Category: Top Dog

For the most part, my dog has been amazing. He’s 15 weeks and super smart. He knows an absolute ton of tricks and is super loving. BUT and this is a MASSIVE stickler point for me. He’s showing aggression. I don’t know why or where something has gone wrong. He bites clothes and starts tugging. He won’t let go unless you physically rip the clothing out of his mouth. Sometimes he’ll loosen his grip and then bite again but sometimes he catches your skin. I’m at the end of my tether. Redirection doesn’t work. Throwing treats doesn’t work. Telling him to ‘drop’ doesn’t work. He just did it to my daughter and caught her leg. She’s 4 and was absolutely petrified. My cat is absolutely petrified. When I tried to get him off her, he started barking and lunging at me to bite me. I have to be honest, it frightened me. He’s going to be a very large bully breed, a breed I’ve grown up with all my life and have only ever known wonderful gentle dogs. I lost my temper. I am covered head to toe in cuts and bruises from this dog. I’m not ashamed to say I hit his bottom with a rolled up newspaper and shouted so much so he cowered behind the sofa. I know I’m going to get hate for that but what else do you do when a dog is behaving like this and your child is screaming in pain? He’s already 12+kg so those bites pack a punch.

What can I do? He goes for a walk every day. He lies with me once I’ve put my child to bed. He’s fed, bathed, played with. But the lunging and the barking in my face I can’t deal with. He runs back and forth and jumps on the sofa to get you. Is this normal puppy behaviour or not? Will he hate me now?

I'm curious about your thoughts on using a harness or collar to train a puppy. He's only 8 weeks, but I would like him to get used to the leash. I had to use a harness on our older dog as he was pretty rambunctious. Not sure about pups.

I’ve had my dog for about 2 years but unfortunately between my busy lifestyle and the financial burden (vet, daycare, dog parks, grooming, food, etc) has become too much for me. I already feel guilty because getting a dog was a choice I didn’t have to make but I did so please don’t make me feel worse 🙁 I recently made an account on rehome.adoptapet.com and I wanted to know if anyone had any experience with this or any other recommendations.

We are dealing with the dreaded coprophagia with our puppies.

We try our best to stop the poop eating and picking it up as soon as we can, which everyone says is the best solution, but things like when it happens overnight, or if it quietly happens in the 30 seconds we have our back turned, and their intentional sneaking around to do it makes that not 100% effective for us. They don't use the bathroom on their leash, not even on walks, so we can't leash them and take them outside to monitor it, but we still watch them as much as humanly possible and pick up everything we can, it just keeps happening. Sometimes they don't even let it hit the ground they just eat it as it is falling out of the other dog. But if I try to stop the dog from eating the falling poop, the pooping dog thinks he is in trouble for pooping and then it affects his potty training while he is in the correct spot doing nothing wrong. For the record, they are indoor potty trained, but when they poop on their pad they just immediately pick it up and sometimes carry it around the house.

• For-Bid did not stop it

• No Chew anti-poop eating treats of multiple different brands did not stop it

• Meat Tenderizer did not stop it

We have now resorted to multiple possible fixes at the same time, which is we are mixing in their food all of the following: one of these multivitamin chews in their food in case it is a vitamin B deficiency, freeze dried gut health mix-in treats in case it is a gut issue, pineapple in case it is a flavor thing, "Ac'cent All Natural Flavor Enhancer" in case it is a flavor thing, and wet food only so they actually eat everything (one of the puppies is picky and if he doesn't like the food he just will not eat after the first bite).

My question is with all of the above mixed into their food, or should I still be picking up the poop immediately, or should I start letting them take a few bites/sniffs before stopping them so if the "flavor" is ruined they no longer show interest in future poops? My thought process is if I keep picking up the poop immediately, they both will not know that the flavor is ruined, and also continue to sneak and do it so I don't know to pick it up. But if I can get them turned off the poop entirely then I wouldn't need to worry about them eating poop every time I hear a suspicious lack of noise in the house. I also want to monitor patterns to see if it is something like they only eat the poop in specific situations, like if they are bored or anxious about something.