Category: Top Dog

So I have a Bernese mountain dog and he loves to go out on the balcony in the winter. I love him to death but hate getting up repeatedly to let him in/out when he can’t decide what he wants.

I’m looking for recs of dog door inserts for a sliding door that would fit a giant bread like him (if one of these even exists)

I am at very wits end. My german shepherd (8years old) has been pooping in my house overnight. He gets let outside several times leading up to bedtime and not even a hour passes after bedtime he will poop(often times he will do it 2 times and I clean it immediately) health wise there is absolutely nothing wrong with him and we have spent 100s of dollars on tests thinking this behavior was so odd. He was potty trained as soon as we got him as a puppy and never ever had issues. How can I correct this behavior.

Looking for new ideas. My 10 month old standard poodle sneaks away to poop on the carpet upstairs and occasionally on the rug downstairs (the rest of hardwood).

Quick back story: She was very resistant to poop training initially outside. She spent her first 8 weeks being walked outside on a leash during training. She would freak out and pull away when it was time to poop. At the breeders she pooped on mulch outside. We also have that option here and she seems to prefer it over the grass.

We often watch her and give her intense praise and treats when she poops outside.

We thought we got a groove but it's been very up and down. She almost always poops outside in the mornings but the rest of the day is a complete toss up. She doesn't really have a schedule of when she poops so it's hard to predict (she may only poop once in a day or three times).

Yesterday we got back from my in-laws which have a very similar carpet/hardwood set up and ZERO accidents. I walked her outside for a while when we arrived before giving up. She went inside and pooped in my son's room within 5 minutes (she did not eat during the long car ride so I assumed she didn't have to go). This morning she pooped outside aaaand just now pooped in my other son's room.

After the initial regular puppy training period, I probably spent about 6 weeks with her literally leashed to me every minute of the day to not allow her the ability to sneak away to poop thinking it would break the habit. It did not. We'll have a week of no accidents here and there then back to pooping in the house every day. I'm at my wits end. I can't leash her to me permanently or block off all the carpeted areas she has pooped in.

I have a 5 month old maltipoo who is the best baby ever… other than peeing and pooping in her kennel. When I got her she was making a mess in her kennel no matter how often I’d let her out. So we put puppy pads in her kennel for easy clean up in the mornings. I think that inadvertently taught her to use the bathroom in her kennel. When loose in the house she’ll run to the kennel to use the restroom. I take her out and she’ll use it, but 30 mins later she’s used it again in her kennel. Every single morning I wake up I have to clean her kennel and she’s soaked in urine so I’m having to give her a bath every other day. I’ve done what I know to do in the past which is limit water/food intake, frequent trips outside and using a kennel divider. It’s like she doesn’t care or she just thinks she has to use it in the kennel because of the puppy pads(that we don’t use anymore). I’m not sure but im at a loss. I’ve never had this problem before. Please help 😭

We adopted a rescue about 3 months ago. She is a 2 year old lab mix. When we first got her, I would take her on a walk first thing in the morning. I would try letting her out in the yard first while I got ready, but she would just bark and not go to the bathroom. So I just started leaving her in her crate until I was ready and we would go for walks. She had zero issues on walks and would pee and poop just fine. A month ago I noticed some pee spots on our carpet, just a few. I guess I assumed she peed in the yard during the day but now I'm not so sure. Two weeks ago I ended up getting sick and wasn't able to walk her like I normally do and then her issues really started to take light. She will hold her pee for over 24 hours, which can't be good. I've been keeping a close eye on her and kenneling her when I can't, but she refuses to pee in the yard. I have a 4 year old daughter so I can't walk her multiple times a day to get her to pee. She poops just fine in the yard.

There was one time when I let her outside because she seemed like she needed to pee and did nothing and then peed on our carpet right in front of me. I did get upset at that point, which now I realize was a big mistake because it has lead to more regression.

She is afraid of my husband and men in general. She will bark at him if he tells her to get off the couch or if she is in her kennel and he walks in the room. He can't let her out of her kennel either because she will try to bit him if he tried to open the crate. She has gotten better, but this has led the bathroom issue to be solely my responsibility. He had a hard time letting her outside and getting her to come back in.

She was from Texas and we live in Minnesota. We got some snow a few days ago and that seemed to lead to regression too. This wasn't the first snow of the year though. She also doesn't seem to want to pee where she peed before. With the snow, I can see where she has peed. She will sniff there and walk away.

Right now, I'm not walking her until she is consistently peeing in the yard. I give treats and praise after peeing in the yard.

In May, we adopted a shelter pup who came to us as a stray. They guessed that he was 3-5 years old. He was not even remotely potty trained.

FINALLY though, we trained him 🙂 he doesn’t potty in the house.

And then we got a rug. Our dogs love the rug, it gives them purchase to wrestle and play. But when we aren’t around, our shelter pup will potty on the rug.

We don’t let him access the rug unsupervised anymore and we block off that section of the house overnight. Sometimes we mess up and he’ll go pee on it. And then last night he got through the barrier and pottied on it (pee and poo).

There are no medical issues, we just did a urine analysis and recently did bloodwork. And it’s only ever rugs.

I’ve seen people say to just go back to regular potty training and have a party outside when he goes. Is that the only thing to do? I feel like we need to catch him right before he tries to pee on the rug and then redirect that so that he understands the rug is not a place for potty. But maybe that’s not necessary? But we’re losing our minds 🙂

Hi guys. This is my first time posting on Reddit, but I seriously need a second (and third and fourth) opinion. Honestly, just a space to word vomit as my reactive dog has taken over my life. I am not very straight to the point so feel free to skim or just get to the main paragraph of this.

We have a reactive dachshund (about to turn 3), who as a puppy was for the most part great, but exhibited a small amount of reactiveness and resource guarding towards me and my boyfriend. This was very manageable until he turned 1 (he got neutered around the same time, it used to feel correlated but idk anymore ), the aggression escalated to serious bites and now strangers have been victim to this. He also developed dog reactivity but that is not the point of this post. I also want to make it clear that this is not his default setting. He is such a love 80-96% of the time. The issue is that when the switch flips, we understand the “a to b” of his reactiveness half of the time, but the other half is totally random, like a lot of one offs.

To preface: I was in over my head with this dog. I grew up with dogs my whole life (all mixed breeds), and somehow lucked out with them having the easiest personalities. So I definitely did not fully understand what having a more demanding breed entails. Obviously as his reactiveness presented itself, we tried locking in to training and ran the gamut on various methods. Boarding, multiple trainers, general obedience classes, positive reinforcement, Prozac (he is off it now), e collar training(which he is currently on), agility classes, etc. All of these have helped, some more than others, and he has made great strides if different aspects of his life. Despite this, he still has bursts of reactiveness, in varying levels. We did see a behaviorist who believes he has rage syndrome, which she says is usually from bad breeding. A lot of what she says about this makes sense, but I also believe that we have also contributed to his reactiveness unknowingly. There were things I missed as an owner and I take full responsibility. We could’ve worked on disciplining more/started training earlier/just doing more. Hindsight is 20/20.

More context: My dog has bitten 8 people, including myself and my boyfriend. We were reaching a dangerous level of hopelessness, as his bites kept escalating, we were always on guard and scared about taking him outside, and we were essentially scared of him in general. He was definitely running our life, and we did not know what to do.

More context: We found a well known dog trainer who had a history of working with reactive dachshunds with a biting history. The training involves the e collar. And yes I understand the consensus of e collar training here, and believe me if I could go without doing it I would. This is literally our last hope,(We’ve talked about rehoming him, but we love him so much and know that many places will not take him with his record, and he does not deserve to have an uncertain future.) Honestly our trainer is so great and so knowledgeable with this whole thing. Regarding our e collar training- we pair a e collar correction with our “No” command, as the desired outcome is to be able to say no without the added correction (still in the early stages of the whole e collar training).

More context (sorry I want to give a full picture): I will say, since taking him off Prozac and using the e collar training along with a very structured schedule, we have seen a positive change in him.

MAIN POINT: Anyway, I have a resource guarding question. He has classic reactive responses to high value treats, and is good at the “leave it command” for lower value/non food items. There’s a specific scenario tho with high/medium value treats that’s leaves me confused. For example, we were at my mom’s sleeping over and my mom gave him a yak chew (medium value treat). All great, he was running around with it as we were seated on the sofa. He eventually came to us with the treat and sat at our feet, very calm to the point I was giving sporadic pets to work on his reactivity. I got up to grab something, and when I sat back down he growled like 5 seconds later and took his treat to the corner of the room. I did not look at him, touch him, anything of the sort. After that I traded him for the chew with a round of find it’s with . But this is not a new occurrence. Like at home I’ll give him a no hide bone (high value), something he can chew on for a while and I’ll give him space, but often times like 15 min later he’ll come up and sit right next to me on the sofa chewing the sofa and will let me pet him and sometimes leaves the treat next to me while he gets water and then will come back very normal. Other times, he’ll be in his dog bed with the treat and if I walk by close-ish, he’ll give me whale eye and sometimes a growl and on the extreme occasions, will immediately lunge and bite. This has been going on before the e collar training and after.

Does anyone have any insight on this? Like why is he doing this? Anything is welcome, and like should I get up and remove myself and try to get him to eat his treat in a designated place, or is it good that he feels comfortable going ham on his treat next to me/sometimes on me? We spend a lot of time together since I’m wfh, so should I be creating more distance from him?

Any opinions or tips are welcome, truly I want to be the best I can for this dog. Also sorry for being long winded and any grammatical errors, I’m writing this at 4am and there’s so much I want to say.