Category: Top Dog

I’m having such a hard time with this. I can’t differentiate if she’s sniffing around to go pee, or if she’s sniffing around to find something to eat. And once she finds it there’s no time for me to react and it’s too late – she’s already trying to eat it.

There’s no chance of me physically taking it out of her mouth because she has bitten me before and drawn blood.

Please share ideas.

For a while I was certain that my nearly 5 month old pup had terrible separation anxiety, as every time I would even walk towards the door he would start barking and wouldn’t stop until I came back. No treats or toys would distract him.

However, yesterday I decided to see if anything would change if I removed the barrier that lets him access the corridor I go through to leave the apartment. I put this up when he was little just so I could keep an eye on him.

When I removed the barrier, he didn’t bark or whine at all! Just focused on his kong and played with his toys when he finished it. I was only gone for 15 minutes, so need to test this with longer durations, but the difference was insane.

Does this mean he simply had confinement anxiety?

Very long story but we had to make the very, very difficult decision to rehome our Great Pyrenees due to him attacking my daughter twice and showing pretty bad aggression towards some other young children.

We took MONTHS to find him a new home. We had at least a dozen conversations with potential new families for him and after our long search we found him the perfect new home.

3 weeks ago we packed up all his belongings and drove 4 hours to his new home, a farm where’d he’d have indoor and outdoor access and a large fenced in area to roam freely.

The new family has a 10 year old dog and I was clear that our dog is slightly dog aggressive at first and will need to be introduced slowly.

The day after we dropped him off, they sent me pics and he was doing great! They introduced him to their dog and he said it went very well.

About 4 days went by and all was still going well.

Then on day 7, I received a text saying that with a heavy heart, they would not be able to keep him.

They said he had shown 3 incidents of aggression towards their dog (growling, barring teeth), that he was experiencing pretty severe separation anxiety (he broke part of their fence when they were at work). And for these reasons, they wouldn’t be able to keep him.

We convinced them to give him some more time and sent them a vets order to increase his dose of trazadone.

2 more weeks have gone by and he said that they aren’t keeping him due to the separation anxiety.

I’m extremely frustrated, disappointed, and upset. My family went through this emotional roller coaster of making the decision to rehome him, making the drive up there, saying goodbye and now because things have gotten a bit hard with the transition, they are giving up on him.

I worry that if I take him back and try to rehome him again, he’ll have even more behavioral issues. But I don’t want to leave him with this family as I fear they hate him and resent him.

What should I do?

Hello!! 10 days ago i almost had to put my dog down due to kidney issues that are working themselves out (i’d get into the details on how but it’s a LOT of explaining), and the day before i cut off some of her fur to keep to remember her, and i cut off the very end of her tail fur (not the tail itself, just pure fluff) and now whenever i touch her tail around there she seems like it hurts, she could jus be mad because i took the tip of her tail but im worried. i looked it up and i only got things about tail docking which is not what i did💔

I have an amstaff mix who’s 8 months and has started puberty around a month ago. As expected his behaviour changed and a lot of times I’m so overwhelmed by everything! He’s started being way more interested in most of the dogs we see on our walks, as soon as he smells the pee of a female dog in heat he’ll literally throw himself to the ground, doing EVERYTHING in his power to smell that spot when usually he’ll listen if I say no to him as soon as he pulls on the leash to smell something. He’s started misbehaving inside our home again and seems to have way too much energy to handle. Honestly my biggest fear is not being a good owner, making mistakes and „ruining“ him in this sensitive period of time. Any tips on how to handle dogs who have started puberty??

For additional infos: -We go on three walks a day: short one in the morning after which he usually sleeps for a few hours, one hour walk in the afternoon which is for sniffing, exploring and training tricks, playing games etc One hour of going to meet with neighbour dogs outside where they can chase and play etc

-He is not allowed to greet any dogs anymore, he has his „friendgroup“ with the same 4 dogs of different ages etc -I do force him to take a nap which can be a pain in the ass as he doesn’t want to miss out any fun stuff my family might be doing outside my room

How long did it take for your puppy to sleep longer? I have a 4 month old Cavapoo, and he wakes up at 6:15-6:30 everyday….. Granted, he sleeps through the night but I am so TIRED