Category: Top Dog

I love my ~5 month old puppy! I have had her for about 2 months now. She is quite trainable and is doing well with housebreaking… except when I come home after being out. If I am only out for 20 minutes or so it is okay, but if I leave for more than that when I come home she "happy" pees. Sometimes it is a little dribble and other times it is A LOT. I live in an apartment building so I cant just pick her up and run her outside. I put wee wee pads now outside her crate in preparation for the excited explosion, but I am wondering if there is a way to train her out of this? Or is this a normal female (spayed) puppy thing that she will grow out of?

Hi guys, especially those with older puppies, if your puppy falls asleep outside of the crate, do you let them or move them? My puppy will be 6 months soon and i started implementing some chill time outside of the crate. (She has been struggling with relaxing outside of it, which i hear is normal at this age, but after staying with some older dogs she now will sometimes lie down in her bed). I let her (until she starts pacing etc), hoping it will help her when she is older and we eventually get rid of the crate. Can someone chime in how was your journey with relaxing outside of the crate? When did it start “clicking” to them? How do you guys deal with this?:)

Hi, my bf and I have been struggling inserting eye drops for our 12 week old Aussie puppy. One of our cats scratched her eye when they were playing and we took her to the vet same day.

The vet and staff had trouble with her. She is incredibly squirmy and likes to threaten bites when we try to get her in position to give the eye drops. We have tried positive reinforcement with high value treats, tried warming her up to it, giving her prescribed gabapentin from the vet and I wait till peak effectiveness to try inserting the drops and it’s still so hard to insert the drops. She doesn’t even want the syringe in her mouth for the gabapentin.. Any sort of holding her causes her to go crazy.

I kinda just squeeze the drops in the general direction of her eye when she is still enough and hope for the best now lol. Does anyone have any other advice? I want her eye to get better but I can’t tell if we are actually getting it in her eye and I feel bed when she screams as if we are hurting her which I know we are not. Please no negative comments. 😞 we are just at a loss now and want to make it a more positive experience for her.

My puppy, Salem is 6 months and hella hyper. I take her on walks/runs, fetch and recently started taking her to play in the lake however she still is hyper after.

I don't mind, I signed up for it but I still need to get chores and school work done + take care of the other animals that got temporary tacked on after adopting her. I'm looking for any activities that tired her out or doesn't involve andfood bc she already gets a lot of treats when training. I'd appreciate the help and any recommendations <3

Hi all! I thought this might be the group for some help! The post is marked NSFW just because some things i mention maybe sensitive to some.

I started working at a local shelter in October, and I love it. I have 100% found my calling and it’s very rewarding. But it’s also extremely effing sad. While working in the shelter, I’ve also had lots of opportunities to work with the associated Animal care and control team; it’s primarily what i’ve been doing the last month while my adoption center is under reconstruction. Yes, we have an adoption center also outside of our main adoption building 😅. Unfortunately I have had my heart broken a couple times, and i have some ashes from some of the babies that I got the pleasure to work with. But recently, while my job doesn’t necessarily make me sad, the amount of empathy that I feel for these animals that are on hold for cruelty cases or the ones that come in with their ribs showing and afraid of everyone and everything.

All of this being said, how did you fellow animal care workers create emotional boundaries? How did you get over the fact that one day you’re making sure they get the love they deserve for the day, and then the next day the kennel is empty, and they aren’t on the adoptions floor? Please guys i don’t wanna pay for a therapist 😭🙏🏼😂

I have a brussels griffon who is 1 year and 7 months. We noticed signs of separation anxiety since 6 months and we’ve worked with a trainer who trained under Julie Naismith. He’s on max dosage for Reconcile for his weight, which he’s been on for under a year now in conjunction with gabapentin given 1.5 hours before his training sessions. We were going very slow and we were so confident that he could handle any time less than 2 hours. All of sudden, he’s sitting at the gate at 40 minutes and 2 minutes one time and not able to settle at all and he’s whining when he hasn’t done this since we started training.

Nothing has changed and we’ve been training for a year. All of this has taken a mental load on me with no support system and I’ve spent so much money on him with training (he also is reactive). I’m at a loss. What do I do? What is happening? We’re looking to switch medications but that’s a whole other process of tampering him off and I’m just so tired of trying so hard and being stuck at home for so long.

I’ve got an 8-month old pittie and a 1-year old coydog, both are very pretty girls and usually well behaved. USUALLY.

The pittie is dumb. She doesn’t know what’s going on half the time, so unfortunately, she’s the one the coydog is always trying to peg. We can’t get her to stop, and after tonight, this is probably the fourth or fifth time it’s happened. Usually when it happens, we automatically stop her and put her in the kennel for a while.

Sie freut sich riesig auf das Geschirr und die Leine bis zur Gartentür springt sie in die Lüfte, sobald wir draussen loslaufen dauert es keine 2 Minuten und sie fängt an vor meine Füsse zu springen, und möchte in den Arm genommen werden. Ich habe sie seit sie 3 Monate alt ist überall mitgenommen Restaurants, Einkaufsmeilen, Freunde besuchen. Sie liebt alle Menschen und ist sehr sozial, aber Laufen möchte sie nicht. Sie macht auch super selten draussen ihr Geschäft, erst wenn wir wieder zuhause sind lässt sie alles entspannt im Garten raus 😥 . Ich bin schon kurze Strecken, lange Strecken, Strassenwege, Waldwege gelaufen, bisher hat nichts geholfen… habt ihr weitere Tipps?

There is so much information stating that dog puppies can splinter tree branches, bones, sticks all sorts of natural chews as well, yet most likely wolf puppies will be chewing on anything they find in the wild. How is that possible?

I have been working on animal behaviour for a while as part of my PhD and Postdoc research, currently at Harvard. I would really value honest feedback from dog owners here.

Most pet tech today tracks location, steps, or shows video. A lot of us buy those devices for our peace of mind.

Apart from tracking, the question I keep coming back to is, when I leave home, are they emotionally settled?

Not just “are they safe” or “are they moving.”

More like:

Did they settle quickly?

Were they pacing or stressed longer than usual?

Is this improving over time?

I have been exploring building something that focuses on patterns of settling and stress over time, rather than just live camera feeds.

Honestly as pet owners, would something like that feel useful? Or would it just increase anxiety?

I would genuinely appreciate pushback.