Category: Top Dog

I’m a first time dog owner at 66-years old. I have a 15-lb maybe poodle mix who is about 14-months old. I’ve had him for 6-months now.

I live on a short, crappy street. I do live about 4-minutes away from a really nice park with walking trails (not dog park and all dogs need to be leashed). So we go there for about 45-60 minutes at least 5 days a week. I also have a fenced in yard where we play and he does business.

All our walks are really sniff walks. I let him lead the way. Of course we say hello to other dogs, people, etc. and I’m really lucky he is non-reactive. Sometimes he does try to keep up pace with a jogger but I’m old with bad knees and hips so that isn’t happening. But overall, he is a really good dog.

HOWEVER, there are days where I feel like I’m forcing him to go. I say time for park/walk and he plays dead weight so I have to carry him to the car. One day he started trembling in the car really bad so we just walked my short crappy street instead.

What I don’t understand is why isn’t he excited to go? He loves it when we get there. I know he has an issue with car rides but it’s literally 4-minutes. And he doesn’t cry or seem nervous but it did take a few months to get him used to short rides. I can’t go more than 15-minutes or he gets sick and starts fidgeting.

So what am I doing wrong? Is it bad that there are days where I’m forcing him to go? Why isn’t he excited?

I switched to Hill’s science dog food. My dogs love it more compared to their old food but only issue is that it smells heavily like salmon. I bought a no-odor container but it doesn’t do the job.

I’ve recently started working from home and thought it would be perfect having my dog around all day… turns out they don’t aggree with my meeting schedule. As soon as I sit down to work, they’re bored, following me around, dropping toys at my feet, or getting into things they normally wouldn’t. I feel bad because they’re used to more attention and stimulation, but I also need to actually get work done. I’m curious how other dog people handle this and keep their dogs entertained during the workday without losing their sanity. Thanks in advance

My pet dogs hate having showers, so I was wondering if by rewarding them after the shower, they would, in the future, be excited to shower. Would this work?

Hello, My dog is around 12, but he is pretty old and has a few different health problems, mostly his hips.

Anyways: he follows me around asking for food, and he is always looking for scraps no matter the size. But he doesn't eat all of his food, and sometimes he doesn't eat or skips one meal.

He is on medication for his hips right now, but I don't think that is the cause.

Am I overreacting or should I be worried.

Thank you

i have two small dogs (7lb and 13lb) and they both have winter jackets. we live in a climate that regularly gets below 0°F in the winter. basically everybody i know teases me for having them wear coats, but why in the world would we not have them?!

AKC says that small breeds shouldn't spend more than 15 minutes outside in below freezing temps, and we experience colder temps than that for a solid 4-5 months. i obviously minimize our time outside but everyone's gotta do their business and they need to be warm when they do so!

i'm not being silly for buying my dogs winter coats, i'm simply taking care of them. why is it still a ridiculous idea to so many people?

Hey everyone, As some of you might know there are dogs that get transported/adopted up north by Texas based rescues and shelters .

We are one of those Rescues, 95% of our dogs are adopted out of state and it’s worked really well for us as we’ve gotten over 200 dogs adopted since 2022. We mostly get those adopters through leads from Petfinder.

They recently did an update on their site and have previously come out with some rules regarding posting dogs in other states that makes it harder for our dogs to be seen.

Right now we went from getting sometimes five inquiries a day to zero over the past week since we got in compliance with their new rules.

The rule I’m talking about is in regards to posting dogs out of their physical location. To stay in compliance, we would essentially only be able to advertise in our local area instead of across the country as we have been doing.

They also came out with a new filter that needs to be checked if people coming to the site want to see dogs from out of state on their local listing.

While we understand, the reason behind doing that, it’s not in the easiest spot to see, and most people may not know they could save a dog from a different state until they stumble upon our Petfinder profiles and then go to our website to see our transport program.

We’re hoping for a quick resolution otherwise Rescue will be dead in the water until we find another pipeline. On that note, we are starting an email list (form can be found by clicking link at top of our website) and will be posting more on our socials. We’ve had to find different pipelines before so we know that we will figure something out, but in the meantime, it’s a devastating blow to us.

Keep an eye on situation, share the information privately and or publicly, reach out to us on Instagram or through our email. Thanks for reading.

Jeff

Co-Founder

FosterDocHouston Dog Rescue