Category: Top Dog

Around 5 months ago, i adopted the SWEETEST bully/lab/GSD mix. i got him as a companion for my partner and i, but mostly me. i take full responsibility for him and take care of him! my partner helps out if i need, but i proudly take full responsibility. he’s like my son! in the last 5 months we’ve had him, (9 months old now) our schedules with work are slowly changing. i work in healthcare, so my schedule is kind of going all over the place right now. we also have to go out of town every now and then, which is fine! because usually one of my friends (multiple) can all stop in throughout the day to let him out, feed him, play with him, etc.

but the last two vacations we’ve gone on (5+ days) it’s been a PAIN to find anyone who can stay over and watch him. i have already canceled one just because i couldn’t find anyone to watch him. so i sacrificed my vacation to spend time with my sweet baby. which ended up being great, because i didn’t have to work and we got to be together a lot! – but we have NO ONE who can take him to their house. people have to come to our house. we are both in our early twenties, and just don’t have the funds to pay for boarding or in home sitting.

and with my schedule changing at work more frequently, i am not able to give him all the time and attention he deserves. yes i do still walk him twice a day, train him, play with him, etc. i meet all his BASIC needs! he gets a lot of mental and physical enrichment! but i feel horrible because yes, i am giving him what he needs, but i dont feel like im giving him what he DESERVES.

he is a wonderful dog and i love him SO much, but i feel as time goes on it may get harder to take care of him. the thought of rehoming him is slowly creeping in, just because i feel he deserves better than what i can give him. this is also becoming hard on my partner, because if someone can’t watch him, they don’t want me to sacrifice my time just for a dog. they tell me “sometimes it’s okay to put yourself first!” and that i am starting to lose myself by taking care of the dog. that i’m becoming ABSORBED in him. which now that i’ve been thinking about it… i am. i sacrifice so many parts of my social life for my dog. and i love him so much, but i want to live out my early twenties. i know it will be better as he gets older, and things will get easier. i just don’t know what to do because the stress of raising a puppy, work, THE WORLD is all getting to me.

just needed to vent and put this out somewhere. i love my dog more than anything in the world, but sometimes i feel the most loving thing i can do for him is to let someone else love him more.

Can it be a uti if it’s only in the evenings? I’ve had her for a month, and she was pretty good about holding her bladder for 2-3 hours. She only had an accident about once a week, and that was my fault. Since yesterday, she’s been peeing inside within 2 hours of going potty outside. Today I thought that I would start taking her out every hour and a half, so she learns where to go again, but she just had two accidents inside. The first was within an hour of going outside, and the second was within an hour of the first accident. She didn’t go very much each time either. Could this be an uti? Maybbeee she’s done this in the day (can’t remember), but it seems to mainly be in the evening. And only until she finally sleeps on the couch for the rest of the evening.

The only other thing I can think of is that maybe I need to wash the carpet better? I use an enzyme spray, but she does a lot of sniffing in the same areas before going. (And I know, that’s going to be my signal to jump up and take her out now). She is mainly only playing a ton on the living room floor in the evenings, so that could explain why this isn’t happening during the day.

How do you feel about transporting your dogs in secured crates in the back of the truck?

The crates would be tied down/secured.

Opinions?

Today my gf took my 3.5-month-old puppy into my job. My manager bent down to pet him, and out of nowhere he bit her hand and drew a little bit of blood.

There was no growling, no stiffness, no barking, no warning signs. She said it wasn’t hard — that his tooth just “caught her,” but it still freaked me out because it did break the skin.

He’s usually very sweet, and this is the first time he’s ever done something like this. The store environment was a little busy but as I work at Home Depot.

Is this normal puppy behavior (teething/startle nip), or something I should be worried about? And how should I handle training going forward so this doesn’t happen again?

Hi All,

Little background — I have an eight-month old Havanese puppy. I got him at 10-weeks old and have primarily raised him by myself.

For anyone currently going through puppy blues or wondering whether there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, let me be your sign that there is and that it gets so much better!! I had one week of really bad puppy blues right after I got my puppy — mainly from sleep deprivation, but also from the overall lifestyle change and additional responsibility that comes along with owning a puppy. Once my mindset shifted (and once I got some more sleep), the puppy blues went away. However, of course, I still had a puppy on my hands. I spent a lot of time and effort training, bonding, and socializing my puppy over the summer. At times, it felt more like a job than anything.

BUT, somewhere along the way, my puppy matured. Rather than having to put my puppy in his crate for enforced naps on a schedule, I find myself snuggling up for a nap and him settling down right next to me with a yak until he falls asleep himself. I now have a buddy to go on walks with when I need to run errands, and a playmate when I want to let off steam after work. We eat together, watch tv together, play together, and sleep right next to each other (for naps, he’s still crated at night). He’s my favorite part of my day.

It didn’t happen overnight and aspects of his behavior are a result of a lot of training (i.e., he used to cry when I would leave the room, now he settles nicely and chills out). I also know that I still have a long road ahead as he’s in the midst of the teenage phase. But, I see my little man poking through the puppy antics and craziness and couldn’t be happier. And I promise, all of the time and effort spent raising your puppy pays off.

I'm trying to understand why potty training works.

So, when the puppy goes potty outside, you praise and treat (positive) which would make it like to go potty outside. That piece makes sense. When a puppy goes potty inside, you are supposed to *not* react, and just calmly clean up (neutral). I guess the rationale is that eventually, the puppy will not want to potty inside, because it would rather do it outside and get the treat. That seems surprising to me because dogs do all sorts of behaviors that don't result in treats. e.g. a dog may know that when you say "sit", it will get a treat for sitting, but that doesn't mean it will be reluctant to just sit other times, if it wont get a treat. So why would it not want to potty indoors?

And then eventually, after lots of training, the puppy will start whining when it needs to go potty and "ask" to be let out. So, is it whining because it knows that if it goes potty inside it wont get the treat for doing it outside? Dogs don't usually whine if they know that they are about to do a behavior that wont result in treats, so why here?

I know that also puppies don't want to go potty in their crate, and part of it maybe that eventually they learn that your house is "home" and not a place to go to the bathroom. But what about other people's houses and other indoor places?

I feel like I'm missing something about the behavioral science here?

I’ve been trying to foster with my local rescues but they just want to keep the dogs in the shelter. I have a huge yard that is fenced in. It has a separate gated and fenced dog run. I work from home. I’m home all the time. I have love to give. I’m not super young and I’m not old. I’ve had pets before.

I’ve been waiting a month already to foster with one of the Humane Societies. I asked the foster coordinator last week about fostering a dog she had been waiting weeks for someone to foster. She told me she may have someone lined up and that she’s not planning to have any foster candidates until January. Well today she sent another email about this same dog that I offered to foster saying she still needs someone to foster, even if for a short period. Like wtf? I already told her I would and every time I talk to her she blows me off. She waits until closing time at the end of the week, where she will be off for the next two days, to send out this email. She doesn’t respond to any emails I send her otherwise. I feel like she is just collecting a paycheck and not actually trying to help animals at the shelter.

There is 1 fearful cat at this shelter. Cat has 3 legs and 6 toes. They won’t even let her out of the cage for someone to see her unless they agree to adopt her.

There is an underweight Great Pyrenees adult dog. They don’t have enough volunteers to make sure he is eating more. When I visited, they didn’t even realize he was thirsty until he started drinking dirty ground water.

The dog they want someone to foster had knee surgery and needs a calm environment. I live alone. My house is quiet. Like wtf.

I feel like these three animals should be foster candidates. They’ve been in the shelter for 2-4 weeks. This place is getting like 2 adoptions a day and they are talking about bringing in 25 more animals per week each week of December. It’s not that big of a shelter.

I want to help these animals and I’m so frustrated that these “humane” societies want to keep these animals locked up when one of them could come home with me.

I’m honestly about to just go adopt a puppy for $1800 because it seems like none of these shelters will ever let me foster their animals.

My four month old has separation anxiety big time. We’ve been working hard and today for the first time, she relaxed in her kennel after 20 minutes of just low grumbles versus screaming and meltdowns. She actually licked her treat for the first time ever in a crate! But then she had dinner in her crate as always, which she is fine with and I snuck into the shower. The second her meal was done she started spiraling and declined rapidly into super screaming and banging around.

I feel like I’ll never be able to leave my house again. I feel like I’m going to lose all my friends because I keep saying no to invites and they’ve never had a puppy so they think I’m nuts. I’m struggling today. Help.

Hi friends, back again

Little girl cockapoo will be 5 months old on the 27th. She’s wonderful (and for anyone who’s seen my previous posts, living her best life w babysitters and puppy friends when we’re not with her). But there’s 2 concerns I have right now.

The first is that she’s still teething and the bigger she gets the more her bites hurt. She has all of her adult teeth now but her canines, which if need be will come out in 2 months when she’s spayed. Is it normal to continue teething even once most adult teeth are in? Any recommendations aside from redirection, which only work momentarily?

Secondly, she has no concept of no-nos. We’ve been trying to teach her “no bite” and we say “toy” and point which she has gotten better about but only when she’s not catastrophe level zoomy. I feel awful because I go back and forth between being horrible at telling her no because I can’t help but laugh when I see her little face, and getting so frustrated I cry. We have been trying reverse timeouts, and timeouts in her pen but even this seems to only stop her for about 20 minutes before the biting comes back.

The part that makes the least sense to me is that she’s actually amazing at other things- she tells us when she needs to go potty, understands what “bed time” means, does great with “sit” and is much better at sitting still for brushing/teeth cleaning/ear cleaning. Why is the biting the thing she can’t seem to get?

Hi everyone! A week ago I brought home a black english lab! He just hit 9 weeks and my boyfriend and I wanted to start doing some training in the crate where he stays alone. For context, he has never been alone in the apartment without us being there, I WFH and my boyfriend is doing his masters, so he’s frequently home too.

For the past week we’ve been crate training him and he’s done so well, all his meals are in there, I put treats in the crate before he goes in, he has a blanket that smells like us and one that smells like his family, and a stuffed toy and a chew. I think we’re at the point where he’s comfortable in his crate and going to sleep, I’m trying to work up to him voluntarily going into his crate, but he’s still just a puppy and doesn’t know when he needs a nap, so that’s a WIP.

To the title though, we want to start training him to do well in the crate when we’re not here. This is mainly so we get a bit of time to go out and go grocery shopping, run other errands, or feel like we have a life outside the 4 walls of our living room, so less than 3-4 hours for sure. What did you do to acclimate your dog to this change, any tips for us, or any videos or articles I could look at? Thank you for any help!