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Just a vent on how many people get these puppies and start breed and care research as the puppy is already tearing up their stuff at home. Thank you for giving the pup a home, thank you for loving animals! But PLEASE, try to set up them (and yourself!!) up for success by doing your research ahead of time to see if the pup and you would be a good fit. I'm so so tired of these first time pet owners buying doodle puppies off the street and then waiting 2 more months before sending your groomer friend the "so how do I take care of this?" text. I'm just tired of seeing these dogs set up for failure and then blamed for it. Please just do your research prior, your puppy and bank account will love you for it 💜

My dog, Freddie, has recently been obsessing over a certain part of our kitchen. He’s 6 years old and hasn’t done this before.

To try and explain the layout: you walk in and you face the washing machine first, right next to it are the dishwasher and a cupboard. Along this line, Freddie cannot resist sniffing, whining, and scratching at the bottom of it, as if he’s trying to get to something.

🥲 Personally, I’m a little creeped out lmao, just in case there’s a whole family of spiders behind there, or any mice.

I’m posting here to see what others think.. Spiders? Mice? Or potentially is there a weird smell coming from the machine/dishwasher? Anything else it could be?

Additional context that may be helpful: Freddie is quite an anxious dog. I’ve also noticed he gets obsessive if he spots a bug and its difficult to get him to stop trying to find it. So much so he keeps thinking patterns in the wall or blankets are bugs. So once Freddie spots something unusual, he cannot stop thinking about it.

How can I help deter Freddie away from it so he stops getting panicked and distressed, as well as figuring it out the best I can without ripping apart the kitchen? 😅

My dos needs to take some pills, he was sedated, so he is not hungry at all. It’s been almost 24 hours since he was sedated and he won’t eat the medicine they gave me. They told me to give it to him right away, but it requires to be given with food. What do I do?

Hi everybody!

I have a very high-drive 10-month-old Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who’s obsessed with chasing leaves. We noticed this behavior over the summer, so we trained her a lot to try to manage it before fall. We’ve made good progress, but in the past few weeks, the amount of leaves near where we live has become almost unmanageable.

Before we started training, a leaf passing by 20 meters away would make her go crazy—lunging, screaming, the full Toller reaction. Now, she can mostly stay calm if leaves pass by at least 6 feet away. The problem is that it’s very unpredictable since there are so many leaves, and it has caused a bit of regression.

What we’ve done so far is desensitization. We used to go outside with a fan and picked up leaves on non-windy days so we could control the stimulation better. Once we felt she really understood the “game,” we also started to add some mild positive punishment, which helped quite a bit.

We’re also careful not to suppress her prey drive without giving her an outlet. We go on two 1–1.5-hour walks each day, which are a mix of loose-leash walking, obedience, and mostly play (flirt pole, tug, chase and catch, etc.). During play, we also do a lot of impulse-control exercises like waiting for the cue before chasing the ball or flirt pole.

Has anyone else struggled with something similar? How did you resolve it?

Hi everyone!

My boyfriend and I recently adopted a 3 month old retriever mix (we suspect he’s a lab/german shepherd mix) and he’s been doing great with training and getting adjusted, aside from this one thing that I’m looking for help on.

Every time we take our puppy outside, he constantly is trying to chew on grass, twigs, rocks, etc. We’re very vigilant and instantly take out whatever’s in his mouth, but that doesn’t stop him. He will go right back to looking for the next thing to put in his mouth.

I’ve had to put my finger almost down his throat to keep him from swallowing anything, lift his tongue, you name it, which I know can’t feel good for him, but even that doesn’t stop him from wanting to eat everything outside.

Is there any advice on ways I can try to redirect him? I tell him “no” which works for everything except this, and apparently he doesn’t care about us having to be all up in his mouth, so I’m at a loss. I also don’t want to confuse him and have him think he can’t sniff around outside because, of course, we’re potty training and he needs to be able to use the bathroom outside and explore. And, of course, we don’t want him ingesting something and getting sick.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you 🙂

Our pup is almost 4 months old and still has 1 more set of vaccinations to go. Just in the past week or so, she seems to be more afraid of things outside than she used to be. She moves people and dogs, but is afraid of machinery. Our neighbour was mowing, and she wanted to run away. Later in the day, a delivery driver came and she was afraid of the vehicle (but not the person who got out). 3 houses down the street there's a dumptruck and a backhoe doing some work and she wanted to run back inside.

However, if I play these sounds inside the house, she doesn't care and is fine. It seems like it just the sight of these things that bothers her.

She's normally treat motivated, but when she's in those situations, she could care less about treats. I can put them right up to her mouth and she just doesn't care.

I'm not sure how you improve this besides re-exposure.

I have a 1 year old golden retriever and a 4 year old Australian shepherd and live in town and am wondering if anyone has had any luck with collars lie halo. I have heard good things on YouTube but have heard very mixed things on Reddit and was curious if anyone had any luck.

We currently rent so we can’t put in an underground fence or put in an actual fence and we usually go to my parents/ in laws on the weekend which is 2 hours away so we have to take them with us and it would be nice to be able to set boundaries for each location but before I spent the money I wanted to see if anyone has had any luck with them.

Thanks for the help!

She has always been protective of her food. Whenever I get close while she’s eating, she stiffens up, lowers her head, and growls. It seems like she’s guarding her food, and I’m trying to understand why she does this and how I can help her feel more relaxed during mealtimes.