Category: Top Dog

Hi! My puppy got her three month vaccine and I'm going to start walking her a couple days from now. She loves people, when we're outside she gets really excited; the other day, she was at the river for a little bit, so she was really wet; as soon as she saw a group of people laughing she jumped at them. I was so embarrassed because she was so dirty. Also she freezes when she sees dogs. I have four other dogs, it isn't like she doesn't know boundaries but I don't know if they count since she's been living at my house for around six weeks now.

I'm a little scared, I've been rewarding her when she turns her attention away from the dogs, but she's little and gets distracted easily so it's hard to train her, so she still doesn't know what "come here" means (at least not when she's distracted). She does know how to sit, give me her paw and turn around.

Any tips on how to start training her on walks? I know she will be really distracted outside, there's a whole other world she doesn't know, so I want to start small and be a little more strict as she grows older. I neved trained a puppy like this, that's why I'm a little bit lost.

Do your puppies get hiccups? Do they grow out of them? So I got my German shepherd/pitbull mix from a rescue mid October. She’s about 16 weeks old. Shes high energy and very playful (sometimes too playful especially while teething…ouch!) We’ve been to the vet numerous times for checkups, vaccines, and some allergic reactions and other puppy stuff so she has been seen multiple times by a vet! Ever since we got her she’s had a habit of getting the hiccups. It’s cute but I also feel bad when I see her sitting there with her little hiccups. She usually gets them after eating (she has a slow feeder foraging mat we use to slow her down) or drinking or playing with our cat. I know it’s not an issue and she’s a healthy pup but I’m just wondering if anyone else’s pup gets the “bups” as my husband calls them. If they did get hiccups as a baby, did they grow out of them or is this just a funny little quirk she’ll always have.

I have a 7 month old lab. He still will steal everything and try to destroy it if I don’t catch him in time. Shoes, blankets, pillows… anything. Counter surfing is awful. I’m at my wits end.

Suggestions to help this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

And after 4 months with the dog breed, they have come to the conclusion that they are inexperienced, however, they did do their research first but could only find positive cons about the breed, does anyone have a website that does not SUGARCOAT any details about the cons of breeds such as Swiss shepherds? and maybe some information on how to train them, etc, I'd really appreciate it!

I have a collie x retriever, she’s she’ll be 1 in a week. She’s always been hard but manageable, I’ve put my heart and soul into training her daily, have consulted professional trainers too and basically put my life on hold for her this last year. Things were in a good place, then suddenly BAM. She reached 11 months and I feel like I have a 4 month old puppy again. She’s relentless, I’ve had to bring the crate back as she won’t settle on her own anymore, her recall is terrible (previously it had gotten really good, she would come to me, not rush over to other dogs). She just seems to always be ‘on’ and even during enforced naps, she doesn’t sleep much and wakes at every little thing. Someone tell me this passes? I feel like I have a different dog, I miss my sweet obedient girl.

My dog has been limping on his front paw since 4 days, on day one he was limping a little bit but now he has problem to walk. He doesn't put pressure on his law. There are no visible signs, no swelling, no redness. When I start to check his paw he doesn't let me check it, what could it be

Also sorry for my bad english

Hi,

I'm basically trying to understand if my dogs were completely "serious" in their fight or just showing off.

So my dogs had a fight over a bone very suddenly (they had their own ones but they wanted the same one), they have never fought before so I was quite shocked. The other one is male and a good 10 kg heavier than the female, so I'm kind of concerned why he even wanted to fight. He's a lot stronger and I'm sure they both know that, plus males and females very rarely fight, so I was completely taken by surprise. They both love their treats, but have never been resource guarders.

I'm trying to convince myself that they weren't completely serious since they stopped when I yelled, and in any serious situation I'm sure the male one could "win" instantly. They were standing on their hind legs and growling. No biting. Can anyone assure me they wouldn't have fought till serious injury please? I'm super stressed out now 🙁 I don't want them to see each other as a threat.

Hi nice people! I just adopted my puppy. She is a lovely 2,5 month old mutt that it’s just adorable. She just got here 3 days ago.

Nights are actually not bad. She sleeps in her bed next to me and has free access to my puppy-safe room to pee on her spot and have water. She actually pees where she should most of the time which is great. She wakes me up a couple of times at night when she gets active and I either just ignore her or get down from the bed, hold her, and then transfer to the bed. (Only when I see she is getting her self more worked up)

The problem is during the day. She barely sleeps. I understand WHY she follows me around. But I literally can’t do anything out of her sight. And it’s exhausting because she gets cranky and I can’t even teach her things (and she obviously gets more stubborn, so all in all not good in that side. I don’t want to set her up for failure by trying to train her when she is overtired). She has her bed in my room and falls asleep there but with me in the room.

So, I don’t know what to do. I want her to be independent and sleeps wherever she wants to. I went out 10 minutes today to take the trash out and that actually wasn’t so bad as being in the other room (I heard her before going in to the apartment)

I posted this in the puppy reddit but didn’t get any answers so thought maybe it would be better to post here, since perhaps those in the puppy reddit are more focused on the first few months. I’m a bit impatient waiting for my nine-month-old puppy to go into heat for a few different life reasons (per vet’s advice I’m waiting to desex her until after her first heat). She’s been acting like a teenager for a couple of months now but especially for the last two weeks. Given both teenage behaviour and the onset of heat cycles are linked to hormones, I’m wondering if there’s any correlation in timing. For those of you with female dogs, did you find the first heat cycle and the teenage not-listening-etc happened around the same time or one happened much earlier/later than the other?