Category: Top Dog

Hi all! Me and my partner have adopted a going on 6 months old dachshund mix about six weeks ago. She is doing great in our home: she feels safe, she likes her play pen and crate, she is almost fully potty trained, and no noise in the apartment scares her – she’s unphased by the vacuum and popping bottles of champagne!

But we live in Manhattan on a pretty busy road. We’ve gotten her used to going potty on three trees right outside our apartment complex and she feels pretty safe there. However getting her off the block towards a higher traffic avenue is impossible. She starts shaking and crying immediately. If I take her outside of our higher traffic service entrance (where the dogs SHOULD be coming and going from) she cries and shakes so much. She also won’t even accept treats because she feels so unsafe so I can’t even work to create positive associations with that space.

We are working with a trainer who has suggested we just carry her when she starts acting fearful. We’ve been doing this for now but she’s also getting really big. We know she LOVES walking because she doesn’t leash pull in Central Park or other smaller parks even closer to us and feels right at home there. We are lucky to live so close to the park too, but walking the five blocks there is so hard right now because she just gets scared as soon as she sees cars and trucks on a bigger avenue. Even at the dog park she tends to hide under benches when a large truck is a couple hundred feet away.

The only time she does walk off our block and all the way to the park IS however when we have one of her doggie friends with us. She will follow them into oncoming traffic easily when guided by one of her three best friends. I really want her to feel as safe with me as she does with them as her friends can’t join us daily for a walk!

Any advice appreciated. I’m sure our trainer will help over time of course since we’ve just had one in person lesson and one phone call, but she really isn’t improving just yet.

Hi, I'm getting a puppy next year, and I live in an dog-heavy apartment building. Because of this, I don't want to have the puppy walking around outside the building for the first couple months while they aren't fully vaccinated.

I am thinking of having a grass turf pad or maybe a real grass pad as a potty area in my apartment, and still having the puppy on leash when we go to the potty spot inside. Does anyone have experience with this? Is it a struggle to get them to go to the bathroom outside if this is how they were trained while they were young?

Any advice or thoughts on how to best navigate this are appreciated. Thanks!

Hey everyone, over worried dog mom here. My boy is 6 months and has been teething the past few weeks. Over the last two days he has cried a few times when he bites down to eat. When I touch the right back side of his jaw when petting him he pulls away and also has cried. He has never not let me open his mouth and look in but right now he’s really on guard. His breath smells like blood. My question is this normal for a teething puppy ? I have called my vet and will see her Wednesday just to rule out infection or something stuck in his gums.

Hello,

I have a 5 month old Coton de Tulear. She has never been super interested in meals, although I still give her 3 a day and she has a little pick. She is healthy and a healthy weight (per Vet), it is just her normal and has gotten worse with teething. She sleeps in a lot in the mornings and goes through breakfast, usually waking 10-11. I was wondering when would be a good time to switch from 3 meals to 2. I have been finding a lot of conflicting information online so am just looking for some opinions and personal experiences!

Thank you in advance!

My pup is 15 weeks old, and I believe she is in peak teething mode. She never bites us, only her toys. When she’s overtired, she chews on all her toys like crazy, and just can’t get herself to sleep. She just can’t stop doing it? I never take away her toys, because I don’t want her to start chewing on other stuff or us, but I wonder if there are any other ways to get her to sleep? She’s not crate trained, because I live in a country that doesn’t use crates like they do in the US. She sleeps in my bed at night, without toys, and she sleeps through the night with no issues. The intense chewing is only in the afternoon and evening when she’s super tired.

Hi guys, so I have a 4 month old female Shih Tzu puppy. She is very food motivated just as any dog may be, however, there are bad behaviors that are hard for me to shape with treat training. There’s two annoying habits that I want advice on. The first one is when I take her out to potty or for a walk, she feels the need to put ANYTHING in her mouth: sticks, rocks, random garbage, duck poop, etc. And this has me stressed out because I worry that she will ingest something toxic and harm herself… and not to mention that I would have to foot a medical bill that could have been avoided if she would just behave. I’ve read numerous reddit posts about this type of issue, and one reddit post I read had a response that said I should tell her to “drop it”, and IF she drops it, I reward her with a treat. For one, this doesn’t work because she almost NEVER releases it from her mouth without me having to reach in and take it out myself. And two, she will literally drop it to get the treat and then proceeds to put the bad item back in her mouth. Furthermore, the second annoying habit is when she has a tendency to bark in her crate early in the morning (she knows my work schedule, so that’s part of the reason) and sometimes it’s because she has to potty. Most of the time I’d go ahead and get up out of bed to take her out, but it’s sometimes not even that she has to potty, but simply because she just wants to play outside…. and this frustrates me so badly because it cuts into my sleep before having to clock into my stressful work from home job. It’s not like I don’t play with her on breaks or throughout the day when I have a lot of time to spare, but she still tends to bark either throughout the day or early in the morning before work sometimes for that very reason still. And I even tried the whole “just ignore it and give her a treat when she’s quiet” thing that other redditors in the community have suggested, but she starts right back up again with the barking shortly afterwards…. Pretty much this is all to say that I’m kind of at my wit’s end with what to do about these issues. I love her, but my patience is honestly wearing thin….

Anyone have any advice for getting your puppy to go to the bathroom on walks?

We live in an area that gets coyotes often and my neighbors have always warned me so late nights/early mornings I’ve always done in the yard. My puppy is 7mo (had him from shelter since 2mo) and has been amazing with going in our little front yard (in his favorite spot though…) and he used to be awesome at pooping on walks but always preferred to pee at home.

I tried praise and treats if he randomly would pee or poo on a walk, but now it’s gotten really bad. He basically refuses to poop or pee at ALL while on a leash, I’m sure he thinks he’s not supposed to.

We took him to a national park for some walking and he peed at 4am and not again until 3pm even though we were outside all day, cueing “potty”. He literally had dribbles coming out until we finally found an area we could get him off leash and he went.

I’m feeling terrible and really lost in how to help him now! He obviously is fine when he’s off leash and he always goes right after our walks but if I walk him for longer until he goes, it just never happens.

I have a 3 – 3 and a half months old puppy. Now before I get to her peeing habits I must let you know we do have another dog who is over 1 yrs old and she is fully potty and pee trained. So back to our puppy peeing, she learned how to potty in the right area during the first week she came to us and it made us very impressed. I know it takes time to train puppies for going potty in the right spot but it seems like she has no bladder control when it comes to peeing.

She pees while playing, lying down, standing, when she's excited etc etc. I did try redirecting her in the right direction/area where she has to go to pee but it doesn't work. She does listen to commands like sit, leave it, come here and go there but when it comes to peeing even picking her up and putting her in the right spot doesn't work.

It's kind of confusing cause she doesn't even show a tell tale sign of when she wants to pee, she doesn't even make a sound then. With our first dog who is now over an yr old when she was a puppy she would show and give us a sign of when she was about to pee but our second pup is proving it to be quiet the challenge ( we don't mind it though).

She is very careful not to potty inside but she does pee. There are days when she won't pee inside but when she does pee inside she makes sure to do quite a lot.

Puppy pees when excited, squatting, standing, lying, sitting THE WORKS THE WATER WORKS! Even after emptying her tank there's always more! In terms of pooping Oh! She'll beeline for the balcony (the designated drop zone). We've tried the quick shuffle the puppy out when they try to pee (no avail), show we are angry [not yelling or scaring](no avail) and don't let them in till she's done (NO AVAIL!).

The fact that she listens her name, avoids accidental poop drop and accidental play bite (she is still land shark stage), somehow likes drinking her own pee (not her sisters) .Loves play fight with her sister 1+ year

What is going on with her? Is it something about her training or something else?!