Category: Top Dog

Hey all!

So, I have an 11-week-old puppy who does pretty well in the car right now. He travels in the backseat in a crate for now, and he just chills in there without issues.

This is not the case with my older dog, who, despite my best efforts when she was a puppy, still does not enjoy riding in the car. We give her a licky mat or a Kong, and she's pretty happy with those for the most part until she's done with them, whines, howls and scratches for a while, until she falls asleep. I'm not happy about it, I'd much rather have her be happy in the car but she just has always hated any forms of confinement. She used to travel in the backseat, but after discovering that she does much better when she can't see us humans, we moved her in the trunk, where she travels in a sturdy carrier.

Now, I'd like my puppy to also travel in the trunk. We were planning on getting a double carrier with a divider for them. Do you think the 15 minutes of chaos from my older dog will rub off on my puppy and make him think that he, too, should fear the car? I was planning on introducing him to the trunk travel on his own first without my older dog, but I still fear my older dog will scare him later.

i love Golden Retriever puppy

I have a 6 month old shepherd, and I raised her mostly alone for the first couple months. I was worried at first about moving in with my family because she might have trouble adjusting to all these new people. It turns out, I had no reason to worry, and the problem is actually that she loves her new family so much she can't handle being locked out of any room for any reason. When I'm alone, she's happy just being with me, but now that the rest of the family is here she wants to be with everyone. She's not experiencing separation anxiety, as such, she actually deals with everyone leaving a lot better than she deals with people being in the home but in a room she can't access. It's the fact that she knows people are there but can't see them, that's what drives her crazy. It's minor stuff, just whining and pawing at the door for a few minutes, but it's really annoying for everyone.

Has anyone experienced this? What do I do about it? Is there any training to make her less nervous about closed doors?

Today, I decided to stay home from school because I was feeling super sick. My dog still kept following me around, into my room, into the bathroom, and even outside. I thought maybe he wanted food, or to play, or to go outside, but he just kept following me. I guess he can smell that I wasn’t feeling good and wanted to keep me company.

He’s a good dog. I love him so much >^<

To preface this, I'm not talking about leaving her alone for 8 hours, and she is also crate trained. I'm talking one minute alone so that I can pee.

We have a 12 week old working line German Shepherd, who we got when she was 8 weeks. For the first two weeks we allowed her to sleep outside a crate and gradually introduced the crate before eventually realising we had to just rip off the band aid and make her sleep in there.

She sleeps just outside our bedroom in the crate, and will often complain when we put her in there for 30 secones to a couple of minutes before settling and falling asleep. She takes naps in the crate during the day, and again, we might get a little toddler "I don't want to nap" whining (not barking or howling, just complaining) before she lays down.

We walk her twice a day, play tug and with a flirt pole 4 times a day, free play in the garden and 4-6 training sessions a day. We also make her work for all meals with a lick mat, slow feeder, puzzle feeder, or scattering her food to make her find it. If we're using something that fits in her crate for feeding, she eats in her crate. She puts her toys and chews in there herself and is fine going in and out on her own.

If I give her a frozen kong, I have even been able to take meetings for 30 minutes in another room with the door open with her in the crate (crate door closed). She will also go out for free play in our garden alone, and comes to check in every now and then.

We always have someone at home, and we basically never leave her alone. If my girlfriend and I go upstairs together she loses her mind, howling and barking. If my girlfriend is at work and I go to the bathroom without giving her a kong or something, she freaks out 30 seconds after we leave. We can't go to the store at the same time, and if she naps and one of us leaves the room she'll wake up and lose her shit too. I think we should have started leaving her earlier, as now she always expects at least one of us to be around. If she has a kong and hears the front door close, she loses interest and will start crying, even if another one of us is in the room. We don't make a big deal out of leaving, and try to keep things normal so as not to enforce anxiety. We give her treats when she's calm, similar to how we crate trained her.

How do we reverse this? Do we really need to start with 10 seconds and work our way up? It sounds like it could be months before we can go to the bathroom! Does anyone have any advice?