Category: Top Dog

10 month old, male (not yet neutered), GSD/Rottweiler rescue mix, 75lbs, in great health. He slipped going up our carpeted stairs last night and was clearly hurt. We brought him into the vet and they found he had dislocated his hip and then diagnosed him with moderate hip dysplasia. They were literally booking him for FHO urgent surgery today but thankfully they were able to pop it back in and are going to send him home later today. It’ll be a long, fairly complex recovery but we’re just glad he’s coming home and that we didn’t have to rush into a surgery.

My question is the stairs in our house. We will now be purchasing a ramp for our vehicles, monitoring his activities more closely, take him to physio etc, but our carpeted stairs are fairly steep and he does go up and down them multiple times a day since our bedroom and his bedroom (yes, he has his whole own bedroom) are upstairs, and our living spaces are downstairs. Obviously we will be carrying him up and down the stairs for the foreseeable future, but once he’s 110% recovered in a few months, I’m wondering what we should do about the stairs. Some things I’m reading say that having him gently use the stairs once or twice a day is helpful for hip dysplasia, other sources say stairs should be avoided as much as possible.

Does anyone have any experiences with this, or resources to provide for the future? Thank you!!

For all the pet parents out there, check out this new newsletter I came across. I found this very helpful when buying holiday outfits for my cats and dogs. The holiday gift guide includes some amazing outfits to adorn your cats in for the holidays, design-forward accessories etc.

Hi all, I have been on here for a vent in the past but looking for advice this time around!

My puppy (5 1/2 months) has been with us since 8 weeks and, because there are 5 of us in the house – 2 of whom work from home, she hasn’t ever spent more than 30 – 45 mins on her own. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, she had to be left alone for an hour today and when I came home she was still barking and obviously distressed. This of course is understandable as we’ve failed at introducing alone time from early on.

She had access outside and plenty of food and water so thankfully she hadn’t destroyed anything and she didn’t potty inside (which is still proving an issue at this time). Although I don’t think its relevant to this topic, it’s probably worth noting that although she has a crate as a personal space, we didn’t go down the crate training route as our previous dog of the same breed never took to it.

Are we just too late now or have any of you lovely people had experience teaching a dog to be less distressed by being left alone in the home? Are there any particular training techniques that can and should be implemented at this stage? I don’t want her to be this stressed out in future when inevitably she has to be left alone and we can’t get doggy care.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

For years, our female Cane Corso has been robbing me of foot space in our queen sized bed. We also now have an 11 month old Great Dane, who is just a big love and wants nothing more than to share the family bed.

I’m extremely tempted to push two doubles/full-sized mattresses together to make a super bed to be able to accommodate two humans and roughly 240 pounds of dogs. My husband thinks I’m crazy, but he’s down.

I know that not everyone lets their dogs sleep in bed with them. But those that do, what size is your bed and how many dogs does it sleep?