Category: Top Dog

I’m a university student living alone in an apartment and researching dog breeds that would fit my lifestyle. This would be my first dog. I’m looking for a medium-sized, intelligent, and highly trainable dog with enough energy to enjoy daily walks, long walks, and hikes, but that can also relax at home and handle some alone time when I’m busy with school.

Training and mental enrichment are very important to me, and I’d love to do more than just basic obedience—things like tricks and possibly scent work in the future. I don’t have experience competing in dog sports, but I’m very motivated to learn and put in the work.

Right now, I’m mostly considering English Cocker Spaniels and English Springer Spaniels, and my dream breeds are Miniature American Shepherds and Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers. I plan on getting my dog from an ethical, reputable breeder that meets European standards.

I live in northern Italy, enjoy an active outdoor lifestyle, and will be the dog’s sole caregiver. I’m very open to hearing about people’s real-life experiences and any breed suggestions you might have!

Hello, my partner and I have had our mini doxie for a year and a half almost now and she is a bit of an anxious pup so we are thinking of getting her a pal, is there any breed anyone would recommend to absolutely get or to absolutely stay away from.

My partner loves the idea of a German Shepard, Lab, Retriever or Husky however I’m more interested in a Doberman, Pinscher, Italian greyhound or even another doxie.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

I read they should be drinking 1oz per body pound, so I fill up a 32oz water bottle in the morning because that SHOULD be enough.

But lately I’ve been emptying TWO per day.

Given, some of it gets dumped out, probably close to 16oz, but I’m nervous it’s a problem??

They eat kibble but I put a little warm water in it for them.

They eat 4x a day.

It’s cold and rainy here.

They pee and poop pretty much at similar intervals every day, with a few exceptions, and they go outside 90% of the time

I have a German shepherd I'm training to be my service animal (not going to get into why/what tasks I will train her to do bc it isn't relevant). She's of the show line and is rather tame for a nearly 5 month old. That being said, she is already about 40 lbs and is estimated to be 100 lbs when she's fully grown (which is exactly what I wanted!) But that means she's already got a scary bark. It's not a bad thing, but I do feel bad when she scares away other dogs/dog owners bc she doesn't know how to bark any other way. I've trained her to do quiet "borfs" inside but she only does that when she's alerting me to someone outside. She's never attacked anyone, human or dog. She knows how to respect boundaries when another dog doesn't want to play–though it'll take her a second bc she's, y'know, a puppy–so I'm not worried about the bark actually being aggressive. She's just l o u d.

Is this even something I can help her with? Eventually I'll need to enforce not reacting at all (starting next month ish) but I feel bad for my neighbors who are just taking their dogs out for a walk.

Note: I'm already working on non-reaction when we go to the park or the store, and she does fairly well? Unless she comes across my friend's Samoyed who is her ESA, who she sees as a playmate lol, but that's another issue for another day.

We have a 15 week old Husky puppy. She’s been amazing. Her only issues have been with confinement. We learned early on that a crate is much less effective than a larger space as she’s not destructive when she has more space. I’ve been working from home since we got her at 8 weeks. I’ve been training leaving her alone in gaining increments starting at a minute until we were up to around 15 minutes completely alone. She has been left in a separate room for over an hour before and has only had issues when she can see us but can’t reach us, but is fine when we are out of site. She has never struggled with separation. We can go outside, upstairs, close doors, and she’s fine. She struggles more with confinement and not being able to move around freely, but could care less if we are in the room or not. Fast forward to today. I had a meeting I had to be physically at. I completely puppy-proofed a room with a 5ft fence across the opening and a curtain so she couldn’t see past the gate (seeing out triggers her confinement anxiety). I left and was gone a couple of hours. When I returned, everything seemed fine. She hadn’t escaped, the fence was still in place, and nothing was chewed up. I could also tell that she laid down in her crate at some point. Now to the issue. About an hour later, she was chewing on her toy when I noticed blood on it. I check her mouth and she has broken both of her top baby canine teeth somehow. She’s eating and drinking normally and I called our vet who said to just monitor eating and drinking from home since they are baby teeth and about ready to fall out anyways. My bigger concern is that she’s hurting herself when left alone and now I’m afraid to try it again. The internet is saying that it doesn’t sound like she was injuring herself, but rather it’s just a combination of her chewing harder due to stress or pulling on the fence and that they were baby teeth that were fragile and ready to come out. Nothing else in the room was moved or had any signs of her being destructive or trying to aggressively escape. I can’t even tell where she broke the teeth at. Let me know if I’m overreacting or if we need to go back to the drawing board on her being left alone. Thank you!

Hello everyone. We have a seven month old female spayed Pekingese and a six year old Japanese chin. Hiroshi our Japanese chin was never really a biter from what I can remember but we cannot for the life of us get Nori (the Pekingese) to stop. I have new bruises and cuts every week, possibly every day. I will provide context on her daily life and what we are doing to try and stop her.

She gets up a 4 am to pee and goes back to bed. She gets up at 6 to eat and goes back to bed. She then gets up for the day at around 7-8 and plays/wanders around the apartment with supervision until maybe around 10 with potty breaks of course. I will put her in her crate or playpen for a nap as I work from home and the nap is usually about an hour or two. Maybe bring her out to play again around 11:30 or 12. Out for an hour or so depending on her mood and back into the playpen or crate for another nap. We pretty much do this throughout the day. An hour or so of play and about two hours for a nap.

She’s very sweet and cuddly. Loves to jump in my lap when she’s playing with her brother, kisses you in the morning and always wants belly rubs. ALWAYS. So so excited when you come home.

However she gets SO vicious out of nowhere. We’ll be holding her and suddenly she’s growling and biting. We yelp very loudly every time and disengage. We do not punish her, we only reward for good behavior. When she bites during play, we yelp and completely leave the room or get up off the floor and disengage for a minute or more depending on the severity of the bite. I’m thinking this might be normal from what others have said but I’m really not certain. Is this just the terrible puppy age where they’re still bitey and if we keep doing what we’re doing she’ll get better? I will say I feel like she is getting a bit softer sometimes when she plays and bites but we are trying to stay consistent.

One other thing to note is she does have an issue with food aggression/resource guarding. When we got her she would snap at us if we got close to her when setting her food bowl down so I started consistently petting her when I set it down, telling her she’s a good girl, and then occasionally rolling treats to her. I had to roll them otherwise she would bite. This has also improved because she will eat a treat out of my hand now so it’s getting better, but if she picks up sticks, mulch, leaves, anything unfortunate laying on the floor. Goodbye fingers. We have tried drop it and do say it consistently and at first she would listen and now she refuses and when we say drop it, she just eats it. I’m at my wits end with this girl. Thank you for sticking around! Any help appreciated!

Looking for some advice from anyone that works from home. I have an almost 8 month old pup. Here is the schedule: 7-8: breakfast, goes out, and the rest is playtime and couch cuddles. 8-10: work- he cries 10-10:30: potty and play 10:30-12: he usually naps on a good day, if not he is usually crying 12:00-12:45- dog park if the weather hold up 1:00: lunch 1:15-2:00- work while he cries 2:00-4:00: on a good day this would be his second nap, if not he is crying. 4:00- potty 4:15-5:30: wrap up work/ all out chaos The rest of the day is whatever we want. He is usually asleep on the couch at 7:30. Goes to bed between 9:30-10 in his crate and sleeps quietly all night.

Things to note: – he hates walks. He is terrified of cars and I would have to drive somewhere a little more quiet to walk him. We are working on this though so we can walk the neighborhood – he has full access to the house so he can do what he wants – if he stays in my office with me, we play a little if I have a chance and pet him. He is not ignored. – he has more toys than a dog needs – puzzles/kongs/lick mats- he gets through puzzles in less than 10 minutes and he either loses interest in kongs or doesn’t want them in the same amount of time.

I just can’t handle the whimpering. It’s constant when we are not doing something. He is always bringing me a shoe which I think means he wants to go somewhere but we can’t obviously go everywhere all day. Once the winter is over I can get him to the dog park again after work when it’s not dark.

Help? Tips? Maybe I do too much with him on days I don’t work and his expectations are off? I work Full days M-TH, 1/2 days Friday.

My partner and I adopted a sweet fox red lab puppy when he was 3 months old and began his crate training immediately. For overnight, he slept in his cage and we would get up with him in the middle of the of the night to relieve himself and put him right back in (no pets, no talking, just out and back in). He’s 6 months old now and still doesn’t fully sleep through the night, even when we cut off food and water 1-2 hours before bed. While we’d like to ignore his barking, when we DO let him out, he does do a #1 and a #2 most nights so we don’t feel comfortable letting him just “bark it out” knowing he’s just on this potty schedule. How can we try to get him on a different schedule so he does sleep through the night (10 pm – 5 am)? For context he’s also a leash – exclusive pup since we don’t have a fenced in yard so any potty is done on walks or any time he rings the bells to go out during the day. We know it could just be him still in puppy and transitioning into adolescence phase but we’re worried we’ve just set the standard for too long. Any tips appreciated!

As the titles says, in a month Im going on a 19 hour long trip split into two days with my dog. She loves car rides and gets really over-excited for said car rides so I'm not worried about her being scared. Any tips on keeping her comfy and happy during the drive?

I just bought my first puppy (poodle) a few weeks back, and he is now 11 weeks old.

We are having a lot of success with potty training, tricks, and crate behavior, but are really struggling to limit the dog’s reactivity.

I know puppies are just excited in general, but when we see any human or dog outside (I live in an apartment), he absolutely loses control. He flails around in his leash attempting to run to them, and will not settle down even after they are out of sight.

Does anyone have any tips for calming their puppy when encountering people or dogs?