and terrier in him. He might be something called a pot cake? He’s about 30 lbs right now. He seems really smart, loyal, and stubborn. I’m definitely going through the puppy blues…

Anyway, he’s so freaking rough when he plays that I am borderline considering reaching back out to the organization we adopted him from. We did do puppy training classes through PetSmart which he did really well in, but we can’t figure out how to stop him from biting the shit out of us when he’s playing. He’s also started pawing at us and even though I trim and dremel his nails smooth he’s ripping our arms apart.

He is still peeing in the house too. We’ve trained him to hit bells hooked on the doorknob to be let outside, but there are still times he’ll pee then hit the bells. He’s like 90% there, but we can’t seem to get him all the way potty trained. He’s crate trained and has no accidents at night or during the day if he’s in the crate. He’s my first puppy as an adult so I don’t know if this is normal or not.

What tips do you have for either issue? I am considering doing more training somewhere else, but it’s not doable right now schedule and financial wise.

We adopted a chihuahua mix puppy from a rescue on 12/22. We were told she was 8 weeks old on 12/20. We moved last summer so we left our vet of 10 years and started going to a new vet closer to our home. We took her to her first few appointments with the new vet, but after a scary parasite incident and a trip to the emergency vet, we realized that the level of care just wasn’t good so we switched back to our old vet even though it’s much farther away. Our puppy just had her first check up with the old vet and, after looking at her teeth and the picture of the day she was taken into rescue (taken by police with her mother from squatter house), our vet (who I trust a lot) estimates she’s 3 weeks younger than the rescue was told by the police (the squatters told the police she was 5 weeks old). This scares me because that means we took her from her mother and brought her home at 5 weeks. She’s been the most difficult puppy I’ve ever raised and I guess that’s why. Does anyone know what things I can do now to fix whatever damage was done by that? We have her digestive issues straightened out with prescription GI puppy food. She’s nearly housebroken and interacts well with our 10 year old chi. She’s also very human friendly. She sleeps from 10:30-7:30 in a crate and we do enforced naps every few hours in her playpen with a crate attached. Bite inhibition is much better. She drew blood a lot up until about 2 – 3weeks ago. I’m just worried her beginnings might have messed her up. Has anyone raised a puppy this young? I feel like I should have known since she was sucking on my finger to sleep the first week and would route in my shirt and get frantic.

Hello!

We have had our mini dachshund for around 2 weeks now. He's 12 weeks old. He's supposed to get his last vaccine tomorrow, so he's staying inside. We've done a road trip to my parents' apartment and things went pretty well.

The little dude gets very quiet when he meets new people. The first 2 days he barely moved and we thought there was something wrong with him. He was just frozen. It was the same when he met my parents – he would keep super quiet and just sniff around.

Things completely change when he's alone with us. He keeps stealing socks, running around, and most importantly, biting. We keep telling him "No!" but I don't really know if he understands that word. He will grab my finger and I will keep saying "No!" to no avail. Whenever he understands that we are upset with him, he will bark back and continue biting. We used to cuddle on the couch together but we don't really let him up here with us anymore since he gets too excited and starts biting. Whenever this happens, we always say "No" and put him in his bed and remove the ramp, but I don't know if he understands that biting is why this happens.

He has plenty of toys and he knows that they're great for biting, but he still loves stealing shoes and slippers. No amount of saying "No!" seems to persuade him not to do so. Also, he'll prioritise fingers over toys quite often.

We've managed to potty train him to pee and poop on a potty training pad and he's pretty good at it until he's not. When we're not looking at him, he'll pee where he's supposed to. Sometimes he pees on the edge of the mat, but that's acceptable. Sometimes, though, only when we're around, he'll pee in the middle of the room, looking at us. I genuinely think it's got something to do with us. We keep giving him treats when he pees where he's supposed to, but random "accidents" keep happening.

I understand that this is a difficult time and I'm proud of the progress we've made but I feel like he thinks he's the boss and he can bite whoever he wants without repercussions. How do I set boundaries for when playtime starts and ends with a puppy this young? Thank you.

Hello again, I have a 16 week old Patterdale-jack cross called Ripley who I can now stand(ish) for.

My partner is stuck using very, very outdated methods to train her when she does something bad (pinning, shouting, kinda hard nose taps, think along those lines) and I've told her it doesn't work and the methods to use instead. The issue is she won't listen since I haven't had a dog before and she's been around them her entire life, 4 lovely dogs who ended up having to go to trainers (shock horror -_-).

The issue is that Ripley was making progress with coming to her name and other basic commands, but since my partner has started this style of training Ripley has backtracked heaps. She doesn't listen, whines and will stand just out of reach and bark aggressively for hours. She doesn't trust treats anymore because they were used to bait her closer so she can be put in her crate.

How do I undo this? I am finally in a position to train her, I can at least stand up now at a hard push and I don't want to give up on Ripley.

In context, three months ago I lost my first companion. She was an excellent puppy; right up until the very end, she was the best. Everyone keeps asking me when I'll get a new puppy, but honestly, I think it's still too soon. I've also heard that it's not a good idea to adopt a newborn to share the space with my 10-year-old dog. Anyway, I'd appreciate any advice, or if anyone has been in the same situation