Category: Top Dog

https://gofund.me/c1c867315

At just 10 weeks old, our puppy Bustar should be discovering the world — playing, learning, and growing alongside his brother. Instead, he was rushed to the emergency vet struggling to breathe, fighting for his life.

What started as fear quickly turned into devastation. After multiple tests, Bustar was diagnosed with severe hookworm. The parasites had silently taken more than half of his blood, leaving his tiny body too weak to survive on its own. He urgently needed a blood transfusion but there was no local blood supply available.

His brother Slinky became his hero, donating his own blood and saving Bustar’s life. Against the odds, the transfusion worked. Bustar stabilised, and for a moment, we truly believed we were on the road to recovery.

But the fight wasn’t over.

Sadly, Bustar has since been diagnosed with pneumonia. His lungs are fragile, and he is now oxygen-dependent, requiring at least two more days in intensive veterinary care on strong antibiotics, just to see if his little body can begin to heal.

So far, this journey has cost $13,000, and it’s becoming impossible to manage — but walking away is not an option when a life is still fighting. Slinky doesn’t understand what’s happening — he just wants to see the brother he tried so hard to save.

We’re sharing Bustar’s story to raise awareness: hookworm can be deadly, even in puppies who appear healthy. Early prevention and regular checks can mean the difference between life and loss.

Bustar is still here. Still fighting. Still loved.

And Slinky is still waiting for his brother to come home. 🐾

Hi everyone,

I live in a flat and we currently use a portable grass patch on our balcony for our puppy to use as a toilet. He’s 12 weeks old and now fully vaccinated, so we’ve started taking him out for walks.

I’m wondering whether we should start weaning him off the grass patch at home and gradually encourage him to do his business outside on walks instead, or if it’s better to keep the grass patch for now while he’s still young.

I have a young Keeshond puppy (9 weeks old) and two older cats (ages 3 and 5). He is extremely mouthy, and when I try to play with him, he often lunges at me instead of the toy and bites my hands or arms. His bites are quite hard and have drawn blood a couple of times.

He doesn’t respond to “ow” or other pain signals, so I’ve been using short time-outs instead. After that its crate time, since he only gets like this when hes tired. At the moment, I do this by picking him up, carrying him out of the living room, and placing him in the smaller bathroom. I used to put him in the hallway, but he started chewing on our shoes there.

I’m wondering whether carrying him to time-out is a good idea. I can’t leave the room myself, since the cats are usually downstairs, and the puppy and cats are only allowed to be together downstairs when I’m present.

Hi all.

Our chihuahua puppy is just over four months old now. We’ve had him for over 7 weeks.

He’s a great little pup and overall settling in well. He seems to have ‘grown up’ a lot post vs pre Christmas.

Now we’re back to our work routine, I want to aim towards letting him just exist in our home. By that I mean teach him how to be happy pottering around a puppy safe area whilst we work.

Our office is attached to our living room via a small internal hallway. My plan is to let pup free roam in the puppy proofed living room and hallway/office whilst we work and go about our day. My goal is to be able to go to the gym, which takes me door to door 2 hours, whilst my partner works undisturbed. Sounds simple right?…

We trialed this yesterday and it was not… somehow pup ended up doing everything he shouldn’t. Things like escaping out of baby gates, chewing things he shouldn’t, just overall being unsettled. And I thought we had puppy proofed this place well!

He has his crate, chews, water, toys, beds, he’s welcome to sleep on our laps. I don’t mind what he does as long as he’s not being trouble! I’m not sure if this behaviour is attention seeking as after two hours of my partner being constantly interrupted, he sat him on his lap and he fell asleep content.

I need some semblance of a life back now! I’m not expecting him to suddenly be a grown up dog, but I need to work towards a couple of hours a day of independent time. If you sat in the living room with him all day (my whole existence currently…) he will happily nap on/next to you and play, but once we’re like ‘hey we’ve got to go an do this now’ he’s acting up.

We’ve done this to ourselves I know… but when he was smaller he basically lived an existence of pen/crate and being physically with us. How do we teach him to settle and have some independence?

My plan for today is to puppy proof even more and sit in the office this afternoon with low expectations that I will be constantly getting up every 30 seconds.

Any tips are much appreciated!

Hi! I’m meeting a 10 month old chihuahua/terrier mix on Thursday at a fosters house to see if we are a good fit for each other. Only problem is that he’s incredibly shy/weary of new people and told me he’s also going to take a while to warm up to me. How do I know we’re a good fit for each other if he won’t say hi to me? Also I was told he’s VERY good motivated so I asked the foster if I could bring treats for him and they agreed. Any tips and tricks would be greatly appreciated!

I have a 3 year old male Transylvanian hound-mix and have had him coming up on nearly 2 years.

The previous owners had him as an outside dog and when I got him, the transition to making him an indoor dog was rough. The biggest issue was that he would constantly “mark” all over the house whenever I was gone. He also has terrible separation anxiety that not only causes him to mark but also tear up pillows and cushions.

I have previously tried to kennel him whenever I leave but he manages to break out every time. After 2 broken kennels I gave up and just let him freely roam the house. I actually gave him the middle name “Houdini” after one night I was so confused as to how he kept breaking out, I zip tied the kennel doors shut and a few hours later I come home to him laying in my bed with a mouth full of my pillow.

I have tried leaving him in one room and he freaked out and started clawing at the door like wild and ended up tearing up carpet all around the door.

Recently I’ve decided to get one of those expensive heavy duty kennels but i’m wondering if this time there’s a better way to make him more comfortable to the idea of going in his kennel whenever I leave. I’m never gone for more than 6-7 hours at a time for work and usually someone else in my house can let him out.

I know he won’t be able to break out of this kennel so i’m mostly worried about making sure he’s comfortable and not barking/whining the whole time.

Any tips would be great thank you

Hi everyone!! I plan to start volunteering at a nearby animal shelter when I turn 18. I want to go into it completely prepared and informed. Should I mentally prepare myself to get bitten? Pooed and peed on? Could I get bitten really badly?

I don't have any experience with cats, and some experience with dogs (I have a dog at home).

I'm sorry if this isn't the right subreddit for this question!!

Thank you!! :))))

my husky has a skin tag on her lower lip. has anyone else had one just show up out of the blue?

Hey guys, I recently adopted my first dog about two and a half months ago from the shelter. He’s a 71 pound German shepherd mix, I think the mix part is Lab. When I first adopted him the shelter told me that he got along with every dog there except one. The first 2 days of having him he did good at the dog park at our apartment but by the third day is when he started to show his true personality. I’ve found out that he is fear based reactive and has severe separation anxiety. Ive tried to crate him with a kong while I attend my college classes but I’ve came home to a crate that is flipped upside down and the metal wires torn off the crate. I then decided to let him roam the living room but came home to trim ripped off the wall. Since I live at an apartment right outside of the college campus, everyone has dogs and it makes it really hard to go outside and relax with him. I’m constantly on the lookout for another dog so he doesn’t go over threshold and start whining, lunging, and even growling/barking. I’m exhausted by it and people who don’t understand dogs have labeled me as the guy with a bad dog. What hurts the most is he’s an amazing dog when I’m at the house and it’s just us. We sit on the couch and it’s cuddle time. I don’t think I can realistically provide the correct environment for him. I’ve tried to redirect train him but it doesn’t help when other people have reactive dogs and I’ve had an unleashed dog rush us once, which completely makes my training sessions useless. I’m currently in talks with the shelter on returning him because logically it’s not a good fit and I don’t think it’s a reasonable thing to ask a college student to pay for reactivity training and those indestructible crates are super expensive. I’m hurting because I know he has bonded with me and I feel like he’s going to deteriorate back at the shelter. I also feel like I’m going to be heavily judged by the staff for returning him. He was their longest staying resident for 2 years and he will be 3 next month. I also forgot to mention that I did take him to the vet and got him prescribed on fluoxetine and trazodone. His reactivity is still a 10/10 even on meds.

We recently got a rescue dachshund and he's very settled in and happy. But he's also very barky, especially at night. Initially we thought he needed the toilet, but it turns out that isn't the case, he's in fact barking at sounds he can hear.

These sounds include urban foxes, other dogs, cars with loud music and once the fridge.

As well as waking me up and my wife up, it also wakes up our other dachshund, who was sleeping through and almost never barked at night.

The guidance we've read seems to fall into two camps: – Ignore him – Comfort him

We tried ignoring him and it got worse and he got upset. But comforting him seems counter productive, as we have to go downstairs to him and it surely teaches him that he can bark for attention at any time in the night?

Any tips/guidance?