Category: Top Dog

We actually have 2 issues with our puppy that I would deeply appreciate feedback on.

For context, we adopted her in early May ‘25, and she was born in January ‘25, so she’s 9.5 months old. Very sweet, very playful mutt, looks like she has some lab, blue healer, and maybe a little corgi (long body). Medium, about 35 pounds.

If I leave a room and start doing things that make noise out of her line of sight, she growls and barks. Huge problem on waking up—I get up and walk her, and my wife is still sleeping. I return, she runs back into the bed, and I feed our cat (male). If I make noise in the kitchen, she starts barking. If I’m in the bedroom as we’re winding down at night, but go into the bathroom to brush my teeth she barks. She barks when I’m working in my office later than my wife and come to the bedroom. Even midday (I work remotely) when I come to the kitchen from my office, if she’s on the living room couch, she barks. Each time, she doesn’t really stop until I get close enough, then she’s super excited and comes for pets.

She also has been relentlessly chewing her left front paw. Seems like it’s only that 1, and she chews her nails down as far as she can go. She has a dewclaw and she yanks at it and bites like she wants to rip it off. Only way she stops is if we give her a rawhide treat or a bully stick.

In general, she’s well behaved for a puppy…can be a little whiny or a little quick to anger if you get in her space when she’s resting. By and large, extremely sweet and fun.

We’re taking her to the vet to make sure the nail/paw chewing is not due to allergies, but we’d love advice on both of these issues. Re: barking, I immediately tell her it’s me from the other room. When she barks at random noises we pretend investigate, act like it’s all good, and sometimes treat her, always praise her. This is what we’ve started since we realized that getting on her case about it was obviously no good.

Thanks for the help!

So, my seven month old pup is inching closer to her first heat. So far, I haven't seen any tell tale physical signs, but there is one change thats occurred lately that I wonder if it is an indicator of impending heat.

She's been well potty trained for a few .months now, hardly any accidents inside anymore.

However, for the last few days she's been very purposefully going inside when im not looking. Even after a walk (where she'll both poop and pee), and plenty of regular intervals of outside time. She's also not signaling as she normally does before doing this. She'll sneak away and do it when I'm not looking.

Is this a regular indicator of heat coming on? I know she's still very young, but its definitely confusing because she does signal throughout the day, and then will go outside, but it seems like at least once a day for the last few days she'll save some up specifically for going inside.

Y’all my puppy is 6 months old and we foster-to-adopted her at 4 months.

She has suddenly developed the belief that the dogs she sees on our TV (Projector) are real.

She climbs up on the TV unit and tries to go through the wall and cries. Poor little darling. We put it on for her sometimes when we go out and she’ll curl up with us at night and watch stuff, and she’s never had an issue til now.

Did anyone else’s puppy do this? Can dogs possibly understand what TV is or learn that it’s ’not real’?

No matter how bad the day gets, coming home to a wagging tail makes it all okay. Their unconditional love, excitement, and silly antics remind us that the little things matter most.

My black lab is a little over 9 months old and he is driving me crazy. I knew his teenage phase would be tough, but this particular struggle is killing me. During the day he displays an expected level of rebellion, but once the clock strikes midnight it's like my puppy has been replaced by a demon. During the day he has regressed on his manners and overall obedience which I knew was going to happen, have prepared for, and patiently correct when appropriate, but I am at a total loss for how to handle him at night. His crate training is completely fine during daylight hours. We follow the same routine every day so I'm well aware of what it takes to meet his needs, which includes a chunk of playtime right before bedtime which has consistently gotten puppy tuckered out and ready to calmly sleep through the night in the past. In other words, this burst of energy isn't him needing attention because he's thirsty and needs water, has to go potty, etc – it's purely an attention play.

The real problem is that my roommates have a 2 year old child who gets woken if I try and wait for him to quit barking. When puppy starts making noise at these godforsaken hours I have no choice but to give in and pacify him immediately, which I understand is reinforcing his unwanted behavior by rewarding him with attention, but again, I don't have an alternative. He will stubbornly keep making noise for over an hour, and while my roommates are willing to wear earplugs to block out the puppy noise, it's completely unreasonable for me to expect them to put the baby to sleep multiple times every single night.

It doesn't seem to matter how much playtime and attention my puppy recieves once I acquiesce and let him out of the crate, he just never tires. I can play fetch and tug of war and pet him and walk him and run him around for literally hours, but once he goes back in the crate, it's mere seconds before he's making a racket again. Leaving the crate is also the only thing that satisfies him; he's not trying to sleep in my bed. He will ignore bully sticks, treats and chew toys that he typically enjoys because all he wants to do is get out and play, play, play. If I pull an all nighter and stay up until our morning schedule starts, his behavior returns to 'normal' after breakfast/our morning walk but like clockwork, the next night at midnight he's back at it again.

Some info about him is that he's 60 lbs, gets about 3 1/2 – 4 cups of kibble per day, gets around 90 minutes of high intensity exercise by going on walks or visits to the dog park, another hour of low intensity playtime/enrichment/training split up over the course of the day and several more hours of cuddles, belly rubs and lovey dovey attention spread throughout the day. He probably spends about 8 hours in the crate on an average day, and is well behaved during that time by comparison.

The solution I'm looking at right now is to move his crate to the garage with a baby monitor and let him bark it out away from where anyone can hear. I'm hesitant to do this because he's been sleeping right next to my bed since the day I got him and I am open to other solutions, but frankly st this point I'm at my wits end.

Raising this puppy has had its highs and lows, at times its literally been enough to make this grown man cry, but until now I've never thought "I'm not sure I can keep doing this". I have a vet appointment scheduled just to confirm there's no genuine medical issue, but that's over a week out which feels like an eternity away.

I'm not sure if I'm looking for advice as much as reassurance. I'm genuinely starting to dread going to sleep at night because I know it's going to be more of this awfulness. It's clearly a hormonal thing that I logically know he's going to grow out of over time, but emotionally every single night is a brutal slog. Am I being dramatic by hesitating to move him away from my bedside? Is it that simple? I could really use some help on how to handle this

my dog (9 year old female) always sleeps with me on my bed, since she's a small breed, that isn't an issue for me, but recently, she's started to do some other things, like, i leave my room, and i find her sleeping in my pillow, or i wake up, and she's sleeping on my dirty clothes, is that a sign of love? ive heard it is, but im really not sure, and really, i just want confirmation that my dog loves me since im a bit insecure about that lol