Category: Top Dog

Hey all,

I have a 17 wo Mini Aussie, who is outside of his crate anything but calm. He usually listens super well to tricks. Three days ago, we started with Karen Overall's Relaxation Protocol, the first time he did great. But now, he doesn't even want to lie down and if I get him to lie down and start the protocol, after getting one to two treats, he just gets up, refuses to listen to anything and starts inspecting the room.

Has anyone encoutered a similar behaviour with his puppy/dog and what worked to keep him engaged and sitting/lying?

Thanks in advance!

I had to leave my 4 month old puppy with a dog sitter for a few days because I was going away and don’t have many family or friends where I live. I picked her up today and the couple kept telling me how she needs training and the man said “I need training mommy” in a super condescending tone, as if she hasn’t been getting any sort of training.

It made me feel like crap. I’ve been taking her to puppy class, where most of the things we’ve been working on are things I had already been teaching her at home. I work from home and spend lots of time every day on training. I’ve read books. I’ve watched YouTube videos. I feel like I’m doing everything I can and it’s still not enough.

Puppy training already comes with so much self-doubt and this just shot my confidence even more. She’s stayed with other sitters that have said shes doing well for her age and I know we’ve been putting the work in, but it’s hard not to feel discouraged when they made me feel like I’m doing everything wrong.

Just looking for a little support and encouragement to help move past this and keep my head up!

We have a newly 12 week lab puppy we adopted about a week ago now and he is related to Satan, I swear. He mostly hates his crate despite all food and kings being given in the crate, and training. This makes those overtired, sharky episodes difficult.

Sometimes he’ll settle and nap, sometimes he won’t. We normally have him dragging a loose leash so we can help correct and potty train and desensitize, but when he gets sharky, he tries to eat through his leash.

We’ve already lost one to it, and no matter how much redirecting we do, he drops it and goes right back to leash eating. Any advice on how to fix this situation?!

I have a 10 week old puppy (yellow lab).This is our first puppy. We got her 2 weeks ago. She's great, loves her crate, goes potty outside.

My question is when she's awake do I have to play with her or give her an activity every time she's awake? Or can I just have her play with her toys on her own sometimes? I just have a hard time coming up with specific activities for her to do to tire her out and keep her busy.

I do little training probably max of 10 -15 mins a day spaced out.

11,5 wk female weimaraner. I've started some calm settle training using kikopup's method. Been training for 4 days now. 1-2 short sesions everyday. Sessions where I'm actively practicing last between 10 seconds and 5 minutes. In these sessions I will sit on a couch (she has a dogbed next to the couch) or on the floor on a mat, throw out a treat and then lure her back to me in a down. I feed her some treats and if she stays down I tell her "good" and treat again. If she stays down for a few more seconds I repeat "good" and treat again. I keep going for 10ish treats. Tell her "all done" and stay seated. I do this cuz I hope she'll stay down with me and maybe find her own chill. But she tends to get up pretty quick and tries to engage me for play.

Every day so far I've also taken one moment where I sit on the couch, leash her and just try to be super boring, hoping she will eventually lay down and settle. This has only been succesful two times so far. If she doesn't settle within 10-15 minutes then I stop it and we do something else. The two times it worked I calmly put some treats between her paws to reinforce her calm settle. One time she stayed down so after a few minutes she got another quiet reward. She stayed down for about 10 minutes, then seemed to lose her chill and wanted attention. The other time she got up and tried mugging me for treats so I switched to doing no mugging training.

I think I'm doing it right, but I'm not sure because she hasn't offered any calm settles herself. She'll settle and sleep in her crate no problem when I put her in for a nap. She'll happily snuggle up on my lap to settle and take naps. But she won't go in her crate or lie down and settle on her dogbed next to the couch. The only exceptions are when she has a chew, but that doesn't feel like calmly settling, more like taking her prize somewhere.

I've been training other things with her, no biting, no mugging, touching her to prep for grooming, coming when called. And she has been superquick and enthousiastic about picking it up and improves with every session. I'm not seeing that in the settle training though, which is also why I worry I'm not doing it right. Every session feels like it could be the first, like we're not improving.

Sorry for the long ramble 😅

Last week I posted on here that I was struggling to emotionally connect with my pup. He was super well behaved, I’d done a bunch of training, but I still personally felt a bit indifferent to him.

Some people basically called me a monster, and others were super supportive.

Well! He’s an update!

He’s just hit 16 weeks and my gosh I’m starting to see glimpses of the dog hiding behind the puppy. And he’s so so sweet and wicked intelligent.

I think last week he was just beginning to teeth, and because his mouth was hurting him (all his front teeth fell out!) he was under the weather. But now he’s feeling much much better and is a joy to be around.

It also helped that I took him to his first gundog training session with a private trainer. And he picked it up so incredibly quickly it was phenomenal watching him work. He absolutely loved it and I felt so proud of him!

So if you’re struggling to emotionally connect with your pup… give it time. They’re only puppies for a little while, and soon enough you’ll have a loyal and caring dog.

I've had my 8 week Cavalier King Charles puppy for a little under a week. He is super super cute. Unfortunately he has 0 chill. Figgy is either running, biting, biting more or peeing. I've seen other people's puppies sleeping on the couch, cuddling them etc. and I am super jealous.

However, I am having some success (fingers crossed) with the crate and enforced naps. He is a lovely little man though. Just checking in to see if other people experienced this? Will help me feel more normal haha.

Any tips besides longer walks and putting the puppy pads outside? He hasn’t gone not once in the 2 months I’ve had him so there’s no chance to reward the behavior. He will wait the whole walk just to go the minute we’re indoors. It’s so cold and that could be why he refuses to go outside I just don’t know what to do

so i’ll be really honest i’m in uni & it was really hard to be consistent with potty training… so she’d be using pee pads a lot of the day (she gets tons of love and treats she’s not neglected at all). she was honestly kind of a menace, and not even always aiming properly. if i didn’t wake up at the usual time, she’d just go.

one day, she started waiting for me in the morning, or waking me up with licks (so cute!). she also started learning to go to the door during the day to ask to do her thing, and refusing to go up to bed unless she was taken out if she needed to go.

i’m really happy obviously, i just think it’s crazy she randomly started being so well trained??? she has accidents once in a while but overall it’s really good. has this happened to anyone else

My dog found a spot in the yard that she keeps rolling around in. I can’t find the spot and idk what she’s rolling around in but the smell is WRETCHED! I had to give her bath for the 4th time this week and it’s driving me crazy! Idk what to do. Help?