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I have a 5 month old Havanese and I’m starting to wonder if I’m not stimulating her enough. She follows me around the house and just… stares at me. Sometimes she gets mouthy or does full zoomies (anywhere from 0-2x a day depending on the day). She can struggle to settle sometimes too.

For context on the settling, she CAN self-settle and does it fairly well a lot of the time. She’ll take herself under the sofa or under my desk and nap. We’ve done settle work with her and she’s generally ok at it…. She doesn’t know stay yet. But there are patches where she just seems restless and can’t quite switch off. After daycare and big walks she just walks into her crate and goes to bed.

Our days are honestly a real mix. Some days she gets sniff walks, training, puzzle toys, and tug. Other days it’s more like a walk and some tug or puzzle and tug and that’s it. There’s no real set routine for play specifically, it kind of depends on the day and how busy I am with work. She goes to a small home daycare once a week with 3 or 4 other dogs, and on Fridays the same daycare lady takes her and the other dogs on an hour long group walk. She gets a bigger walk on most weekends too.

She doesn’t really bring me toys unprompted unless we were already playing. She CAN self-entertain (she’ll throw her own toys around and chase them) but I’m not sure if the staring and following means she wants more from me or if that’s just… a velcro puppy being a velcro puppy.

For those with similar breeds or puppies around this age, how much actual interactive play are you doing per day? And how do you tell the difference between “I’m bored, engage me” and “I’m a puppy and I just want to be near you”?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We’ve had our puppy for two weeks now. We brought him home at 9 weeks old and is 11 weeks now. He is a rescue who was brought up north at 6 weeks old, and stayed with a foster family for 3 weeks. He is thought to be a basset or spaniel mix of some kind but nobody knows. He has taken potty training reasonably well, rings his bells to go out, and knows how to sit. We got him a crate because the foster family said he liked his. They didn’t lock him in it, and we don’t.

We both work during the day but my fiance stops home on lunch for an hour to feed and take out. He isn’t home alone more than 3.5 hours during the week.

Since the night we brought him home he has relentlessly bitten everything he can that’s attached to a person and more. Biting pants and feet when walking, hands every single chance he gets, lunging at faces, stalking and attacking feet and legs. Pretty much anyway you can phrase it he has bitten us everywhere, all the time.

Things we’ve been consistently trying since day 1:

– Ignoring him (rarely possible, he just bites more)

– Rewarding when good for any amount of time (treats, words, petting)

-Replacing with a toy when he’s biting (works for 10sec max)

-all types of chew toys for teething

-Short timeouts, behind a closed door or in his gated area

-burning energy w calm walks around the yard

-limited play time (he bites so we stop when he does)

-yelping like a litter mate (he couldn’t care less)

We didn’t expect him to make drastic changes in this time but also didn’t expect it to be this difficult. We made the teeny tiniest progress in week one. It was hour by hour if he was good or not.

We deep dived and read a lot. Learned to try and identify WHY he’s biting. Overstimulated, attention- seeking, frustration, teething, too much energy. Along with this we started implementing new strategies.

Week 2 we’ve tried:

-scheduled naps (helped a lot…when we can get him to nap which is rarely)

-interrupt his behavior, ignore briefly, reward when good

-giving command he knows (sit) to redirect

-dimming lights with calm music in a calm area

-overall being more consistent with how we handle biting

And here we are at the end of week 2 with not much to show for results. He is the tiniest bit more controllable, but once he starts biting we just can’t stop him no matter what we try.

It’s been incredibly defeating. My fiancee and I are drained within a few hours of getting home from work. He bites and bites and bites. Some nights have been way better than others, but it only lasts for so long.

We very much understand that this is going to be a long road ahead. We’re as patient as we can be, but something needs to change. We don’t expect anything to be immediate either.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read and help.

I got a 3 month old Dalmatian puppy from a farm and the only place she will sleep is her crate. I work 8 hours a day so I was planning on crate training her, but my roomate works from home so she can take her out to pee. The thing is, my roomate wants to keep her out of the crate while at home(which I love and I hope will be reality some day!!!), but she ends up being to naughty/nippy and distracting her while she’s working. I feel like she ends up being in her crate (on and off) for almost the entire day… she sleeps but I just don’t want this to be developmentally detrimental since she is such a high energy breed. I am just feeling like I need some honest help and advice for our situation.

It sounds like she’s making a thumping noise from her chest ? She’s 11 weeks

I rescued a 6 month old husky / lab / Sheppard mix 5 months ago. He turns 1 year next month, is fixed and used to be mostly a really good dog. I have a 6 year old husky who is an angel and is also fixed (female).

I’ve read a lot about the adolescence phase, but I don’t know if that’s what this is. When we first got our pup, he was resource guarding food and toys. We immediately started working with a trainer, and do our best to ensure no food or toys are out with them together.

He has become aggressive to other dogs by humping and just going crazy growling, so we can’t take him to the park anymore whereas before he was so good with every single dog. He snaps at my older dog all the time, he doesn’t play gently anymore and just is reverting in all aspects with the training we’ve done.

The trainer we hired is supposed to be one of the best, but she only provides us “preventative” training, but it isn’t working and we need help on what to actually do when our pup starts trying to play with the older dog but gets too rough, or why he is snapping through his crate now where he never did that before. We’ve tried so much but I don’t know what to do anymore. It’s as if every single day, some new bad behaviour comes up. We can’t even take him to public places to continue getting socialization as he is just so reactive and hyper and crazy around everything now.

I don’t want him to keep these bad habits and I know this age is imperative to ensure we train these things out of him but I feel like we’ve tried so many things but he just keeps getting worse. He’s such a sweet dog and has never been aggressive to me, but he’s torturing my older dog and we just want them to get along like how they used to.

Please help, I’m so exhausted and the trainer I paid for isn’t helping and we don’t know what to do anymore.

I adopted my 10 month old 2 months ago, and she really only settles in her crate. When she gets tired at night she’ll run upstairs and practically bounce into her crate.

We did successfully have a couch nap on Sunday, finally!! I was sooo happy. She even started to fall asleep on the couch while I was getting ready for work yesterday.

But the nighttime demon has yet to understand that it’s okay to settle and nap on the couch before the big bedtime!

I just want to hangout with her. 😭❤️

I’m hoping for more daytime naps —> she gets more comfy sleeping outside of the crate —> she can take a small nap before bedtime —> eventually she can sleep outside of her crate at night

We've only ever had rescue Jack Russells but for a few reasons we are looking at getting a rough coat Jack Russell Terrier from a puppy. We just have no idea how to go about it all, who to trust, what to ask, etc.

We've reached out to the JR association but have had no response which is disappointing.

If there's anyone willing to have a chat on here or in DMs about how you found the process here in the UK, that would be really appreciated.

Any general tips welcome too. TIA x

Is anyone else experiencing this? (Australian shepherd between 1 and 2 years old. )

I am training a puppy, his name government name is Diogenes, we call him Dio, and sometimes I call him DD (Diamond dog/Dio Dog).

We have another puppy named Moo, who we also have various names for, my favorite is Moopert.

I don't really want to confuse them, but these names often just slip out. Am I worried over nothing? Will they learn these names apply to them the same as their given names?

Kia ora from New Zealand. I’ve been doing some preliminary searches of articles or peer-reviewed studies that show the benefit of puppy (or adult dog) basic obedience classes. Looking for any kind of benefit, potentially for the community (decrease in attacks?) or even just the bond between dog and human.

It’s been taking awhile skimming through various results and most are not super helpful. Just thought I’d put some feelers out there to see if anyone knows of a good paper/study/article. It would help me with my volunteer work with the needs analysis of creating online modules to support in-person classes (if anyone has done a similar project would be great to hear about that as well!). Thanks team.