Category: Top Dog

Just looking for some advice or tips on helping my 6 month old Springer Spaniel with her sudden increase in separation problems.

She's crate trained, happily takes herself to her crate for a nap after walks etc. She was sleeping through the night perfectly for months until the last couple weeks where she's been waking me up frequently but doesn't even need the toilet.

And the past couple days she just won't settle at all. We're still working on settling outside of the crate so she still has her naps in there, and is happy being in there for an hour or 2 while I go out.

At the moment she just keeps pulling the blanket off the front of the crate, and whining constantly, even if I'm just a metre away. She then just sits silently staring at me in her crate and just won't sleep.

I know she's getting older so needs less sleep but at the moment she's sleeping 10pm-7am overnight (waking up 3+ times) and not napping in the day which I know isn't enough sleep (and probably what is causing her destructive and bitey behaviour)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated and is getting very exhausting!

we have a 15 week cocker who we have had for nearly 5 weeks. we haven’t made much progress with daytime crate training. he has meals in there and will potter in and out but will protest if we close the door on him.

at night we started with crate in our room, then outside room, then end of landing etc, he is now downstairs in the kitchen. this was ok for a few nights and he just woke up 2 times for toilet trips (he wakes us by barking but we previously didn’t mind as he clearly needed the toilet)

but the last 4 nights he has got into a habit of:

10-10.30 put him to bed, he goes quite willingly and settles quickly

11.30 wake up barking, take him out but no toilet needed

12.30/1.30 ish wake up barking, generally does go for a wee on this trip

3.30 wake up barking, usually does go for a wee or poo

4.30 wake up barking, doesnt need toilet, won’t settle easily, lots of whining and barking, very hyperactive

5.30 same as 4.30 so we generally stay up with him at this point

because we have neighbours and because he does sometimes need the toilet we do go downstairs to him when we hear the barking. We don’t open the crate until there is a moment of calm sitting and silence

are we reinforcing the barking when he doesnt need the toilet by going down to him everytime? The problem is if we don’t go down i worry it will descend into panic barking and not stop, then we will wake our neighbours

Hello!

Looking for some advice if possible.

We have a 4 1/2 month old mini dachshund. We have tried a lot to socialise him and he really loves other dogs and humans. What he is less good at currently is being calm around dogs that don’t want to interact with him, he tries to play and ignores their signals that they’re not interested in him. We are starting work on this ASAP.

My family member has a dog that was not socialised as a pup and hates other dogs. She is not aggressive towards them, she is straight up scared. They are coming to ours over Christmas and I am trying to figure out how best to have them interact with each other.

They have met once and it was a bit of a nightmare, their dog jumped onto the sofa and refused to interact at all with our pup, whilst our pup just sat and tried to jump up, cry, bark etc because the dog would not engage with him. When their dog was off the sofa, he would run up and try play and the dog would angry bark at him and run away, rinse and repeat for ages meant there were no calm moments during the interaction.

Grateful for any advice on how to approach this. I realise it’s not just a problem with our pup but if anyone has had a similar scenario would love to hear your advice, right now all I can think of is keeping them separate all day which will be a challenge in itself!

Hello! I have a 9-month old corgi who does pretty well with loose-leash walking, but only when I have treats with me. If he doesn't smell any treats on me he starts pulling and running ahead.

How do I get the training to stick without having to bring treats with me each time we go out?

What are your top dog/puppy life hacks.

For us, Slow Feeding Bowl was HUGE and the pet app to keeping track of our pets.

I'm curious what other hacks for toys/training/tips have changed how you handle your puppy/dog or saved you tons of time or money.

Side note; we just changed our puppy Bella's small mat into her big mat in her kennel. (she's a 4 month old Golden Retriever). I thought I was going to cry last night!

Hello,

My now 13 week old labradoodle is doing pretty well with crate training (goes in when I point towards the crate, happily licks his kong, finishes it and then wails for 2 minutes and goes to bed). He spends almost every nap in the crate (with crate covers) except for the afternoon where he sometimes sleeps on the cold tiles. We have left him periodically with the crate covered for 1 -2 hours (after a pee and poop and food and toys etc) – but need to slowly transition to leaving him home alone for up to 4 to 5 hours when I start work in feb (he will be approximately 5 months) for 3 days of the week (every other day someone is home).

He has a puppy proofed room that has space enough for crate, pee pads/grass pad (I know this holds back on out door potty training, but id rather him do it in a designated spot then on the floor) + enrichment (approx 2 x 1m space not including crate). He is super attached to me and follows me everywhere and I do not want this to eventually lead to separation anxiety lol. In terms of his training, he toilets outside AS LONG AS we take him straight after every crate nap and after some intense activity (if not he just finds himself a nice carpet). He sleeps through the night most of the time, can do basic commands and we are working on more important ones like leave it/drop it etc. He likes to run away with shoes and socks and honestly anything that ISNT his toy he grabs and runs and chews:).

Any tips on how to progress from here to more independence (and get him to not whine and bark in his crate 10 minutes after the kong) would be very much appreciated!

Also: I have tried the whole give him an enrichment toy and leave for 10 seconds and slowly progress. My boi is up to maybe 20 to 30 seconds but often comes to stand at the door, waits for me to return then goes back to his enrichment activity. We have a set of baby gates that we are planning to install over the weekend so he can learn to sit behind the gates and watch life outside but not necessarily always be involved (let me know if this is a bad idea). First puppy so I'll take all the tips I can get!

Any advice or recommendations for a puppy (10m old female mix) who really loves to shred and destroy toys, which I have no problem with, but she unfortunately starts to ingest the materials. She’ll eat the stuffing from toys, or strings/fibers from stuff too. Idk how to get her to stop and basically I can’t leave her unsupervised with toys. Things that are hard like kongs/rubber chews she has and occasionally chews but they are not nearly as fun as destroyable stuff. We also have coffee wood which she doesn’t seem to eat as much of and she loves to chew. Should I maybe just accept that destroying toys is not gonna be one of her hobbies lmao?

Hey all! Just got a working line GSD. She’s 5 months old and has been in good kennels abroad since weaning. She’s perfect overnight in the crate and lasts 8hrs without a bother. Has her baby teeth in. Main issues we’re having is lead biting, bowl biting, evening zoomies and barking incessantly in the crate if she can see/hear us. We’ve resorted to going upstairs when we crate her during the day otherwise she WILL.NOT.STOP. Have made the crate the best place ever, covered it, has a multitude of chew toys which we try to distract her with from the bowl, ignore her when she barks but drop treats in if she’s quiet. Take her out for a pee break and straight back in….. Any advice? I grew up with Shepherds but this girl is breaking me.

…one of them cries nonstop any time it's just her and her sister in the puppy pen. She gets REALLY worked up. It isn't anxiety, either, it's fussiness at wanting to be anywherebutthepen. If I let her out, she stops crying immediately, regardless if the mom is there or not, but obviously 1. That just reinforces her behavior and 2. There's no way I'm leaving a 4 week old puppy unsupervised overnight while I sleep.

I live in an apartment and am so worried I'm gonna piss my neighbors off. How do I handle this awkward ~4 week transition period between weaning and trainability??

By the time we get out of work, it’s dark.

What we’ve been doing is walking around the neighborhood at night on weekdays & then using weekends to go to parks and stuff.

What can we do on weekdays? The reason I haven’t been going to stores and stuff is because he is not at the point where he can be that close to people/dogs and staying calm. Should we go anyways? I am worried he will be above threshold and it would do more harm than good.

We had puppy classes on Mondays but that ended. We learned a lot doing those classes, but he was above threshold during that too. He’s just a very very alert dog & he focuses very hard on his surroundings.