Category: Top Dog

Hey all.

I used to give my dog bones a few years back but she chews them WAY too hard and she broke a tooth. Now she has a yak chew which has been a lot better but I can tell she doesn’t like it as much. She likes hard things, if ever someone leaves a hair clip or something hard and plastic on the ground she will chew it up. I gave her a soft rubber toy and she destroyed it within an hour.

The yak chew has been good and has lasted a long time, but does anyone have any other recommendations? I want her to have a bit of variety as she’s always been a spoiled brat lol

Does your dog turn his head when he hears an odd noise? Does your dog bury their food with your pants? This is the thread to ask why.

Please keep this thread to non-medical issues only.

The last 2 weeks almost every night my 5 year old golden has been waking up in the middle of the night. He wakes me up and he’s panting most of the time. Eventually he gets settled and normally it’s him laying on top of me or pressed against me.

When we have thunderstorms or fireworks he tends to do this type of behavior but neither have been happening. I can’t figure out what the issue is.

I took him to the vet and they checked him out but nothing stood out to them other than he’s having night anxiety.

Anyone know what could be happening or what I could do to help him out?

Hello I have a border collie named stormy and she’s getting very chunky and we don’t have much time to take care for her right ( we shower her one every two weeks feed her 3 times a day with half scoop of food and we play volleyball and soccer with her almost every day) and I was wondering what I could do with her because she also likes to bite.

I have a senior German Shepherd and a 6 month old Golden Retriever. Our senior has always been iffy about other dogs, but she has coexisted with the puppy very well… Until recently.

She's always been a resource guarder against other dogs with her food and toys. We have been very good with making sure that they are separated or supervised when food is out and make sure that they only play with their own toys.

However it's gotten to the point where she is now guarding water. We had a large bowl that is shared but have recently gotten their own bowls to prevent any issues. But now our senior will proceed to drink all the water to the point she throws up and we think she's doing it so that the puppy can't have any – even when she is not in the room.

I'm at my wits end and would love to hear if anyone has experienced the same issue and what was your fix.

i don’t know if this will even be allowed here bc it’s not technically a question about training, more about general knowledge about breaking up dog fights (for the average owner, not industry professionals).

i am going to preface this because my question is weird as hell without it lmao.

i work in ER vet med, and today we had a dog that came in after being stabbed multiple times following a dog fight in a park. the dog coded within minutes of being here, and owners elected to stop CPR. from my understanding of the story: 2 dogs (a pitbull and a JRT looking thing) were fighting, and the owner of the pitbull was no where nearby. the owner of the JRT was trying to break them up, but got bit in the process. another 3rd party person came in and stabbed the pitbull, after which paramedics rushed the dog to us via ambulance.

obviously this is a case where owners did not know how to properly break up a dog fight, as most of the general public is unaware of (a conversation for a different day).

this just got me thinking about hypotheticals: what quick methods would you advise in a situation like this? assuming the owners know nothing about the wheelbarrow method, etc. i’m talking you see someone about to stab a dog and you have 10 seconds or less to intervene to keep the dog from being stabbed. originally i was thinking pepper spray would be a much better alternative to a knife, but still carries health risks & can cause other problems (i personally feel i would rather deal with the risks & issues that come from pepper spray than multiple stab wounds over my dog’s whole body, but that could just be me).

this isn’t even the first horrible case we’ve received this week, so i’m just rocked from it all. welcoming any and all suggestions!! not that it helps this current situation, but just trying to think of things most people would either have on them or have near them to break up a fight without having to kill one of the animals.

Hi. I am dogsitting next week for 3 dogs (1 is mine and I won't be talking about him too much) 2 of the dogs have a very different schedule than the one I'm going to have to use with them and I'm trying to think of ideas on how to handle them.

My parents (the owner/caretaker of the 2 dogs) are both retired and home about 95% of the day engaging with the dogs. One is 5 year old Corgi, who will settle nicely but has major resource guarding issues (I do have management solutions for this and have watched him before), and is prone to weight gain so on a very strict diet. The other is a 1.5 year old mixed breed large dog (German Shepard, Lab, Pitbull and boxer mix) who has no ability to settle and my parents created a marathon dog with…he is not crate trained and the one I am the most worried about.

I do work 100% remote and have a great deal of flexibility in my work but I do need to be available for meetings and such.

The dogs normal routine is, wake up, go outside to go to the bathroom, eat breakfast, play outside for like an hour (with my dad normally) nap for 2 hours while my dad goes to the gym. Go on a 2 hour + hike, then they come home for another 2 hour nap, then the puppy goes to the dog park for like 2 more hours. Then more outside time (normally fetch), dinner, more outside playtime and then they sleep.

I cannot do this schedule and work. I honestly don't think its a healthy schedule in general for a dog this young, but it's not my dog and my parents have made it clear that they don't care about my opinion here.

My plan is, keep their morning routine very much the same, then for the first walk, give them some each some sort of food puzzle with half their breakfast. I will put the corgi into his crate for this to manage the resource guarding (and likely my dog too cause he has food allergies). Then after I get through work I will take them on a long walk (probably not 2 hours but a decently long walk)…they are all except the puppy good on the leash, instead of the dog park because I have no interest in dog parks. Then they get outside time, dinner, probably split in two again with half in a puzzle feeder for each dog separately, then outside. Then I will also do some brain game training with all 3. My dog won't go to sleep unless we do like 15 minutes of training every night so I'll just work with the other 2…

For the puppy's extra energy cause I know he will have some I am going to bring a flirt pole which he does like, and he does play nicely with my dog which I hope he will do to burn off some energy.

Thoughts on this? Any other sorts of recommendations you can think of? I'm kinda at a loss for other ideas as to how to handle a 75lb barely trained puppy who has no real off switch…I would love to do some settle work with him but I just don't know if it's too late (and I am almost positive my parents will just undo whatever I do when they get back…cause they think its normal to have a dog that only sleeps like 6 hours a day–yes he is 1.5 years old and doesn't sleep through the night).

So my year and a half old dog has recently started to jump on our bed side tables and our table in our cat/spare room basically everywhere she can get on top of things she is and it’s driving me crazy. She didn’t start doing it until about a 2 weeks ago. She had gotten on our gaming car and then onto our entertainment center and I told her “off” and she got down but now it’s every time I leave the room she’s on our bedside tables or in the spare room on top of the cat table or my plant shelves. I’m afraid of putting something that will deter her on the table bc that’s our cats safe place and he hangs out there. I would hate to scare him from getting on the table or shelves he has. Our dog gets along with our cat really good and she doesn’t bother the table when he’s in there but she will get on other surfaces.