Category: Top Dog

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….

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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.

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