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TL;DR:

Picked up our puppy during a New England blizzard, hotel stay was chaos, drove through the night, got home Sunday. Puppy cried nonstop at first, I slept on the floor, but last night he finally slept 4 hours straight 🎉. He’s sweet, smart, mostly potty trained, and we’re doing baby‑wipe “baths” so we don’t overwhelm him. First vet visit is tomorrow. I should practice a car ride and crate‑door time today, but I’m exhausted. Weather has been rough but improving. Puppy kindergarten starts in March. Conflicting advice online is making me lose my mind, but overall he’s a really good boy — I’m just tired and stressed and hoping it gets easier soon.

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We picked up our little guy on Saturday afternoon in New England… right as a massive blizzard warning hit. The drive home was surprisingly smooth — he cried for the first hour but then he slept most of the time — but the hotel stay was a bit of a disaster. He was so confused by all the new smells, and I was too nervous to let him walk around freely because of parvo/germ worries. We stayed a few hours before realizing none of us were going to sleep, and since we planned to leave at 6 AM anyway to beat the storm, we just packed up and drove through the night.

We made it home Sunday midday.

Sunday was rough — he cried and cried, and that first night I ended up sleeping on the floor next to his exercise pen. We were all exhausted and trying to figure each other out.

BUT last night he slept four full hours without crying 🎉🎉 which felt like a miracle.

He’s genuinely a really good puppy: smart, sweet, already basically potty trained, and the breeder gave him a great head start with crate training. He also really needs a bath, but we’re holding off and sticking to baby wipes for now because we don’t want to overwhelm him on top of everything else.

The weather has been tough (blizzard = no outdoor play), but thankfully it’s above freezing today here in the Mid‑Atlantic, so we finally got some outside time.

His first vet visit is tomorrow, and I know I should take him on a short practice car ride today and work on closing the crate door… but honestly, I’m so tired I don’t know if I have it in me. My partner and I are wiped out — I’m the primary daytime person while he works — and I’ve definitely been using ChatGPT more than I should, to figure out what to do 😅.

The hardest part so far is the conflicting advice online. Everyone says something different, and it’s overwhelming when you’re sleep‑deprived.

We start puppy kindergarten the first week of March, and I’m hoping that helps us all get into a rhythm.

Overall, he’s a good, smart, sweet puppy… I’m just stressed and tired and trying my best.

Please tell me it gets better soon — I could use the reassurance. I’m also trying to find a new job at the same time but that has taken a total back burner.

Puppy help

Dear Reddit, please help. Against all of my better judgment I got myself a 10 week old Bully Mix after my super chill old dog died. I have a basic understanding of dog training and was having really good success initially. Now he’s four months old and everything is going off the rails. He constantly bites my kids to the point where everyone is scared of him. He was doing really well at the basic commands and no longer wants to listen to me. Which is age appropriate, but is not working in my favor. He is quickly outgrowing my abilities now. I live in a very rural area and there are no available training resources that are accepting new clients. The shelter is planning to put me in contact with their trainer, but I really do want to grow my own skills. However, I am getting so confused by all the different suggestions on the Internet. I’ve looked through some of the wiki page, but I’m not seeing like step-by-step what I should do next type instructions. I feel like all of the suggestions that I’m reading about are complicated by having three young children around him at all times. I am determined to teach him how to be a calm and respectful companion for my family.

This week hasn’t been a complete loss, he has had some success with keeping his feet on the floor when he is greeting. This requires massive amounts of coaching. This skill is extra important because we have a home-based business where clients are coming and going and cannot be jumped on. (Why did I get a puppy?!?)

I’ve been trying some of the techniques I’ve found from “Say It Once” like tethering but unless I give him a high value chew he will eat his leash. That brings me to my most pressing question, leash training. We live in the country so he doesn’t have to be on a leash very often, but I would love for him to be part of our lives and go places with us so we continue to practice the leash. Obviously, I don’t know what the hell I am doing because the leash turns him into a piranha/tornado combination. He is going to hurt himself, and I hate it.

I’m not even sure what I’m asking, resources?, Advice?, punishment? I need something more personalized than basic dog training advice because our home feels so complicated. I have made a mistake by bringing him into our home just to be kenneled even when we are home but I am determined to make this work and not send him back to the shelter. Where do I start? I thought it was going so well but I was wrong!

So I had labradors my whole life, my last Labrador is still alive but she was so quick (like the rest) fantastic at being left home alone. She’s with my mum now as that’s her main owner anyways.

About 3 months ago me and my partner have decided to get our first puppy together. She’s a standard black poodle cross with some Labrador and Australian shepherd as the dad is unfortunately a rescue. This has made her such an exciting surprise but it has been a rough few months lol.

She’s amazing at so much and the smartest puppy I’ve ever owned, she’s so quick to learn and she is extremely respectful and just super loving and understanding. However, I believe this is because she loves people, a bit too much for her own good. She is very attached to me, and occasionally my partner, even if we leave the house she gets super anxious and barks like mad. This was what used to happen when we first got her, it has thankfully been getting better but the progress is slow, I’m worried she’ll never be able to be on her own fully. I can’t leave her for long at all. Even five minutes and I hear her start to bark from outside. I don’t want any of that “just leave her and she’ll get used to it.” crap.

I’ve tried every possibility and it does not work for a dog like her, she just believes im abandoning her and she’ll get louder and louder. I tried this twice and gave up as the strategy seems more harmful and makes her stick to my hip like crazy. So none of that that will be ignored thanks. That didn’t even work with my labs. Please actual advice would help from people who understood this!

We adopted our new girl a few weeks ago and she's six months old. She was moved around quite a bit in her early life but she is so sweet and generally adaptable so far. We were told she was crate-trained but would cry a bit sometimes when first going in, then settle for the rest of the time. We found this to be true for the first weeks. We have her crate in the guest room and shut the door so our other dog, who can roam at night, wouldn't wake or distract her. The crate is not covered (we didn't have one) and we don't give any stuffed animals for safety reasons.

The first night we had her, I stayed in there until she fell asleep, giving a couple of treats and then leaving quietly when she was asleep. We followed the same process for the first week and let her cry a few minutes when she wasn't asleep yet when we left the room.

She has progressively gotten worse with it over the last week – she used to cry 5-10 minutes then it became 15-20. We're thinking it's because she's more attached to us and doesn't want to be separated now as time has gone on? I asked our dog trainer for some advice and she suggested trialing keeping the door open or putting a stuffed animal in there (her previous foster did say she liked that), so we gave her a stuffed toy at bedtime last night. She cried for over an hour with the toy in her mouth. I took her outside to pee and brought her back and she continued to absolutely howl and circle around the crate, in a way we'd never seen before.

We're thinking she was just not tired enough at bedtime (she slept on and off from like 7:30-10:30pm on the couch) and the toy may have riled her up for playtime instead of bedtime. Now we're afraid of rocking the boat and trying a crate cover or opening the door in case we have similar issues, but her crying periods getting longer instead of shorter over time made us want to try countermeasures.

She also goes in for a 3 hour midday crate nap where she usually cries a bit then as well. I'm dreading putting her in there today after how last night went but I know I need to try again and see if the issue persists.

I am a couple of months out from getting a puppy. I have a trip planned, so I'll start looking after that, but I've already started to look at what I need to get for her.

It will be a female English Show Cocker Spaniel and she will be around 8-10 weeks when we get her. They grow show much during the first 6 months or so, so what do you do for harness/collar? Do I need to buy multiple sizes during that time? are there specific types you recommend that might be more flexible?

I am also curious what your options are on whether i should go for harness or collar for her.

I have had dogs before, but they were rescues. Even though young and still in training, they were fully grown and so I don't have experience with this.

I don't know what to do. Got a patterdale-jack Russel cross just before Christmas, complete surprise from my partner. I'm at the point where I'm considering rehoming or selling her.

Some things to know, I am currently bed bound, I'm unable to feed, train or generally take care of her and it's going to be multiple months before I can walk properly again due to complications after an injury. I also have an iron temper, ask any of my friends, they have never seen me angry. I'm not trying to be tough or hard, they're just important bits to know for the rest of this.

My partner will not train our puppy the important bits. She doesn't sit, she doesn't stay, she has zero recall, she barks constantly throughout the day, she knows exactly what her name is and yet won't even acknowledge when I say her name, if it's just me and her in the room she jumps and screeches at the door for someone else, her tail was docked wrong and she needs to go to the fucking vet NOW, we've had her two months and she hasn't been to the vet except for jabs, she's not chipped, she has bitten me, she has bitten my partner, she reacts very badly to the four other dogs in the house (none of them are mine and have been her years longer than my dog), if they fight the other people in the house just shout her name, one of those dogs is a fucking German Shepherd, my little patterjack is not winning that fight ever, she hasn't been on a walk since a week after we got her and she will grab food directly out of people's hands while they are eating.

She does twirly whirlies though. And she rolls over, and she does paw and she does play dead, you know, the incredibly important commands for a three month old dog to know. She's 1000% trainable, but she can't be around me much because she will jump on and hurt me (which she has done multiple times already) so I can't train her and I don't know what to do, no one else in this fucking house will train the dog not to pick fights with a dog five times her size, or not to shit on the carpet (which they will happily complain about though), or ANYTHING ELSE IMPORTANT.

I don't know how long I can carry on with this. My temper is shot, I'm getting angry a lot, lot more than I want to and it's starting to affect me at work, my patience used to last hours, now I can't get through a half hour phone call with a customer without having to make up some bullshit excuse to put them on hold so I can calm down. I don't like this, I can't handle the dog, the three other people in my house won't handle her in any meaningful way, I can't keep their brutes away from my dog, I can't feed her, I can't train her, I can't do anything about anything and I don't know what to do.

Thanks for the vent, putting it into words I'm a lot calmer now.