Category: Top Dog

My 5 month old working line Collie is a happy energetic, confident little guy. He's also extremely sensitive to noise and he has been known to get very obnoxious and bitey at the vet's when he was quite ill. Today the poor guy got so scared of this really random noise in the living room (boardgame tiles being pushed around) that I had to take him out of the room crying and lunging. After some calm down time with me in a quiet room, I went to put him down for a nap in his crate (having to cross the living room for that again) but he completely freaked out and wriggled, snapped, growled and frantically tried to bite drawing some blood as I was trying to restrain him.

This reaction is clearly coming from a place of fear. I could have handled it better as well but it all happened so quickly. Would you sound the alarm and call in the behaviourist cavalerie or is this puppy/adolescent fear phase stuff?

I have a 7 month old male Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. We adopted him from a shelter at 4 months old, and they neutered him. When we first brought him home (4 months old) he would try to hump is dog-brother, or us if we were sitting on the floor. We would firmly say “no” and redirect. It wasnt too often, and he quickly grew out of that phase with us. Yay.

Unfortunately there was a lot of humping in December. He would try to hump other small dogs, children, and our friends that owned dogs (assuming it was their scent). The human humping, especially children, I am not okay with. We spent a lot of our holidays watching him like a hawk making sure he wasn’t tying to hump anyone, which was a burden. We did had very similar socialization moments in November when he was 6 months old, and humping was not an issue with other small dogs or people then.

Again, he’s 7 months old and already neutered. I’m hoping this is just a phase and he’ll grow out of it? Is there anything else I can try doing to redirect this behavior?

My cavoodle puppy is 5 months old and turns absolutely feral at the beach. Runs as fast as she can in every different direction until her leash jerks her backwards, eats all the sand (and has pure sand poos for the next few days), rolls in it and gets sand all through her eyelids and under her eye bags that we have to try and scoop out.

I see other peoples puppies just running and playing at the beach like normal but I can’t even take mine any more. Did anyone else have this problem and manage to calm them down to act normal?

I’ve come to this sub a ton for my puppy when I got him and it felt like my life was over as it was. Freedom gone, I have this animal that won’t listen to me, etc etc.

Now he is an angel and today I am chilling with him on New Years Eve and we just hung out inside all day. Didn’t need to be worn out, didn’t need 2 hours of mental stimulation… it’s just good to be here

I didn’t come here to brag, but I remember what it’s like when I only dreamt of this time, it’s been a lot of hard work, but it definitely all pays off. To everyone out there hang tough and keep up the effort because it will all be worth it

I bought an online dog training system. The videos progress from basic to more complex exercises. The program is designed so that dogs learn the skills step by step. It seems suitable for owners who prefer to train their dogs at home rather than hire an outside trainer. I'm still in the early stages, but I find the program effective.