Blog

hi everyone, i need advice on what to do when we leave the house. our puppy is almost 5 months old and not settling when we leave the house. he barks/howls/cries the whole time we’re gone whether it’s 15 minutes to 2 hours. everytime we leave, we make sure his needs are met (pee/poo and drink water) but he barks non stop for the whole duration we’re gone. he’s in a playpen with access to his crate the entire time but won’t settle on his own. any advice?

For the last few months I’ve had to enforced naps for my puppy and it’s been very consistent around the same times each day. I noticed she’s able to settle down in her playpen.. not outside of it yet haha. But it’s a start. It seems to me we can slowly adapt to a more non structured nap schedule.

I’m just worried because I usually use her nap times to leave the house so I’m scared if I don’t follow a schedule, she could still be awake when I need to leave the house and idk I guess it’s more crate training but i’m a bit lost on how I should approach this since I’m a very type A person and she’s been extra clingy and starting to resist her crate. Which is funny because when we do crate games it’s like she knows it’s just a training session so she’ll jump right in and won’t protest.

So my puppy of 10 months ever since 8 weeks has slept in a separate room from me alone. This was to teach him independence and he caught on instantly. We have a family member moving back in with us and they need to use the room he was in so now he’s sleeping in my room with me. I don’t know if it’s as difficult as doing the opposite but he’s always been raised that when someone was opening the door to his room he was getting let out. Also there will be times due to my work schedule where I will be going into my room well into the night when he is sleeping. He’s never had to deal with someone coming into a room with him and not letting him out of his crate. Is this as difficult as I’m making it think in my head? It’s weird lol because I’m doing the opposite of what people usually do.

I was holding my puppy with one hand and kinda wiggling his snout with the other hand in a playful manner, we rough-house a lot and he's very playful. He twisted around and fell down out of my other hand and started crying and whimpering. I picked him up immediately and held him and pet him and the whimpers subsided. I gave him a treat, he's limping around on his right front paw a small bit but he can still put weight on it.

I gently lowered him onto my bed and he's fallen asleep. I'm taking him to the vet tomorrow for shots, will they examine his leg too? I fell so so terrible and I really hope he's ok!

As the title describes, my 7 month old German shepherd x husky will refuse to go poo on walks/hikes sometimes. 90% of the time he will poop right away but all of a sudden one day he will just decide to not go poo! He is fully potty trained BTW! He's never had an accident in the house thankfully but sometimes it seems like he's just holding in his poo for some reason? I cant figure out what I'm doing wrong, I've even started to add a little bit of pumpkin puree into his lunch and dinner. His stool looks healthy and there is no clear indications of any heath issues. Can someone please help me lol some days I wanna pull my hair out. I walked him this evening for almost 1 hour in a nice secluded field doing laps but no poo ): I keep him on a strict schedule too. I always walk him first thing in the morning, again around 11:30am, and again around 3:30 and one more time before bed which is usually around 7pm. I feed him on a very strict schedule too, so I have no idea what's going on. Some days he will just refuse to poo! Please help.

We adopted an 8 month old lab viszla/GSP(maybe) mix about a month ago and are having some difficulties with crate training. She’s never been crate trained so I’d love to hear your advice and thoughts on training at this age and what we can do with her current issues.

Night sleeping

We started with the crate in our room and she had many bathroom breaks a night but would go straight back to sleep when be brought her back in. As time went on the bathroom breaks stopped and we gradually moved the crate into the living room. It’s now almost at its final destination however we’re having an issue where she will wake up at 3.45am and bark the house down.

We let her out for a toilet break but when we put her back it starts back up again. Whether I’m in the room or not. The issue is that we live in a flat and have 2 side neighbours and 1 above. Some have kids. So it’s really hard for us to just let her bark it out. Sometimes she also thrashes around so we have to let her out.

When she comes out she will sleep on the sofa if we sit on it. I’m worried she knows she’ll get to sleep with us on the sofa if she kicks off so we’ve taught a cycle that will be difficult to break.

We have an alarm that we use before we let her out to try to mitigate the idea that the barks let her out, so she thinks it the alarm. It doesn’t seem to have done anything.

Day sleeping

She doesn’t nap on her own accord so we really want her to be able to be put in the crate. We familiarised her with the crate for about 2 weeks- big treats in there/capturing calmness/closing door gradually and increasing duration. We got a few naps this way.

A week or so ago we started putting her in there, covering and walking away. She barked for 5-10 minutes , some times even 3 and then napped. However for the last few days it’s got worse and she will bark frantically, thrash around, and destroy her bed. She doesn’t seem to slow down with the barking and the most we’ve been able to leave her is 30 mins but we had to let her out. Again we use the alarm.

I’m at a loss of what to do as if I keep going down this path then I worry she will keep making a negative association with the crate.

Sorry for the long post, I just really need guidance as It’s essential that she’s crate trained as we can’t trust her home alone yet!