Category: Top Dog

Hi all,

My pup, Buster, is ~1.5 years old and is still having some accidents in the house. He is walked every 4 hours and if he doesnt pee or poo, he is crated for 1 hour. He is walked ~1 hour after eating and whenever we get home from leaving him. Some days, he just poos on walk and then has a pee accident. Other times he has a random accident in between the window of his walks. Some days he has no accidents and nothing is different.

He sleeps in the bed with us every night. Today I woke up this morning with a big accident in the bed – not sure when it happened because my husband didnt notice it and he peed and pooped on his normal first thing in the morning walk!

This afternoon when all of the mattress protector / sheets / blanket were all washed again, he peed on the bed again! Any advice of how to handle that or how to react? The second time today, I saw him do it and was able to scoop him and the blanket up so the pee didnt seep through to the sheets. I worked with a trainer previously who said NOT to go outside immediately if there's an accident because its over – curious if anyone has struggled with potty training and ultimately gotten past it.

Thanks so much!!

Hi everyone! I’m looking for a bit of advice on puppy training. I have a 13-week-old Labrador that I’m trying to teach the “leave it” command. He loves picking up slippers, towels, clothes, his lead, and even chewing the skirting board. I know this is all normal puppy behavior.

During our scheduled training sessions, he does really well, he’ll leave or drop items like slippers or towels on cue, and we’ve even started practicing “leave it” with treats, which he’s great at.

The problem is when we’re not in a training session. If he grabs something and I say “leave it,” he completely ignores me. I know he’s still young, and I’m not expecting too much too soon, but I was hoping it would have started to click by now since we’ve been working on it for about 8 weeks.

Is there anything else I can do to help him start applying “leave it” outside of our training sessions?

I have two dogs (ages 3 and 4). They're very sweet and food motivated/smart, but are very excitable and have trouble listening when they're excited and get distracted easily. The smaller one is also sometimes a jerk to the bigger one (e.g., she moves closer to him and then growls that hes in her space). I have been trying to work on these things myself and eventually realized i could use some professional help. I had a few questions related to this;

1. Would people recommend I start with individual training or a group class? I'm open to doing both too.

2. For either one (group or individual), would both dogs be trained at the same time or would I have to take them one by one?

Thank you!

Hi everyone,

Our mini schnauzer (male) has suddenly become disinterested in his lunch right after he turned 5 months old. He still eats his breakfast and dinner.

We had initially planned to stop feeding him lunch at around 6 months old but this may be a natural point to stop (especially if he’s disinterested and not eating it). We don’t want to keep wasting food either!

When did you all stop feeding your dogs lunch/the third meal?

TYIA!

Hey everyone! 👋

So we’re finally getting our Havanese puppy on December 29th — he’ll be 12 weeks old by then! We actually arranged this date with the breeder because we were going on holidays before that, and it just would’ve been too complicated to bring him home earlier.

The upside is that when we do bring him home, we’ll have three full weeks off to focus 100% on him — training, bonding, and just getting him settled in.

But lately I’ve been getting a bit nervous… he’s been growing up in a really rural, countryside environment, and we live right in the city center of Paris. I’m worried that the sudden change at 12 weeks — new people, new noises, new smells, traffic, etc. — might be overwhelming or affect his socialization window.

Has anyone else brought a puppy home around that age from the countryside to a busy city Did your pup adapt okay? Any tips on helping him adjust smoothly without too much stress? Should I be doing anything special to make sure he gets enough socialization in that first week or two?

I just want to make sure we’re setting him up for success — we’re so excited to welcome him, I just don’t want the big change to be too much for the little guy.

My goldendoodle dog is 12 months old, and the last few weeks have been absolute chaos with him. He is jumping and biting/nipping and is not listening to commands. It’s really scary for most everybody around him and especially for my older age parents. He’s in training once a week and to be honest, I’m not sure that anything is going to work with him. This is the third round of training that he’s been in and I do my absolute best to reinforce everything at home. It’s definitely not a perfect system, but I really don’t know what else to do. I take him for walks several times a day. I play with him. This includes puzzles, fetch (although he doesn’t ever really bring the thing back), tug, and I use his treats for different types of fun activities where he learns different things. He’s well fed and gets pretty good rest throughout the day. It never seems like it’s enough of anything. Is this adolescence? How did you handle it?

My dog just turned 1 year old yesterday. The entire time I’ve had him, going to work and school makes me so sad. He has toys, food, water, and my family members when I’m gone. But I think our bond is too strong, if that’s even possible lol. I’ve literally been considering online school so i have more time with him during the day. Only because when I’m gone, he doesn’t eat, I don’t notice any of his toys out of his toy bin, and I’ve been told he doesn’t always go poop/pee when I’m not home. When he was super young he had bad separation anxiety (as most puppies do) and it 100% has gotten so much better. But the not eating really bothers me. I thought he’d eventually get over that too. Is this normal? Does anyone else’s dog do absolutely nothing until you get home?

Can I teach my big dog to not play with the small dogs toys?? He rips them up in .5 seconds. Or do my small dogs just have to have big dog type, indestructible rubber and rope toys now?