Category: Top Dog

I've lost like 2kg in 2 weeks due to the puppy stress, missing meals, constantly up and down lol. Anyone else? Damn it.

Hi everyone

Our 5 month old cavapoo is really getting there with his training, picks things up super quickly and we are starting puppy classes with him very soon.

I’m looking for either reassurance or tips on his behaviour around other dogs and people.

On walks he is getting better at being more neutral with dogs and humans, but when we go to a families house – he becomes completely chaotic, jumping up, nipping, over excited. He chases their dog (who is old and hates it), ignores her growls to him and is difficult to get to focus and listen and settle away from everything exciting.

Is this normal / is there any way to help regulate this? He has met this dog a few times now under different settings but is still as excited when we go (despite how much we tire him out beforehand)

We recently started doing off-lead walks with our 8.5 month old Border Terrier and his behaviour at home has changed (negatively). He is brilliant when we let him off and goes charging around the fields and will come back when we call him. He loves it and it's great to see him running around and enjoying himself. It really wears him out.

I don't know whether it's coincidental or not, but he has started biting our feet again when we are either sat on the sofa or walking around the house. He did it a lot when he was really young and we thought he had mostly grown out of it because he was only doing it sporadically. Now it's a lot again. He's also dragging his blanket out of his crate and trying to rip it up or dragging mats around to get attention.

He has also started whining to get up earlier in the morning. We usually get up at 5.50am every day and he usually starts crying a couple of minutes before the alarm goes off but has started whining from 5.15am now and won't let up until we finally get up when the alarm goes off. He doesn't need to go to the toilet and we don't interact with him at all when he starts whining.

I guess it could just be standard adolescent behaviour with him testing boundaries and pushing our buttons and it just happens to have coincided with us giving him more freedom outside. Anyone have any suggestions or advice?

I got Bella at 16 weeks and have crated her since day 1. She’s really good in her crate but wouldn’t settle by herself when out. When she was 5 months old, I’d crate her for 2–3 hours, then let her out for 1–2 hours throughout the day.

Then I started letting her stay in her pen during crate time and only crated her at night.

She rarely got calm enough to sleep on my bed, but about a month ago she started getting calmer when roaming the house. She’d play with her toys on my bed until she fell asleep. For the last week, I’ve been letting her sleep with me every night.

Will this harm her crate training when I need to crate her in the future?

She’s not a fan of going in the crate when I tell her now, but I figured it’s just the teen phase. She will go in when I bribe her with treats though, and she sleeps as well as before once she’s in.

Last month she also got a lot better with house training — we’re at 45 days with no accidents.