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I’ll go first; my 2.5 year old Cane Corso is an absolute drama queen.

I volunteer at a shelter, and if I come home smelling like one dog specifically, he huffs and puffs at me and practically ignores my existence. He’s never cared about the scent of other dogs, or any animals in general, but if I specially hang out with the ONE mastiff at the shelter, he smells her on me and won’t give me the time of day.

His other little act of protest is that he won’t shake a paw or follow any other commands beyond “sit” if I haven’t had my sit with him that day. Usually in the morning I’ll come cuddle him on the couch and give him lots of love, but if I haven’t had the time, he gets sassy.

We have a high-energy and very velcro German Shorthaired Pointer. We’ve been leaving him in the crate every time we need to be away, for example when I’m working at the office. He didn’t mind being there too much but once he woke up, he started crying like crazy and we would hurry home to let him out. It’s been pretty difficult for us to deal with and I was so afraid that this will be my life for a long time. He is 11 months now and I decided to try leaving him in the living room/kitchen area with other parts of the house separated by baby gates. I set up the camera, ready to see crying, whining and destruction. Guess what, he just sleeps all day long, longer than he ever does in the crate. Of course I still go home during my lunch break and let him out to pee and take him out to exercise for an hour. Most of the time he doesn’t even react when people leave the house. It’s been perfect! Before I was afraid that he has separation anxiety but it is clearly just fomo – he didn’t want to be alone in a crate when something might be going on out in the living room but when he knows that nothing interesting is happening, he just sleep. This is a dog that until a few months ago wasn’t even able to sleep outside of the crate. I hope my story gives hope to people who are in a similar situation with their dogs. Try different approaches and it might just work out well!

I could really use more eyes on this since it’s been bothering me all day.

Our 7-month-old corgi puppy has always struggled with potty training, specifically pooping outside. Admittedly, we started potty training pretty late (3-4 months) as we’re clueless new dog owners. That’s likely not helping us.

Around month 4 or 5, we hired Main Trainer to help. He walked us through the basic advice of outside > crate > outside again. This has been a struggle for a few reasons. First, my husband and I both work full time, so we can’t take her in and out all day. When we are able to, she holds her bladder 4+ hours to avoid pooping outside. She’s also gotten sneaky. I’m home more often than my husband is, and when I look away for a bit while keeping her on a leash indoors, she’ll poop in like 2 seconds. It’s honestly impressive.

Eventually, we sent her to one of those puppy training camps for a week with Farm Trainer (who works for the same service). She told us that she got our puppy to poop outside consistently, and she was confident that we could replicate it with the same song and dance (outside > crate > outside). Guess what? She didn’t. Right after our puppy came home, I took her in and out for two hours until she sneakily pooped inside again.

I also want to mention that, when puppy was with Farm Trainer, she apparently never peed on walks. But when she’s with us, she pees on every walk. So she’s clearly behaving differently with us for some reason. I suggested that the change of environment might affect her, but Farm Trainer said that’s absolutely not the case.

At this point, we’re back to the drawing board. My husband suggested that we get a little grass patch for her to go on inside, so she associates grass with potty time. Since we thought it might work, he emailed Main Trainer for an extra opinion. He responded, “If you can’t commit to potty training like [Farm Trainer] laid out you should talk to your breeder and reassess commitment.”

This feels a bit extreme to us. Honestly, even if puppy poops in the house for the rest of her life, we wouldn’t want to rehome her. I also feel like the trainers don’t believe me when I tell them I’m trying my damndest with my work schedule. Our puppy’s been improving in all other areas; she’s just struggling with this. Is it that big of a deal to “reassess commitment”?

today was my puppy’s first day home alone (for 3 hours) while i went to work for a little. i made sure he had everything he needed and it still didn’t ease my anxiety 😫. it makes me sick to my stomach when I have to leave him alone even though i know he’s perfectly safe and taken care of (and his whining / barking just straight up breaks my heart). does anybody have any tips on how to deal with this because my appetite is straight up gone with the anxiety i get from it. (i think i might be the one with separation anxiety lol)

Socialization is crucial to every puppy so I’ve been trying to socialize my 4 month old female puppy. Twice now have I had negative experiences doing so. The first time a man let his dog correct mine, which at first I didn’t understand that’s what he was doing (“watch” was the only thing he told me). She yelped so hard and I almost cried! At first she was struggling to open her eye but after some time she seemed to be okay. When I went to pick her up, the old man took her from me and was cuddling her for like 10 minutes so I couldn’t look at her eye right away. The second time a man saw me walking his way and leashed one of his 2 dogs when our paths crossed. He told me the dog off leash was friendly, which is great so that mine (on leash) can say hello. His leashed dog started lunging, growling, and barking while pulling him closer and closer to mine. Mind you she was a small dog, but he was letting her come almost face to face with mine. He was telling me something but I couldn’t hear him over all of the barking and growling, which my puppy started copying because she is a copy machine and loves mimicking other dogs. I kept saying “what?” While trying to focus on his dog’s mouth to make sure my puppy wasn’t near it, while trying to get my puppy to stop barking and interacting with this man’s dog and to focus on food I had for her. After far too long of him being so close that his dog was centimeters away from biting mine, I finally realized this old man was telling me to let dogs be dogs, that they’d figure it out. What am I supposed to do or say in these scenarios? I get really bad anxiety, especially social anxiety. The two old men really did seem to have good intentions which is why I couldn’t react the way I wanted to (I wanted to say very mean things). I’m really shy and kind of a push over and I am working on it, I just need advice.