Category: Top Dog

I need help. I got an 8 week old bully/lab mix puppy today. When I did the initial meet and greet with my dog, they were fine. But as soon as I got the puppy home it has started growling and snapping very aggressively at my smaller dog when ever it is near my daughter or us. It seems like he is resource guarding us from my older dog. Is this something trainable? What do I do? Im worried I made a huge mistake. Please help!!

Hi all,

First time posting here, i have a 11 week old Cavapoo who is a little fluff ball of energy! Me and my partner have been trying to train him since we got him 2 weeks ago. He has taken to basic training well, such as going to his crate when he is tired, settles in it in the day and night time on his own and knows basic commands such as sit, wait and we are working on his recall which he is getting better.

However, we are finding when we are training him and times when he is playing he gets very over excited. In training he listens well for a few minutes but then gets over excited and tries to jump on us to get to the treats, so we end the training session. With play, he growls and sometimes barks in a playful way with his toys. We are finding at times he is excited and playful he can go for our feet by sometimes growling and barking. I have been redirecting him to his crate and leaving him in there to settle for 5-10 mins until he is calm and then bring him out or i disengage and ignore him until he is calm.

My reason for this post is more just to ask if the growling, barking and over excitement normal? It may sound like a silly question, but when we have asked our friends who also have young dogs of similar breed (one is also a Cavapoo and one is a cockapoo) how the puppy stage was for them. It sounds like their dogs were much calmer than ours. It’s making us worry a little, i guess i just want to hear if other people have had similar experiences with their puppies.

Other than that he is a loveable sweet boy who we both adore. I have looked into getting him enrolled on some puppy training classes to help socialise him with other puppies too and to work on his training in other environments.

We also are still waiting for his second vaccination which is tomorrow! We are hoping some of his energy may be able to be burned off when we can finally take him out for walks.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and appreciate any feedback or advice 😊

I’m honestly at a loss and really need help.

Our 8-month-old Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever was extremely well socialized from the start. We got him at 2 months and exposed him to everything: trams, subway, busy city center, loud environments. He handled it all perfectly.

At the beginning of October, one incident changed everything. During a walk near our house, a skateboarder started doing tricks right next to him, slamming the board loudly against the concrete. My puppy had a full panic attack.

Since then, he’s terrified of electric scooters, skateboards, and walking around our own block. He often freezes or tries to run back home.

The confusing part: if we drive him somewhere else, he’s totally fine. Forest walks or different neighborhoods are great. He walks normally, relaxed and happy. But starting from our house? Almost impossible.

We’ve had multiple consultations with two different behaviorists and tried everything: treats, toys, comforting, ignoring, carrying him, controlled exposure, slow desensitization. Nothing helps. The only thing that works a bit is when another person joins us for the walk—then he can walk farther starting from home.

I feel completely hopeless. We love him so much and it’s heartbreaking to watch him be this scared.

On top of that, we’re expecting our first child in mid-March, and I’m really worried about how we’ll manage walks with both the dog and the baby.

If anyone has experienced something similar or has advice, success stories, or reassurance that this can improve, I’d be incredibly grateful.

I've got an 8 month old Daschweiler – yes that's right he's half rottweiler and half daschund! It's been super cold here recently and we wanted to get him a jacket, the daschund ones are too small now, and anything else seems to be far too short. His back is about 55cm/22" long but neck and chest are much smaller than any of the jackets made for dogs this long. I think the breed he's most similar to in stature would be a basset hound, can anyone recommend somewhere that sells coats for basset hounds in the UK? Or just long dogs in general? I don't want to spend a fortune on a tailor made on right now as he's still growing and we have no idea how big he's going to get!

We took our puppy home about a month ago and he chewed every toy bin we bought(he's good with all the other furniture in the house), so we’re building one that’s designed to be chewed.

I'm not selling, this is just a concept. ChewVault Concept

Would this solve a real problem for you?

I have a german shepherd husky puppy and i want to find a good way to keep her exercised while i did homework. i found one on the marketplace for $25 but it sold too fast. would there be any good deals anywhere else or recommended brands?

I have a puppy who loves to eat EVERYTHING and one of his favorite ways to play with things is to shred stuff/destuff toys and honestly I don’t mind him ripping up toys, we have plenty and if that’s how he has fun so be it. However he wants to eat the stuffing/threads/garbage he pulls and that’s what I would like to stop because it can be dangerous. While we work on preventing it, I would love to give him an outlet for this desired behavior that is safe. So if anyone has any enrichment ideas, that would be amazing!

I have a Chihuahua and she absolutely loves going under blankets and snuggling right up to whoever is in the blanket if someone is under it. I'm not mad that she's doing it, I'm just curious as to why.

Hi, I’m 16 years old I just attended my first ever dog show today and I would love to get into showing. I have always loved working with dogs. I have two show line German shepherds (one black and one black and red both 2 years old)and my family and I are hoping to get another dog in the next year. I would love to show one of my shepherds but I’m not quite sure if they are too old. If they are it would be fine though because I could into showing when we get another dog. I’m not quite sure how to start the process or the training required.

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated thank you!

Okay yes this is a vent but i just need to get this out of my system, i have an English cocker spaniel and she's about 1.5yo. So my dog is well trained, recall nearly instant unless she's smelling something intensely or well when a big dog pins her to the ground or cages her in, standing over her and obviously she can't quite leave. And the recall of these big dogs is awful! The owners call their dog back and then nothing. And this isn't in that playful way that the dog pins her.

This happens nearly every time we go on our big walk into either into the forest, big parks etc when most of the dogs are off leash. It's so infuriating because my dog starts to cry and then still the owners dont seem to care. Tonight i was going out with her on leash, we barely went onto the sidewalk and a Belgian malinois lunged at my dog then at me, I said something to her that she's scared and she just looks at me then leaves without even apologizing, my dog was 'yelling' and trying to get away. This lady was smaller than me and she couldn't quite control her dog.

I only had this issue with small dogs a few times, with medium size dogs, even less times. I taught her to get away from big dogs that seem not trained or aggressive. Im not sure what to do, im not confrontational but i might lose it the next time that this happens, im glad that my dog isn't traumatized or is scared of big dogs but she doesn't approach them anymore as much even without me telling her not to, it's always the big dogs coming very hard and very fast onto her.

I know that there is small dog slander but Holy the big dogs are the worst from my personal experience, yeah i know usually this isn't the case but for me it is, even myself i got bitten by a belgian malinois and i myself am wary, she loves to play with all kinds of dogs, from smol to big and today at least she had fun with a big dog that was very gentle and overall they both were running and playing for a long time, overall i feel like the females are less aggressive towards her and she's spayed.

I think that i will start to wave my hand for the owner to get their dog away or shout. Why do these people get these big dogs without training them properly and teaching them to be gentle with other dogs. It's only the bad dog owners, the good ones are amazing.