Category: Top Dog

Background:

I have a 4 year old German shepherd, husky, pointer mix who’s gone completely haywire recently. He’s a rescue and overall has been a great dog in the 3 years I’ve had him. He’s responded decently well to training, although he’s pretty slow to pick things up and retain. He’s the problem child I’ll be talking about.

He is bonded to my other dog, a 6 year old cattle dog/coonhound/pitbull mix, who is the sharpest, smartest dog I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. My pitty mix has always been a huge help with my German mix and will remind my German mix of boundaries and expectations frequently (biting his legs to get him down when he stands up on the dog gates, pushing him to the side when he’s not paying attention to where the baby is, things like that).

I also have two cats who have been raised around my dogs. They all coexist and love on each other all the time. My dogs have always treated the cats like their puppies and will gently correct bad behaviors, play with them (usually pups laying down and the cats will run around them and tackle them), and will come running if my cats sound like they’re in distress.

I’ve worked extensively with my dogs to train them. I’ve used positive reinforcement, ignoring attention seeking barking, distracting from triggers, confidence boosting, recall, etc. They work with me around my horses so I’ve needed them to be well trained.

The issue:

Recently, he’s been really bad and has started regressing in his training despite me being consistent in commands, rewards, and exercise. He chases the cats, has recently gone after my younger cat (didn’t hurt her or really put much effort into hurting her, but I couldn’t really tell what his intentions were), and he barks at EVERYTHING. It’s driving me nuts. I can’t figure out what’s happening. Car drives by? He barks. People talk outside the door? He barks. A squirrel goes by? He barks. Delivery man walks up or someone knocks? He goes berserk. He’s starting to make my cattle dog/pitbull mix regress in his training too. I’ve never seen my dogs act this way. It’s gotten to the point where my daughter has been refusing naps because he barks so much while she’s asleep and it wakes her up.

The only thing I can think of that’s changed (and a pretty big change too) is I’m pregnant with my second baby due in January, and my toddler has started walking and being more active with the dogs. They’ve been nothing but gentle and sweet with her though, so I don’t know if it’s just anxiety around protecting her or stress? I’m at my wits end, someone please help me.

I adopted a rescue from Ukraine — her name is Polly, she’s about 9–10 months old, and she’s one of the sweetest, gentlest dogs I’ve ever met… but also extremely fearful. I don’t think she was abused — more like she lived around lots of dogs and never had to navigate the world solo. When she arrived, she mostly stayed in her crate or on the couch. Didn’t follow us. Didn’t explore. Wouldn’t go outside voluntarily at all.

We’ve been working slowly and gently: consent-based handling, no forcing, no leash pressure, lots of agency. She loves affection in bed or on the couch, is starting to follow us from room to room, and has definitely bonded to us. The biggest breakthrough recently was taking her to Scotland for 3 weeks with a calm, confident dog. She started venturing outside, running laps in the yard, choosing to explore, even coming back inside on her own. We’re being careful not to push her too fast: long line, predictable routines, micro-sessions, etc.

Our goal now is to get her comfortable walking on leash when we’re back in London. Indoor leash desensitization is going slowly since the sound of dragging spooks her. We bought her a crate has detachable wheels so you can push it like a stroller. She’ll do 1–2 steps outside the stroller then retreat, but it’s improving. We’re also speaking to behaviourists and looking for a calm dog to walk with her regularly for modelling and confidence.

I guess what I’d love to hear is:

• If you had a dog like this, how long did it take until walks became normal?
• What actually moved the needle, something surprisingly minor, or a pattern you repeated?
• Did confidence come gradually or in sudden leaps?
• What worked specifically for threshold fear + leash tolerance?
• Any wins that kept you going when progress felt microscopic?

Not looking for magic fixes, just the perspective of people who’ve walked this path and come out the other side, even if it took months.

Polly is slowly finding her feet in the world and I want to support that the right way, without rushing her or accidentally creating setbacks. Any stories, timelines, or things that worked for your nervous rescue would mean a lot.

I have a 4 year old lab/pit mix, she was super sweet with my other dog (12 yr dachshund) and my mom’s 2 cats while I lived with mom but then I moved in with some friends and their dog attacked her a couple years ago. Since then she’s changed. I don’t know if I would say she’s reactive but when dogs would bark at her on our walks she became standoffish and try to lunge and she would try to chase after the stray cats. I immediately started muzzle training her and working on redirecting her attention away from the dogs and cats. This seemed to work, we can go on walks and she rarely needs the verbal commands, she just ignores everything but me. But now I moved back home with my mother and she has 2 new cats that my dog is not a fan of. She’s fine with older ones but showing aggression towards the new ones and none of what I did before seems to work. I’m out of work right now so I can’t afford for a professional trainer but I planned on looking for one as soon as I get a job. Right now I’m working on trying to redirect her from looking at the cats like food with treats, I keep her muzzle on when in the shared areas and take it off when on walks in our yard, feed her away from the other pets and keep her kenneled in my room when I’m out. Is there anything else I can do to help?

hi! my partner and i just adopted a rescue (4.5 months old) who is crate trained! and he does a great job. we’re still working on the crate command but he’s doing really well. ANYWAYS. everything online says that the front of his crate should be uncovered but when we do that he loses his mind. he’s only quiet and comfortable in there when the front (facing into our living room) IS covered. when he puts himself to bed and the door is open/uncovered it isn’t a problem. Is it bad if we continue to leave the front of the crate covered? or should we nip this in the bud now and get him used to it being uncovered. thanks in advance !!

Our coonhound is 8(ish) years old and driving us absolutely nuts. We love her to bits but we're all struggling a bit right now.

I know that she has been struggling on a higher level ever since our baby was born 13 months ago. It REALLY threw off her routine, and she has isolated herself a lot more ever since. We kept her away from the baby for a while because he really, really overstimulated her and she'd like try to climb in my lap while I was breastfeeding and things like that. It freaked me out a bit so she wasn't allowed around the baby for a while. She only wanted to be with me so she would stand at the gate and bark, bark, bark. She would get up in the middle of the night and bark. She wouldn't want anyone but me, and I was with the baby 90% of the time. Eventually she gave up asking and has been isolating herself a lot more ever since. She seems a bit depressed. Now that baby is older we have a much more regular routine with walks and treats and I offer snuggles but she doesn't really want them anymore. For example she and I used to snuggle on the couch after dinner every single night it was our standing routine for like years and she simply won't anymore. She's not interested. She is less overstimulated by the baby but doesn't really want anything to do with him and he seems to make her uncomfortable, so she again is kinda off by herself. Our other dog is much more comfortable around the baby so he gets more family time.

Anyway, all that to say she has other frustrations. But our frustration with her right now is that she is really struggling with the baby gates and closed doors in the house, especially in the evening. She scratches and barks to get in and out and she will continue to bark until we let her through. We only have one bedroom, and the baby is sleeping in there. We have gates on the stairs because she resource guards from the other dog so we usually keep the gate closed so they're not both in the kitchen at once.

It's driving us nuts. She will scratch to go through the door, and then she is barking to get out. Then she comes out, looks around, and wants to go back in. Then she wants to come out. Then she wants to go upstairs. Then she wants to come downstairs. Then in and out of the bedroom. And on and on and on. She will spend literally 90 seconds to 2 minutes in each space before wanting to move on, sometimes less like I don't even have time to walk back to the couch before she is barking again. She has multiple places to sleep in every area of the house. She has been fed. She has been walked. It takes her like an hour to settle down at night. This is also a relatively new behavior.

She just had her annual exam two weeks ago and is perfectly healthy.

We're going nuts and don't know how to help her. Anytime I am going in or out of the gates I offer to let her through and she rarely will go through when I offer, but of course 2 minutes later she absolutely MUST go through.

Does anyone have any suggestions. It's excruciatingly frustrating and I don't know how to deal with or why she is doing it.

We brought home our nine week old female goldendoodle the day before Thanksgiving and she's been an absolute dream! She sleeps in her crate every night from 10 to 5 and only cries for the first minute before self soothing. I introduced crate naps today and they were each about 1.5 hours, in the same room where we crate her at night. My question is should I make myself (and our other dogs) invisible to her during these naps or move freely around the house and have her get used to not always being apart of the action? I'm also attempting to crate her for 30 to 40 minutes of "independent play" twice daily where her crate is in whatever room I'm in which has gone better than I expected. I'm just unsure about how to approach the naps. Any tips would be appreciated!

I feel like l'm going to struggle to explain myself here in a good way, but here it goes…

My struggle is understanding what it takes to get some commands nailed down to the point that just the word itself works. For example why is 'sit' and 'down' so easy compared to something a bit more advanced like 'side’ or ‘place’? I get that I somewhat answered my own question there by stating it's more advanced, but I just feel like I'm missing something when 'sit' and 'down' are picked up within a day or two while ‘side’ and ‘place’ have been a work in progress for months now. He does know the commands to some degree and will follow my hand and sit promptly to my side or to his place but if I try to just say "side" or “place”with no luring with my hand and a treat he will just sit or lie down like he's still unsure of what he's supposed to do.

Am I just being impatient and the simple answer is that some commands just take much longer? Or is there some steps I might be missing to help him better understand?

What do your evening and overnight routines look like with your puppies?

Currently our puppy will usually nap till around 5-5:30 (we usually need to wake him) to then have dinner around 6pm. Then while he eats and (hopefully) plays by himself we prepare our dinner. But we've found unless we put him in his crate he'll spend our entire dinner whining trying to get to us from his play pen.

So he ends up going down to sleep between 7 and 7:30 in his crate. We had been having luck with then taking him out to pee around 9:45 and then getting right back in for bed but it seems he's maybe outgrowing this because he's not going right back to sleep. I think maybe he's getting too much sleep in the evening but not sure how else we can manage to feed ourselves/do dishes/shower etc unless he's in his crate.

We've also been getting up at ~3:30am to take him out but usually need to wake him to do this which I feel like isn't the best, but I'm not sure he'd make it all the way to 5:45am when we wake up for work so selfishly getting him up then means we can at least get back to sleep for a few hrs after.

I brought my mini dachshund to get neutered on 11/15 and I was an absolute WRECK because I was worried about him being in pain and/or a possible infection due to him licking his wound. I tried the donut but he was able to lick around it and he would intentionally slam his head into walls and his kennel with the cone on so I eventually opted for a recovery suit and that worked perfectly. Anyway, funny story time; a week or so after his surgery, I took the suit off of him for a bit to give him a break from it. I went to use the restroom and when I had come out, I noticed him attempting to mount and hump one of my other dogs. I shooed him off and when he unmounted, I noticed he had an erection, but this one was like nothing I’ve ever seen before so I IMMEDIATELY started panicking and FaceTiming my partner. It was HUGE and it has two MASSIVE balls on either side of his erection so I thought his intestines were spilling out of his incision site…(silly looking back now, I know🤣) Anyway, I immediately called the vet after hanging up with my partner and got schooled on what “bulbus glandis” are. I could barely speak when I called the vet because of how bad I was panicking and crying but they eventually were able to make out what I was saying and calmly educated me. I’m sure once I hung up they got a good laugh out of it…and so did I once I was able to calm down. To think I almost rushed my pup to the emergency vet…FOR AN ERECTION🤦‍♀️🤣