Category: Top Dog

I have 2 dogs and never really allowed them on the couch. One of them has been jumping up while I am away at work. I have leather couches, and she scratches them with her nails, so I really want to keep her off.

I started by laying tinfoil on the couch when I was away. That kept her off for a few months, then stopped working. She jumped up anyways.

Then I invested in these plastic mats with spikes on them to deter her from jumping up. This also worked for a few months until she figured out how to pull the mats off the couch.

Are there any suggestions on how to keep her off the couch while I am at work?

I believe he's about 5 months old now. He whines loudly at night when we put him in the crate. We feed him in there, never use it as punishment, and he likes hanging out in it during the day. The whining from the crate became too much for our roommates so for the last week we've been locking him in my room with us at night. Once he settles he sleeps through the night pretty well but first he cries for hours. He's fed, watered, gets let out plenty throughout the night, usually doesn't need to potty he just cries at me more… just outside. I've given him bones and toys, etc. I know he's just a little baby but when's he stop being suuuch a crybaby lol I'm tired. He just wants free reign on the house but he's not quite big enough to be trusted yet. For the love of god, any advice on how we can get a good night's sleep?

Hello, I am moving to a new house with my dog this weekend. Where we currently live, there isn’t a back door to the garden so take her out on a lead and through the gate. Every time, without fail, as soon as we take the lead off she sprints off barking. Naturally we want her to use the garden for the toilet but also to play in. If we keep her lead on, she will not go to the toilet, but when taken off she just runs about barking.

She seems to be riled up from things she’s seen in the garden previously (weeks+ ago, like a cat) and doesn’t forget they were there. After her run around, she will also just stand there sniffing the air very intently and sometimes bark at absolutely nothing. I feel like she just has an association that garden = barking.

Moving to the new house, how can we ensure this association doesn’t happen? I’d love to be able to just open the door and she wanders out, rather than get really hyped to go out and run around barking.

I’m in desperate need of help. I have a female 15 month old corgi, 18 lbs. We’ve tried everything when it comes to potty training. Confining her to spaces, keeping her on a leash, positive rewards, routines, etc. We have a baby due in June and don’t know what else to do. I’ll take any advice.

Right now, she doesn’t signal to us when she needs to go out. She goes out every hour, on the hour. She gets instant rewards after going potty/poop. We’ll be outside for 10-15 min and she doesn’t go, come back inside, back out again 10 min later. We do let her free roam because keeping her confined truly hasn’t made any sort of difference. The only place she “goes” poop is on 1 spot on our carpet. The same spot every time (if she does go inside.) We’ve taken her outside with the poop before, to show her it goes outside and that does nothing.

Is it by chance the carpet in the one spot that she thinks it’s okay to go? I’ve shampooed it, had it professionally shampooed, and now we’re replacing it in a few weeks with vinyl flooring. I just don’t know what else to do with her. Mind you, we have a 4.5 yr old corgi that we had absolutely no issues with potty training. Help.

I just had a conversation with a coworker that's pretty average when it comes to dog knowledge, not a bad thing, but a good peek into what the general public thinks about dogs

He didn't do much research on dogs before getting one, I think that's typical for the majority of dog owners, he just had dogs growing up, went to the pound and got one for his family.

Although, because he was looking up the shelter, he started getting recommended dog training videos on his feed, and he got interested in it, and is doing his very best with training, but (like I'm assuming most people would) didn't get the memo 100%

He took "socializing your dog" in the context he understood, "make sure your dog meets everyone." And it's lead to some issues he's vented to me about. He takes his new dog to dog parks and she got in a fight, he blamed the other dog and took her again, another fight. He has his dog do leash greetings and now she lunges at dogs on walks. He took her to bars and has everyone who wants to pet her, and she's now a little nippy and barks at people. Which, for I think most of us here, is the most expected result, but of course that wasn't his experience

He now has the opinion all this "new age dog crap" is terrible and ruined his dog, and it was hard to give him advice; when before "socializing", he was enthusiastic enough to do what he felt was enough research all on his own, and I feel bad for him and all other owners that have similar experiences

I'm not trying to get the whole internet to change how we word things, but I've been thinking that personally, I'm going to refer to it as "desensitization" which I think is a lot more intuitively understood. Because really, that's what we mean by socialization.

Getting a dog used to many environments, and being calm in them isn't a very social part of training. In fact, when I'm working on 'socialization' I don't let anyone come and pet my dog, I don't let my dog IN the dog park, and I don't let any other leashed dog approach, because that is the exact opposite of what I'm working on.

I didn't really notice how ironic of a term "socialization" is until today, and I think it's a really easy mistake to make and I feel awful for him and his dog, because really, he was trying, and now he's resistant to further advice. And really, so much of this is avoidable because "desensitizing" just fits so much better in every aspect I can think of

I've noticed this about her dog for years. It is a 100lb or so dog and will displace easily a chunk of soil/grass the size of my palm. We don't exactly live in a Better Homes and Gardens neighborhood (deer infestation, huge mole problem) but some people do try to take care of their lawns. I've always felt that it's inconsiderate to let her dog do this, but when I've brought it up she's insisted it's normal scent marking behavior and can't be controlled and as someone who has never had a dog, what do I know. She does train dogs (is not certified, but kinda fell in to helping with puppy classes, etc via a friend) so if there was a way to train it out of her dog I'd have thought she would have.

I'm basically just looking for opinions here. Is this reasonable to let your dog do? Is it normal behavior? Are there ways to train it out of your dog?

It's an Akita if that makes a difference.