Category: Top Dog

9 week old Labradoodle Terrier mix. He's a beautiful little guy and I love bonding with him. But I never get to because of his behavior, and well…

It's only been 2 weeks and I already feel like I'd be better off letting someone qualified take the puppy instead.

All he does is bite. And it makes me mad. Like really mad. I want to bond with him, but it seems like all I do is let him out of the crate, correct him for two hours as he proceeds to tear up everything in sight (namely my hands and feet) and then I get frustrated and put him back in. It's turning into a cycle that's becoming self-destructive for both me and him. He just can't calm down. And I know it's because he's a puppy, but I feel like the life I've been building for myself in is steadily coming unglued.

He's supposed to be a member of my family, not something that makes the empty coldness of solitude that came before him seem like a peaceful alternative.

I know he doesn't hate me for it. Whenever he's launching himself at my face and hands his little tail is just wagging away. But he just won't correct. At all. No "Ah!" or "Yip!" or "No!" gets him to stop. High pitched yelping doesn't help either.

I thought we were making headway with the cage, because it was the only place he'd calm down and rest. Now he's decided to redouble his efforts and be twice as obstinate, bitey, and destructive outside the cage.

I don't get it. We play. We explore the yard. We walk. I talk to him. But the moment it's nap time, the snarling, biting, and barking begins.

I've always been good with dogs. Even strays. I want to love this little bugger, but… damn.

I'm such a fraud.

I have a 4 month old puppy. I’m unsure of what schedule we should have. I usually work Friday-Tuesday. He goes to puppy daycare Friday’s and Tuesday’s and goes over to my parents’ home the other three days since they have a yard he can run around in and have fun rather than staying in my apartment by himself. On the days I work I usually take him out for maybe 10-15 min to potty outside around 7:15 AM and then I take him to either daycare or my parents’ house. After work I try to walk him for about 30 min or play outside chasing each other for 30 min. It’s usually 6 or 7 at that time. Around 6:30 ish or 7 ish we head home and he either naps or watches me make dinner until around 9pm. At 9 pm I kinda throw his kibble around the apartment so he can sniff it out for some stimulation and around 10 we potty and go to sleep. On my days off I do the same except take him out for a walk every two hours and put his food in a ball that he can rolls around and dispense food at 1pm. I’ve tried playing with him with his toys but he seems to get uninterested after 5-10min. He’s not destructive at all but I still feel like I’m not doing enough to stimulate him so any advice would be appreciated! I have been wanting to take him out on hikes and parks and will do now that he’s fully vaccinated. Also any training that I should do would be appreciated. He knows sit, down, paw, come and we’re working on bed just because I have no idea what else to teach him.

I got my lovely puppy only a week ago and he's 10 weeks old now.

I would say 90% of the time he manages to go outside so we're not having too many accidents.

I know it's early days for me but how are you tracking your puppy's progress with toilet training?

I sometimes wonder if he realises that he should go outside or if I've just been taking him out at the right time.

At what point did you see that realisation start to click?

At what stage will he begin to signal more clearly to me that he needs to go to the toilet?

we’ve got a 6 month old cocker spaniel puppy who we’ve had for 3.5 months

hes never been a good sleeper, this includes daytime naps and nighttime but with nighttime we obviously expected through the night toilet get ups and really early mornings when he was very young- all fine with that

hes now 6 months old and he is still waking us up at either 4.50am or 5.30am barking. we do a very boring toilet trip and then try to go back upstairs but at this point he continues to bark so we have to stay downstairs as we’re in a terrace house so can’t have barking at that time of morning. we try to never come downstairs as he is actively barking, it’s defenitely a protest bark rather than distress

things we’ve tried:

crate closed at night (did this until last week)

free roam in puppy proof room (started last week, we got to 6am twice so thought we’d cracked it but he’s back on the early mornings again). he likes the option of moving to the cold wooden floor part way through the night

crate covered (still do, but crate is now open in his room)

white noise (still do)

snuggle puppy (still do)

the alarm trick (was making him wake even earlier as if he pre-empted it)

keeping him up later (normally naps from 8.30pm, didnt make a difference)

feeding him earlier and later (didn’t make a difference)

sniff walk in the evening (still do this)

he gets 3 walks a day, one is off leash and usually sees other dogs

he gets enrichment during all of his meals and an extra enrichment chew during the day whilst we’re working

im at a loss what to do anymore as we can’t let him bark it out due to the neighbours. I can see on the camera he wakes up about 20 mins before the barking and potters around or lies by the baby gate quietly

EDIT: there’s no internal (like central heating) or external noise (that I’m aware of) that would be waking him at this time as nobody else in our neighbourhood is up at this time. we have a garden with high brick walls so would be surprised if there was any cats or foxes he could sense

I’m trying to get a general idea but how much time I should make for getting a new puppy. Right now I work around 46 hours but most of the main part of my days are free (i work overnights and early mornings). Do you think that’s enough time to give a puppy the time it needs?

I’m worried about this now since they have some of the signs like always staying together and on walks they can be more fearful/aggresive(just growing but they never bite) and they aren’t really separated that much, they share a kennel. How bad is this and what should I do?

I got Ellie back in September, when she was around 3 – 3.5 months old. I was a project manager so luckily I was able to take her with me as I drove around checking up on renovations.

At some point it got hard to train her consistently, so I started researching ways I can train her on the go and ended up building an app, all thanks to the breeder I got her from, she suggested I become a trainer because of my bond with dogs.

I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that I'd rather help other owners train their dogs, because I believe having a strong bond with your animal amplifies training results and communication more than anything.

Back in December, I decided I wanted to move somewhere warmer so I can spend more time outside (a head injury a few years ago made Chicago winters extremely hard for me).

Well a few weeks ago, I made the move to the west coast, I just launched an app for the first time in my life, and Ellie gets to live her best life swimming in the ocean and running on beaches. I never would've thought my life could change the way it did in the past 6 months, but she inspired me to do better. I'm blessed and grateful for this dog so much. Love you Ellie aka wigglebutt!

I am begging for help. It is currently the first night of having a puppy and we have it in the crate. It’s 8weeks old, from a litter of 11 puppies. It has been shouting and tearing at the divider (cardboard boxes) in its crate for going on 3 hours.NONSTOP. The puppy is otherwise healthy and well behaved, (we got it 12 hours ago and took it to the vet already for its check up, so take that with a grain of salt, I barely know the girl) it will even sleep while in its bed in the living room when tethered to one of us. The crate is in our walk in closet, maybe 6 ft from the bed, facing the bed but not with a suuuper clear view of us since it’s on the ground My partner thinks we should wait it out completely, but I think NONSTOP barking and whining and tearing, first night at home, we should at least poke a finger in, soothe her vocally. Something. We have read upwards of 8 books before getting the puppy and it seem like there is conflicting info. Apologies for any grammar or general not making sense, I’m very tired and typing feverishly in hopes of an answer if there are any night owls up !!

My pup – for context a 4 month old Old English Sheepdog – is having the usual puppy biting and nibbling problems which are annoying enough, but we can deal with that and tolerate it.

However, the real problem is his reaction to being told off or being made to stop doing something.

For example, when we tell him no for biting us or withdraw our attention after he has nipped us, he will often begin to growl and bark at us and sometimes even try to nip us with his lip curling up in a fairly aggressive manner. Our strategy so far has been to move away and ignore the negative behaviour as we believe it stems from his frustration at not getting what he wants – so we are keen to make sure the aggressive behaviour doesn’t create a path of least resistance.

The reason for me making this post today though is because we took him on a walk to this morning and we found a quiet spot to practice some recall training, which was fine. He did ok, and then time was up so we wanted to get him back on his leash. Well, he wasn’t happy about this, and even though he remained in the sit, he tried to bite my hand repeatedly and hard while I was putting the leash back on him.

This is unacceptable to me, and it was kind of the last straw for being tolerant of his nipping. My family have already expressed concerns about him joining events as we have a lot of kids in the family and they don’t want him to nip them. If he is now escalating to biting out of frustration or aggression, then that won’t fly at all. How am I going to get some bite inhibition and restraint trained into him? He’s such a nice dog most of the time, but at least once a day he goes mad for a few minutes with these behaviours.

Hi all! Are there any user friendly poo and wee tracker apps? Goal is to see how quick after his food, sleep and playing/training schedule he needs to go? Thanks