Category: Top Dog

My wife and I recently got a Golden retriever puppy that’s now coming up on 10weeks. He’s been such a joy to have, although here and there *definitely* has his moments (which is to be expected!)

One thing we’re having trouble with is leaving the house without him howling his mind away. He’s on a fairly strict schedule and has eased much better into enforced naps, about 3-4 throughout the day, but when he sees us leave even if he’s in the play pen, he sings the song of his people.

We’re trying to be better ignoring him once all his needs are met, and progress has been steady, but we feel shackled to our space. Either she leaves and I stay, or the other way around.

This weekend we have family visiting and of course we’ve established our situation but we’re trying to how best navigate when we’ll be out 1-2.5 hours out of the day multiple times and with our little guy.

For context he takes naps in the crate and his play pen, he’s easy to put down if we shush him and give him pets as he’s in his crate, but we literally tip toe around the house to ensure he stays asleep and doesn’t hear us leave if we even get a chance to!

Hi all! I have a 13 week old lab. Had her since she was 8 weeks. She is teething so she is a little bitey. The thing is, she has stopped biting me a bunch. She will get mouthy with me very rarely but for some reason she is very bitey with my boyfriend. She accidentally got her tooth in his ear and he pulled her off him and it ripped his ear open. I’m thinking it’s how he responds to the biting. He moves quickly, tries to get his hand away or move her away, which I’m thinking she thinks is a game. Typically I ignore the biting or say ow and she stops. I’m just not sure why she really goes after him lol. Advice maybe??

I got an 8 week old puppy. I lost my job before I even got him (3 weeks before pickup).

So I was able to do everything right. Train. Leave in short spurts and come back. All the suggested separation anxiety training. Got him to the point where he can sleep in pen in another room without screaming or any issue.

He's 14 weeks now.

I just got a new job.. but it's from 8am to 6pm 5 days a week I'm gone. Today was my 3rd day… (my old job was fully WFH so it was going to be easy…)

All the training seems to have gone down the drain. When I get home, he's screaming and screeching. I get my neighbor to check in on him and they're able to check in at noon and at 3pm for about 20 minutes.

I'm afraid he might get separation anxiety once this job continues like this…

My 18 week old Golden has been sleeping through the night most nights. However, the past two nights he has started whining/barking in the middle of the night to go outside. I don’t want to ignore his needs but I am concerned that he may have figured out that he gets my attention when he’s bored and barks in the middle of the night. So where do you draw the line and get out of bed when your puppy starts whining/barking in their crate at night for a legitimate potty break vs. just ignoring it?

Hello,

I have a 7 month old golden retriever. He's recently began some new behaviors that are both concerning and frustrating (perhaps this is the "teenage" phase)

First of all, he is forgetting/ignoring commands he was very receptive to for months; things like place, down, come, even sit. He is resistant to learning new commands, too. He's destructive too. From what I read, this is relatively normal for his age and breed.

What I am mostly concerned about is his new resistance to relaxing. Before, he was comfortable laying down (without napping) on his own in a gated room of the house. I used positive reinforcement when he would relax as a puppy, but stopped this long ago because he seemed to get the hang of it. Now, he does not lay down at all unless he is exhausted and needs to nap. It doesn't seem like he wants to play, either. He won't pick up toys or come up to me. Now, he will just pace around the house and pant for long durations of time… I can't really coax him out of it/ train him to relax the same way J did when he was a puppy. Is this concerning? Is there any way I can train him to be okay with relaxing again, even with his recent training resistance ?

hi everyone. my puppy just turned 6 months a few days ago but he’s randomly started peeing and pooping in the house and not outside whatsoever. we sometimes spend long periods of time playing outside and the second we come in he decides to pee on the rug. this started randomly, he’s always been good about his potty training but now he’s extremely out of wack as of 2 days ago. He did just get neutered a week ago so im wondering if that could maybe have something to do with it? Or is this a regression thing maybe?

We adopted our puppy back in October at 12 weeks. He is now 7 months old and this is the basic account of how things have been going for other people to use however they please, lol. (Additional context, I work from home)

Potty Training: I would say he was successfully potty trained by end of December (~2 months of training). The first night we got him, we took him out every hour in our backyard to go to the bathroom. He did such a good job with minimal accidents inside. That was the basic idea in general, was to take him out every hour with increased space in between potty breaks as he got older. There was lots of praise when he went with tying the word “pee” and “poop” when he went so we could encourage him when walks started.

When he did have an accident, we never punished. We might accidentally yell “No” but it was hard to stop when you see that squat happen lol he would be taken out immediately to finish pottying. His last accident indoors was back in December and that was because he was sick. I’m sure we might have a couple more before he hits a year, but he can hold through the night and up to 4 hours during the day! He also signals to go out and we say “want to go outside?” before opening the door so he associates the phrase with it.

Socialization: We started with treats and a sling bag. We took him on walks before he was fully vaccinated and worked on acclimating him to different sights, sounds, and people and encouraging him with praise and treats when reacting the way we wanted. After full vaccination, he goes to a puppy daycare 1-2x per week (more on that later), we also introduced him to friends dogs who we trust. He is a happy rambunctious pup!

Training: We signed him up for a two week puppy training course at a local place, same place as the daycare. This was the best thing we invested money in. It was two weeks of intense training for him that covered sit, stay, climb, down, heel, and crate training. Just the basics. It gave us the foundation to work on everything else. He now knows sit, drop it, shake, spin, touch, down and wait, and we’re working on others. It’s been a struggle to find a treat he likes the most, but he is very very toy motivated! He has to work for us to throw the toy by going through his tricks.

Because he is so toy motivated, we worked a lot on drop it. He gets snappy sometimes with my partner (because I’m the main trainer), but for the most part we continue to make progress every month.

Crate Training/Enforced Naps: The training camp was the best thing that ever happened to us. Crate training was a game changer for him and us. From month 3-6, we did 1 hour up, 2-hours asleep. After the 6 month mark, I began to keep him out all day while I work (with the occasional nap during the day). I encourage calmness while I’m in meetings by feeding treats when he lays at my feet. He only goes into his crate at night and even takes himself (which I never thought would happen to us).

I’m working currently on leaving him out while we leave the house. Longest trip away has been 10 minutes lol otherwise he goes in his crate to wait for us to get home.

Challenges: He got sick with a respiratory infection right before Christmas which was terrifying and resulted in an ER visit, that was tough and set back a lot of our training and was tough to work from home while he needed help.

He then got sick with Giardia a month later, lol, it made me wish for the respiratory infection. So far we seem to have beat that. That resulted in a week-long deep cleaning regimen and the addition of probiotics and food topper (Bernie’s Perfect Poops). Fun note for that, to trick him into taking liquid medications I would give him water that the chicken was boiled in in the syringe throughout the day, so by the time he needed the meds, I would just switch it out and he took it easily!

(Also really recommend pet insurance because those ER visits are expense 😅)

Overall: The first three months were the most challenging. I really recommend working with a trainer or training class of some kind and having the budget already set-aside to do that before adopting a puppy, you just never know what might pop up or what you’ll struggle with because each puppy is different. We feel very lucky that he’s developed a calmer personality and does well with dogs and cats. It’s constant work, but we love our boy! (Now if he could just stop getting sick lol)

Happy to go into more detail on any section for anyone who needs it!

Hey there community!

I have a senior schnauzer shell be 13 YO this April and she’s in good health go on walks twice a day, eats well, and have never had any issues besides growths in her chest, recently took her to the vet and she was like I have seen dogs in perfect health going downhill really quick and so that really stocked up on me and I want to know if you have had a schnauzer how long did your baby live? I know that there is not an actual answer to predict this but I just want to be prepared or understand what signs I should be aware of. TIA.

Any recs that are challenging enough to keep a puppy occupied for awhile?

My dog (1.4year old Pomeranian) has been doing very good with potty training so far. We have a regular schedule of walks and he will consistently go outside on those walks. However he is prone to going inside if he isn’t within my sight, like for example, he will wander upstairs and relieve himself while I’m trying to work, often soon after a walk. I work from home and I’m able to give him a lot of attention but I do need to focus on work sometimes. I noticed I will find an accident after seeing him pacing and panting, which I could consider a potty cue, however, everything seems to stress him out so he is often panting and pacing for various reasons ( for example I am on the couch and he is not lol/ I’m eating food and he is not/ someone is outside) .

How should I go about redoing his potty training and how can I better get him to signal to me he needs to go? And do you have any recommendations for helping him feel more relaxed??