Blog

Our 8 month old puppy is getting neutered this Friday. Can we get some recommendations on items to help with protecting the surgery wound? Do you recommend any onesies?

Does anyone have any recommendations on self cleaning dog bowls? Something that reduces the bacteria buildup? Not sure if this even exists… but wanted to hear about some of the solutions out there that people are using.

We have a seven-month-old, who we adopted about a month ago (vaguely a lab mix, we're really not sure). Overall, he's a delight and pretty easy to train. We have struggled with peeing since the beginning. Right when we got him, he would go in the house and would pee almost unconsciously on walks (i.e., while still moving). Even a month later, we still have a LOT of accidents, even though we clean carefully with enzyme cleaner. They're never in the same spot and truly seem like 'accidents.' Especially in the evenings, we need to take him out every TWENTY minutes or so, or he'll lose control on the way outside. He always has a pretty large volume. We have really ramped up the high-value treats for going outside in an effort to get him to hold it.

After more accidents and truly wildly frequent urination, especially in the evening, we took him to the vet yesterday. The vet was very surprised by the frequency, but didn't find anything wrong, with a normal urine test.

He's crate trained, and we've never used pee pads. When he's in his crate, there are no accidents, including overnight.

Any thoughts and help are appreciated!

I have a 6-month-old mini Aussie/Bernedoodle and she’s so picky when it comes to treats. Like she’ll be excited the first time and then completely over it the next day 🙃

I’ve been trying to find something that’s actually motivating for training and that she consistently likes, especially since she’s still a puppy and I try to keep ingredients pretty simple.

We recently tried some banana bread cookies from Charlie's Bakeshop (Small dog bake shop in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia ) and she’s been obsessed with them so far (which is rare for her).

I’m curious, what treats have worked for your picky puppies? Always looking for more options to rotate so she doesn’t get bored again 😭

I forgot to add always gets an upset stomach and diarrhea if she has anything with chicken.

My puppy will be 10 weeks tomorrow and she usually does pretty good with potty training, she has a playpen for when I can’t directly supervise her but when she comes out I play with her or train her. She’ll even go ring the bells on the doorknob to go potty outside.

But when I’m not actively engaged in play or training with her (still 100% supervising her), I swear she just is looking for the perfect place to pee 🥴 literally this morning she popped a squat in a blanket my kids were using on a blanket fort. It happened so quick I didn’t even have time to stop her. And before you say I should have blankets all picked up and everything, I have 3 young kids. I don’t want them to have to completely change how they play because I’m worried the dog might pee.

My question is why is this happening when she seems to definitely at least understand potty training (I’m not expecting perfection at this age)?

It’s not like she didn’t go pee recently, she’d gone pee maybe 5 mins prior. I also use an enzyme cleaner, and I even got enzyme cleaner carpet shampoo for my shampooer an completely shampooed all the carpets in the main living area. And yes I treat heavily when going potty outside.

So this puppy always want to go to the kitchen and he’s like always trying to get out from this crate and go to the kitchen. And he sometimes play very hard with my mom and sister like he bites them abit which is kinda painful. However, when he’s with me he’s kinda bored of me I think because I’m there with him a lot and he sometimes takes a nap close to me or on me if I kinda bring him on to me, and he doesn’t play with me that much, maybe because I don’t have or put that much energy and mostly lay down around him. But the thing im concerned is that he sometimes gets frustrated when I don’t allow him to go to the kitchen area and like use my hand to block him, is he going to have a bad behavior. I’m about worried that he won’t listen to what I say. Because when I say no no no he still does it.

Hello! My yellow lab puppy is almost 18 weeks. We brought her home a little over a week ago. Crate training is going extremely well! She loves her kennel, goes in on command and even on her own. She does great with forced naps in her crate and sleeps in it overnight. Has no issues when we leave the house and she’s crated. Potty training is also going really well and she hasn’t had any accidents since we got more consistent with the crate a few days after bringing her home.

I know puppies need a lot of sleep and she’s right on par with the recommendations but I feel bad that she’s in the crate so much. When she’s out, we spend most of our time outside running around and playing or working on commands. We’ve tried letting her free from the crate (we have a small living area that’s open concept so it’s easy to keep track of where she is) but she just goes into full landshark mode and will try to eat EVERYTHING. She also gets really excited being out of her crate and will jump on my toddler and get the zoomies every single time. We never use the crate as punishment, but we’ll try and redirect and the only thing that truly helps her calm down is her crate.

So anyway… how long do I keep doing this? Like I said, I feel bad she’s in there so much but she’s just insane when she’s out of it. 😭

Title. Our boy is such a great listener. Sit. Touch. Down. Come (for the most part). Place. Go Home (crate). He’s on the money with these about 85% of the time. The latter few almost 100%.

On walks? Totally different dog. He’s a nut job if he sees our neighbors. He’s a nut job if he sees another dog. Won’t listen. He’s a YAPPER in general, but golly, on a walk? Forget about it. He’s on his hind legs jumping, barking, absolutely buck wild. It’s clearly excitement, or the desire to run over and interact, but it’s tremendously difficult to get him to settle down. In general his settling/regulation is a WIP, but on a walk it’s embarrassing, and it makes running into people a “here we go” situation.

My wife and I have been trying to reverse clicker train, click the moment he sees the distraction. It works maybe under 50% of the time.

I chalk up half of it to him being a field golden, and of course him being a puppy, but we’re really trying to work on his attention and distraction levels—it just flies out the window in walks.

What are good ways to approach improving on this during our walks? Any recommendations with clicker training, or trying to get him to settle/pay attention, or improve what we’ve built on? TIA!