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This must be by 30th post today alone, so I apologize in advance lol.

Picking up 8 week old pup in a few weeks. It’s only about a 20 minute car ride from where we are. Just for the sake of it being to spend a million dollars on puppy stuff at once, do you think we need to buy him a puppy car seat and seat belt right away or could we pass with whoever the passenger is just holding him until he gets a little bigger?

My fiance and I just adopted a ~4 month old puppy from a shelter. She had kennel cough after the shelter immediately brought her in but once she was medically cleared we picked her up. It's been two weeks and we just had a trainer come for the first time and I feel a bit discouraged and was not expecting that reaction from the trainer.

When she knocked on the door our puppy barked and we are staying in an Airbnb for a short time due to home repairs from a flood but she barked and once the trainer walked in she acted completely appalled. We have noticed our puppy takes a little to warm up to people but she eventually settles in an hour or so. She was giving treats but our puppy was still barking. She was also barking to get attention. The trainer then said "this happens every 1 in 7 dogs she trains when she walks in the door" and "I'm sorry this is your first dog experience" which I felt was a bit odd to say… my fiancé and I had childhood dogs but this is our first dog together. She then proceeds to tell us about a re-homing a dog situation because one dog she trained kept biting.

Our puppy is usually a snuggle bug but we definitely notice she's got a lot of energy. We have a lot of enrichment toys we use since we both WFH. But the trainer then proceeds to tell us that Hills food has whole grain corn which prevents serotonin growth and its why she's continuing to bark at the trainer. She's in a constant fight or flight mode she said. She suggested we change to Acana or Orijin.. anyone here use this instead of Hills? Our vet recommended Hills too. Seems like these two food options are higher protein.

After the hour, we just felt pretty discouraged and we knew this was going to be a process and we're ready and committed to our puppy but I think I was just anticipating a more positive trainer attitude.

I have a 5-, almost 6-month golden retriever puppy. About a week and a half ago he had emergency surgery to remove a cat toy from his intestine. I didn't know he had eaten it, otherwise would have taken him to the vet right away to have vomiting induced. Because of the particular toy it was, I know it was in his system for more than a month before being removed.

I had noticed for about a week before the surgery he was acting strangely. He would no longer settle in his play pen, would panic when I left the room, and started waking up about an hour earlier than usual. He had softish stools, and was going more frequently than he had been previously, and had pretty bad flatulence. This all coincided with my returning to work after a 2-week holiday break, a gradual food change and some pretty bad teething, so I wrote it off. This was about 3 weeks after he had eaten the toy, and in those 3 weeks he had been completely normal.

He's been home after surgery for just over a week. For the first week I kept him on a higher dose of the sedative meds the vet sent him home with and he pretty much slept in his crate all day.

The past 2 days I've cut back on the meds and all of the behaviors he was exhibiting the week before he went in for surgery have returned. He is pooping more than normal, farting, unable to settle, and is waking up in the wee hours of the morning. When I let him out of his crate he jumps all over stuff and plays really aggressively, which the vet has specifically told me to avoid. If I leave him crated, he barks and scratches in the crate and I'm worried he's going to hurt himself.

I'm at a loss. I don't know how to handle this in the interim while his incision heals, and I'm worried it means something larger is wrong since the surgery has clearly not fixed this. Is this just normal puppy stuff?

Let me know if this makes sense. I'm so tired from the lack of sleep. Thanks in advance.

My parents got a German Wirehair pointer puppy on New Year’s and I’m currently living at home and work from home so I get to be with it all day while my parents are at work. For the first week I could not work my full hours because I was constantly picking up or cleaning pee or letting him outside every 30 minutes (only for him to still pee and pop inside).

My parents are very simple people. They’re 63 & 62 years old, and have never had their dogs professionally trained. My dad is the type to slap his dog if he is misbehaving bad enough and you better not try to tell him that’s bad otherwise you may be in for an hour long red in the face argument where all of your previous failures in life get mentioned.

My dad is a mechanic and hates his job at this point and when he gets home he showers and sits down and basically does not get back up. When he gets home I take my personal time to do what I need to do alone considering it is his dog after all and he’s home so he should be happily taking care of it. Well instead he just lets it piss on the floor because he doesn’t want to go outside because his legs hurt and he’s honestly just lazy. But then when he finds the piss he screams at the dog BUT STILL DOESNT TAKE HIM OUTSIDE!

I’m at my wits end I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to help train this dog the right way but it just feels helpless as this point.

I guess any suggestions I would appreciate idk why I even made this post honestly I’ll prolly just get dragged in the comments.

Has anyone else not been getting along with their significant over and bickering a lot more because of the stress of a puppy? We’ve been together 15 years so I’m not worried about us but dang, we’ve been fighting a lot more lately 😂😅

Hello. I try to pay attention to my puppy’s body language when meeting other dogs, and give her space to decide if she wants to approach or retreat, but one thing that’s puzzling me is that often she will tuck her tail as if frightened whilst still trying to approach the dog / pulling insistently toward them. Is this a “feel the fear but do it anyway” sort of thing? Or is it that one signal might mean something else in this context? She’s ten months old but has been doing this for a while, even with dogs she’s met multiple times, when we pass on the street or at cafes.

I got my almost 6mos pup a 10” collagen stick by Nothin’ to Hide. She has had the small ones and loved them (honestly have yet to encounter a treat or food she does not like lol) and i was looking for long lasting chews to stock up on so thought this would be a good option. It’s pretty big!!

I gave it to her after dinner today and she chewed it for a while. I could hear her munching on it while I ate my dinner and the last I saw it, it was still decently big! But then all of a sudden… poof. Gone. I feel crazy. I know she probably ate it but it just seems like it was way too big still to finish it off?! Maybe it’ll show up somewhere in the house lol but does anyone else’s pup do this?? The first week I got her this also happened w a different but smaller edible chew and I was freaked out until my friend assured me she probably just wolfed it down 😂 it’s fully edible so I believe it’s fine but I know people have horror stories for stuff like this and I need reassurance that this is normal and okay!! But will be giving these things to her few and far between from now on if they aren’t gonna last more than one sitting!!!

Getting a mini petite Goldendoodle who will likely be only a few pounds when we get him, so very small. All the pens I’m seems for inside seem to be extremely small, and with the addition of his crate inside of the pen I find it to be way too small. Is that how it should be?

Are we supposed to literally keep the puppy in the pen all the time and not roam around the house at all?

So cats keep coming inside our house through the doggy door. Sometimes we see our dog just chilling with cats through our CCTV so we know he's not much of a guard doge. Recently, we found a cat in our house again and we were shooing it and my dog suddenly started chasing it out. But no aggression it's like he's saying "Look at me I'm doing my job! I didn't let the cat in!" We both rolled our eyes because he only does that when we're at home.

I have a 1.5 year-old labrador retriever that doesn't know how to play gently with other dogs. He isn't aggressive or anything, he just gets way too excited and starts to jump and trample on the other dogs, which has caused him to not be accepted at dog daycares. I even have to keep him and my 14 year-old dachshund separated most of the day because anytime he sees her he starts to run and jump and trample her and he doesn't understand that her snapping at him means that she doesn't want to be played with, he will just keep doing what he's doing and nothing that we do to try to correct it works. I can tell he means well, he doesn't bite or scratch or anything, he just gets too excited.