Category: Top Dog

Hi everyone, looking for some advice (and maybe reassurance!).

We have a Labrador puppy who turns 20 weeks old this Friday, and toilet training has been much harder than we expected. We’ve been really consistent — taking him out to the garden as soon as he wakes up, after meals, after naps, and after playtime.

He’s had a couple of accidents on our carpet, and now he seems to actively prefer going there. He does circle beforehand, but it’s always on the carpet. As soon as we see him start circling, we take him straight outside — but he often just runs back in and tries to go on the carpet again. Sometimes this cycle repeats multiple times, and it feels like we’re getting nowhere.

When he toilets outside, we give lots of praise and high-value treats immediately, but it doesn’t seem to be fully clicking yet.

For extra context:

• We tried toilet pads, but he just rips them up.
• We also tried bell training, which unfortunately didn’t work for him.
• Very occasionally he will tell us he needs to go out, but it’s rare.

A few questions:

• Is this normal for a nearly 5-month-old Lab?
• How do we break the carpet preference?
• Are we accidentally reinforcing the run-back-inside behaviour?
• Should he be signalling more reliably at this age?

We’re trying really hard to set him up for success, so any tips, reassurance, or things that worked for your puppies would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!

My bf and I just got a free 6-month old puppy from a friend of ours.

She’s a shiba inu & a precious baby!

The only issues are that she’s going through a lot of adjustments. She has no vaccines, but has a dewormer so far and has been an indoor puppy using bathroom mats in a fenced setting. Walks have been challenging as I’ve been short leashing her and getting her used to walking without dragging herself. We did get her a crate recently too, and I did try welcoming her to her food and water inside the crate so she doesn’t feel punished. I did ignore her cries until she stopped, which had me unlock it.

We’re taking her to get fixed with vaccines at the end of the month. Meanwhile we’re waiting, I believe she’s going through a heat cycle simultaneously while getting used to our home and our cat. She ragebaits the cat a lot while also wanting to play with her, and our cat gets along with dogs most times except for right now. Cat has no anger toward us luckily. On top of that, puppy has a stubborn behavior not responding to commands and sometimes her name. We try giving positive reinforcement, but sometimes she can be a brat and refuse treats.

I’d like some help with what to do.

I have a 4 month old Portuguese water dog puppy. She’s an angel besides the biting. Typically she’s been taking about 1.5-2hr naps every 2 hours or so throughout the day. This week she started sleeping sometimes 4 hours at one go. Is this a miracle and we officially hit a new sleep schedule or is she sick? Behavior is totally normal during the day and she did just get her last shots about 10 days ago so we’ve been going on walks around the neighborhood but no large exposures that she didn’t have before. She’s also teething. Just feeling anxious and need some reassurance 😅

My little dog-ter is a Chihuahua-terrier mix (18 weeks), an adorable but fierce landshark, and (as would be expected) extremely excitable. Has anyone seen a correlation between their choice of dog food and their dog's mood/excitability?

We're deciding where to land with her diet moving forward, and any help would be appreciated. 🐶🥰