Category: Top Dog

I have a rescue dog (four yr old F (suspected) Finnish laphund I've had her for about a week now) she resource guards (both bed and food) she has recently (just today) started sleeping in my bed, she slept next to me for a few minutes she has a startle reflex when she sleeps (which I wasn't told about) and bit me ( it scared me more than it hurt me but it did leave a mark) I sent her out of the room ( she's very obedient) and waited for a few minutes before I interacted with her, I made the decision not to let her sleep in the bed with me yet for safety reason. Just a little bit ago I was heading to bed and was telling her 'off' ( from just outside the room, calling her name gently, ) we then proceeded to have a long session of bared teeth growling and snarling that I stood my ground through and she eventually stopped dropping her head and moving off the bed and into another room where I was pointing (she has a xl crate in there and that was where I wanted her to go, but I'm working on that) she came over later doing the " oh hi you're here" butt wiggles with a lowered head I gave her some pats and she tried to come back up again and I sent her away towards her crate.

What I want to know is: if it was a good decision to let her sleep on my bed while I'm not in it ( I feel like I shouldn't, but that it also a good opportunity to show her that I won't back down when she growls at me even though she does generally listen when I tell her to ' stop' and 'leave it' as well as I good opportunity to show her she needs to listen to me)

Is it a good idea to show her that her growling, snarling and lunging don't scare me?

Or should I just make my room a "restricted area" and keep the door closed when I'm not there ( I can't sleep with it closed as I have some PTSD)?

I want to also add she has other beds

She use to be beaten and kicked a lot by her previous owner and made to sleep outside tied to a clothes line, so she use to being alone and not near people all the time ( she won't wear collars or leads now because of it) even segregated herself off from her foster carers as well

She is a good dogs and it's early days yet, most things I've figured out on my own but I want opinions on what I should do.

I'm trying to tackle one hurdle at a time… And there's a lot of them.

Hello all, me and my girlfriend have a 20 month old working line female intact German Shepherd. We have had her for five months and in that time she has settled well in the house and we have undergone lots of training with her. She is very well behaved not reactive and fairly well socialised her only issues are slight separation anxiety which we have been working on and occasionally she can be overprotective for instance she may Bark when a member of our extended family hugs us, I will now refer to her as S.

We have wanted to get her a doggy friend for awhile as we thought she would enjoy having someone to socialise and play with, we settled on a five month old Akita/GSD cross we will refer to him as B.

Outside the house, S gets along with B and they have both shown an indication of wanting to play, i.e. Play bows, loose open body language. We have kept them both on lead for now while they build up their relationship.

However inside the house, inside the car, and around people which S considers to be high value S is showing aggressive or distressed behaviour towards B such as barking, growling and thrashing around. This behaviour is most notable when S is in her crate and B is free. We have tried to avoid this as much as possible to create a level playing field however sometimes taking B to the toilet means that we have to cross past the crates which S is in.

We have kept them on lead in the house when they’re not in their crates and generally they ignore each other and relax, this is also the case at bedtime each one sleeps on a different side of our bed.

We have contacted a trainer however due to the time of year we most likely won’t have a face-to-face appointment for a couple of weeks, the advice so far has been to keep them in their crates however as we are finding S to be more reactive in her crate we are not sure whether in this case that’s the best way to move forward.

What should we do? Any advice would be much appreciated – thanks in advance.

My 4 y/o cocker spaniel is an absolute asshole about peeing inside. We have tried EVERYTHING. We did a whole new routine with a trainer for confidence cuz we thought it was anxiety. Nope. We tried belly bands for incontinence. Honestly I think he peed harder cuz he hates them so much. Tried just letting him be himself and see what happens and we went two weeks without an incident until today when he let out a full pee on our bed immediately after an hour long walk.

We take him for long walks twice a day. He gets to sniff everything. For reference we also have a German Shepherd (also 4 y/o) and a cat (5 y/o, hates the dogs so she’s mostly out of their way). Both of the dogs are crate trained but I truly want them to both be able to sleep in the bed but because our cocker keeps having “accidents” (if I could even call them that because he looks us in the eye when he does it) we can’t trust him and we think it’s unfair to favor one dog over the other.

Any advice is so greatly appreciated.

(Hateful or negative comments are not appreciated but it’s the internet so if you feel the need to scream into a void so be it. Just maybe veil some helpful tidbits in there too. At the very least if you’re gonna be mean, throw in a bit of advice about how to get the stains out would be lovely)

Hi all, we have an approximately 3 year old rescue Chihuahua mix (mainly Chihuahua), we have got it from a rescue centre a week ago. We were told that he was good with other dogs and cats etc but when we go on walks he gets really agitated and aggressive towards every dog he sees even if they don’t interact with him.

Before we take him to a dog trainer, we would like some tips on how to stop him from being so aggressive.

What tips and suggestions do you have that we can use to turn him into a friendly dog that either wants to play with others (or at least does not react to them).

Today we have started distracting him with treats when he sees other dogs but we are not 100% sure we are doing it right as he loses focus very easily.

Thanks for all the tips!

My boy 4yo Rott. He was just relocated with him from a home. He does very good at not peeing inside our loft but he will pee on the balcony and sometimes in the hallway.

No i assure you he goes outside enough and often. He is a serial marker and anything not in our unit seems fare game to him. How can i train him the difference of yes and no areas

Hello all!

I have a 1 y/o cattle dog who is an absolute dream. He is well behaved, listens keenly, gets hours of exercise, and sleeps a lot of the day. He's a pretty happy puppy. We never had issues with peeing inside, and he potty trains well, but he won't stop popping inside. We've tried everything. Training, vet visits, better positive reinforcement during walks, he's crate trained, he is fed on a specific schedule, everything. Sometimes he goes weeks without doing it and then he suddenly does it for a week straight. He goes on three 20-30 minute walks a day, will poop, walk back toward home, and then poop inside. Nobody is sure why or how to stop it. I'm not either. If you have any ideas I am all ears. Thank you!

Hi!! So we've had our 4 year old Samoyed Gracie since she was a puppy, she's so lovely, has never resource guarded or anything, and we've had foster situations and she's never minded other dogs being in her space, eating her food, etc. We just got our 7 month old Samoyed Lulu from a rescue program and I noticed her display signs of resource guarding, not over food, but over toys. She's been making a pile on her dog bed of all the toys gracie touches and growls and snaps at gracie if she gets near it. gracie doesn't react, just stretches and walks away.

i work in animal rescue and just started studying my minor in animal behaviour so im feeling a little useless since i haven't covered this topic yet. sure i've covered food guarding from humans but ive never covered toy guarding from older dog. i know lulu isn't showing aggression and probably overstimulation (lulu peed right after in the house), but we definitely caught it early and i'd love some support on what to do.

We (me, my husband, 2 kids under 13) rescued a mixed breed dog 2.5 years ago. Other than one incident with my oldest son on our first afternoon after bringing him home, our dog, Harvey (4), has been pretty great. He's responding to training, he loves our family and our home, and we love him dearly! The problem is that he HATES my mother in law! She is an older woman (80), a little unsteady on her feet, and she has recently moved to be closer to us. Harvey barks at her non-stop and often charges her. One time, she sat down on the couch and he ran right toward her, jumped up on the ottoman, and she reached out and hit him away from her. Although we don't condone Harvey acting like this, I also told MIL my that we DO NOT hit him. We don't know much about the life he led prior to being surrendered to the shelter, but he had some health issues and probably wasn't loved and taken care of as he should have been. The behavior has only gotten worse to the point where MIL doesn't usually come inside our house and will just drop things off or pick things up in the driveway. We can kennel him, but he still barks so hard that he stinks up the room. We hosted Christmas at our house this year and attempted to board Harvey for 2 days. Unfortunately, the boarder was full. We have some prescribed anti-anxiety meds for him and decided to dose him so he could be relaxed while she was here. We also made sure he had been exercised and did everything we could think of to be proactive. When we allowed Harvey to be out of his kennel he was constantly trying to be near MIL. Every time he approached her, my husband intervened and sent him off to some other family member that would give him attention and pets. However, towards the end of the evening he walked right up to her in her chair and bit her hand. He didn't growl or bark. He didn't even try to hurt her as it wasn't a painful bite. He definitely could have hurt her if he wanted to. I am confused because he doesn't act this way to anyone else. He doesn't bite or nip. He only barks at people he can't see outside our door. She really isn't mean to him other than the previously mentioned issue that happened almost 2 years ago. Why does he do this with her only?