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. 🐶🥰

Not sure what to tag this. I have a 9 month old GSD/Husky/Mountain Cur. She's beautiful and sweet and smart, and is in the middle of training with me but is doing well. I've had her about a month and a half. I have wanted a dog for a long time, and my partner and I talked about it on and off periodically with no real seriousness, and than suddenly over the course of December, we went from talking to owning. There is no issue with the pup, the issue is me and trying to balance my life. My partner and I are both nurodivergents and get easily over stimulated, and as you can imagine, a 50% husky pup can easily set that off. I walk, play, train, and do brain games between 1.5 to 2 hours a day with her, plus cuddles and weekly exposures/outings. She also goes to doggy daycare a few days a week. I love taking care of her, I love training her, I love snuggling with her. The problem is this: I don't know how to work, manage my household, have a social life, and raise a good dog all at the same time. Im not trying to be dramatic, but I literally collapsed on my kitchen floor two weeks ago from being so tired. Like out of nowhere knees buckled and it took me 5 min to be able to stand again. Puppy has been dealing with Giardia, and while meds have helped, it's still rare for me to get a full good 8 hours. My job is remote, but very mentally demanding, and I also do the cooking, grocery and other shopping, and most of the day to day cleaning. My husband jumps in when he can, but he just came back from a pretty traumatic event a few months ago and I'm hesitant to lean on him. I have a lot of friends that are very pro dogs, that all talked about how they would help, but now that I've had her they all sort of disappeared. I don't blame them, they've all had very legitimate reasons for not being able to hang out/help with pup, but I'm dying. Also, she's been very expensive between daycare and various vet things do to her being sick. Im confident this will reduce in the next few months, but for now I feel stretched in every direction. I will not give up pup, I love her and I'm excited to meet the dog she will grow to be, but I don't know how to balance the day to day and my mental health. I just feel I have no time and when I do, I just want to sleep. :/ help!

My puppy is called Buddy, like the title says. He is a 7 month old German shepherd puppy. About 6 days ago he sprained his paw. We called the vets, but were told to keep an eye on him instead of bringing him in. He was limping and constantly giving us the sore paw. He stopped eating his puppy food when he started limping, he took chicken and treats so we thought. Let’s give him chicken while’s he’s not feeling great. So this goes on for about 4 days. We even tried putting his food up a little higher thinking it might be hurting his leg if the bowl was on the floor. Nope. So my Mum had the idea he was getting too used to good food. So today we gave him his puppy food in the morning he didn’t touch it. We later gave him a bone he normally loves and he picked it up for a moment then dropped it and forgot about it. Mum tried giving him more later, but he still isn’t touching it. He’s still limping a little, but that’s getting better.

He’s not even eating our cats food. (I know he shouldn’t eat the cats food, but when our cat leaves some, he’s usually like a furry dishwasher 😅)

What can I do, he isn’t eating his biscuits either. I can’t afford to get him to the vets right now.

Mum thinks he’s just being fussy, but he’s a bit depressed too right now.

How can I help him eat?

Thank you.

My 22 week old Cavapoo puppy is comfortable with her crate, and settles in it well when we put her in there for enforced naps, but doesn’t seem to naturally see it as a place of rest.

We have a set up for her where her crate is joined to a pen. The pen helps restrict her space while we get on with chores etc. Often when she is tired, she will happily lie down and settle on the floor either inside or even outside the pen but never really takes herself into the crate.

We would love for her to see her crate as the ultimate place of rest rather than simply a place for enforced naps. In general, she doesn’t fall asleep outside of the crate. She will settle but not physically sleep until she’s very very tired or we enforce a nap.

Any ideas on how to get her to take herself into the crate when she’s tired please?

We welcomed a very crazy, energetic yellow lab in October at 8 weeks old. He came from a rescue where his momma and littermates were found dumped in a drainage ditch, one of the poor little guys got hit and didnt make it.

It's been cold in the Midwest since he received his last round of shots so we took our very first walk around the neighborhood today while the weather was cooperating. He was excited for all of 3 minutes.

I thought he was just a little fearful of car rides, I've had to pick him up and place him in the car while the poor guy was shaking on any necessary trip out. On our walk, I realized he was less excited about all the sights and sounds and just petrified of parked cars. His ears were back the whole time and he had to hide behind me at times. Moving cars he found more interesting than scary.

Im hoping with warmer weather we can try to take him to places he will like in the car and grab pup cups and all the things our older dog enjoys so much.

Does anyone have any advice on how to help him through this? I feel for him and hope we can resolve this through support and positive associations. I will nit be able to lift him into a car when he is full grown, he's 45 lbs now and Im already struggling.

I have a 9 week old puppy who loves to play.

The other day we were playing in the yard with one of those plastic/rubber soccer balls for dogs. I was kicking/dribbling it around and she was chasing me.

Well I went to kick it and she unexpectedly jumped where I was aiming, and the result was accidentally hitting her with the ball right in the face/head from about 5 feet away.

Yes, I should have been more careful and I obviously felt terrible about it immediately.

She yelped and ran away, but was otherwise uninjured. I felt terrible and gave her kisses pets, and tried to reassure her.

Her behavior after has otherwise been completely normal, no fear/cowering or anything like that and she is just as playful as ever with every other toy.

However, today when we were in the yard I knocked the ball (not towards her!) for her to chase like she used to, but she immediately started shaking and ran towards the door to go back inside.

I then put the ball away and tried to coax her back out but she didn’t even want to go outside after that.

Is there a proper way to overcome this so it’s not a long term issue? I’d love for her to be happy playing with the ball again like she used to, but I don’t wanna make it worse by trying to force the issue, so the ball is put away for now.

Anyone have any tips?

Naps have been relatively good up until ~5 days ago. We generally follow a 1 hr up 2 hrs down, and she’s been pretty great with it. Now we’re on day 5 of her absolutely hating naps. She’ll bark and cry and claw non-stop. We’ve been having to sit next to her until she falls asleep, but I’m worried this is the wrong thing to do and teaching her we will stay with her for her to fall asleep. But as of now nothin else has worked. I’ve tried going in so she can see me, then leave and come back 5 mins later. She’ll cry and bark the whole time. We’ve let her go 20 mins straight and she doesn’t let up. Any advice on how best to navigate this?