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To be honest stresses from other areas of my life is amplifying the puppy blues by a lot.

I have a reactive 8 month old puppy. We’ve been doing a lot of work and well I see small progress for sure, but today was a bad day.

It felt like we took a jump backwards. She’s reacting at a Ievel she hasn’t in a month or two.

Redirection was much harder today and the distance from triggers had to be significantly farther. I feel so down on everything.. I feel like it’ll never get better.

lab pup, Wednesday he's 14 weeks, had him since exactly 10 weeks. senior is some kind of chi I think but looks like a rat terrier maybe, almost 12 years, had her since rescuing around 6 months, and she's mostly blind.

General training was going really good, and he was doing really well at potty training. He's totally crate trained already. One of the only issues we've consistently had is he demand barks at her, begging her to play. she wants nothing to do with it and makes that abundantly clear with growling. they can be in proximity as long as he's not nipping or barking at her.

the last week has been really overwhelming for me. i'm dealing with a lot. and a lot is an understatement. I'm experiencing an increase in my mental health symptoms, I had an injury that has been causing me even more physical pain than usual and I was in a spica brace all week, I'm getting ready to move and just got approved for the new place this week but the uncertainties – especially financially – around the move is giving me more panic attacks, and I have a puppy on top of it. my patience has been stretched really thin this week.

because I'm already struggling, his normal non-linear puppy progression feels like I'm doing something wrong. it seems like he's started acting out to get treats, especially leash biting when we're inside. but he's still having accidents inside the house, probably because I struggle to keep track of time or a couple times it's been because I misread his cues and didnt wait long enough while we were outside for him to get all his poop out. So I've been keeping him on lead to be able to notice, respond and get him outside quicker. Last week he was even telling me when he needed to go outside by whining and apparently when he steals my shoe it means he needs to go out cuz two or three times now he's stolen my shoe and once I've gotten him to drop it, he's promptly stepped 3 feet away from me and started peeing.

Today he had been demand barking at my senior and went to lunge at her on the couch, but because he was already at the end of the leash, he lost his balance and fell. he started limping, so I checked his legs and paws over from top to toes with no reaction or indication of pain, and its been over an hour now and before I put him in the crate for a nap he was walking mostly fine. But now I feel guilty that he got hurt. I feel guilty he harasses my senior girl and no matter how many times I redirect him or she growls at him, he'll stop for about 15 seconds and then start up again and keep doing it until he's bored.

he's started biting at the treat bag the last couple of days. it's a shitty bag that I havent had the time to make a stronger one, so I'm scared he's going to rip it. he's started trying to chew on furniture this week, too.

and I'm single and still grieving my last relationship. so everything is on me. if I get overstimulated from the biting and the pulling and the barking and all the very normal age appropriate behaviors, there isnt anyone I can pass the puppy off to. I've been yelling a lot this last week between trying to handle the puppy and trying to manage my senior so she's less likely to be bothered, and I feel absolutely horrible. theyre both good dogs, and I know yelling isn't helpful and probably making things worse.

he only just started showing me appropriate affection yesterday. he's been playfully biting and chewing on me since the first week, but he just started licking me yesterday.

I dont want to screw him up. I dont want my seniors remaining time spent stressed out because he demand barks at her so many times a day.

i'm exercising him via fetch inside the house and the flirt pole in the yard (he really loves the flirt pole) until he's fully vaccinated in 5 weeks or so, we're in training classes once a week, I'm giving him mental stimulation, he's getting enforced naps, if we're not playing or sleeping or pottying or eating we're training (if we include correcting and redirecting negative behaviors as training), I'm trying to keep him to a decent schedule. I'm doing my best and this week definitely feels like my best isnt enough and I'm simply not cut out to raise a puppy.

I have an 11 week old lab puppy and have been working on basic obedience with him, and I’ve been thinking about starting practicing walking on a loose leash with him just around our yard. The issue is he isn’t used to wearing a collar or leash as he doesn’t wear his collar most of the time since he can’t go into public places yet. When I put the collar and leash (or harness and leash) on him, he’ll usually try to bite the leash and collar and it’s hard for him to get to walk with it on. I’m just wondering how I should acclimate him to a collar or harness and how to get him used to wearing it on its own and with a leash without biting the leash.

I’ve noticed my puppy has been chewing a lot more lately and is gravitating to different textures. All fine, she has a ton of toys and is generally crated when she’s home alone. WELL this weekend she took a chunk out of my leather couch and started pulling the stuffing out. I caught her doing it and told her no and gave her something else to chew and she hasn’t chewed that couch since. She went after a different chair just now though.

Am I just always going to have to have her crated when she’s out of my eye sight? I’d love to eventually give her more freedom, and for a while I’ve trusted her to be free in the gated off living room for a few hours but now I don’t think I can!

Hey, I was walking my dog through winners today to help desensitize him to stores and busy environments. It’s not usually a store I go into so I was surprised by their pet aisle and prices. I got a chuckit launcher for 11$ and almost bought a bag of bully sticks too.

My question is has anyone else ever boughten treats or bully sticks from Winners? They looked different than the ones in pet stores – less dense and lighter in colour. Are there any quality issues I should be aware of or look out for??

i've been having my puppy ring the bell every time we go outside for about a month, but he has only used the bells to signal on his own twice and only after I've said, "do you need to go outside?"

is it just a waiting game, or am I missing a step? I'm not sure how to get him to transition from doing it when told to doing it on his own.

Just came here looking for the last resource of advice. my wife and I have a 12 week old golden retriever puppy. To make a long story short, we never planned on getting a puppy as we have 3 dogs already, but the entire litter was adopted by her family and we felt like leaving just 1 puppy left, was, well sad. Back to my points, we do not feel like we can get this puppy trained, we’ve had her for 4 weeks now, the accidents continue to happen in the house, she doesn’t seem to know her name, leash training is going horribly, and overall just doesn’t seem to be clicking.

Potty training – we’ve tried multiple different attempts at potty training her in different ways, including some $40 training app she downloaded. we’re currently on the idea of special treats for when she pees outside and that’s the only time those treats are given to her. My wife hates the idea of bells on the door because she works in the vet field and has heard too many stories about the bells getting used for attention and not to go outside, so as much as I’ve heard it works, we’ve exed out that one. She continues to have accidents in the house and just can’t predict when they’re going to happen, they have become less frequent the older she’s gotten, but there’s no sign of her telling the difference between carpet and grass regardless of how often we make sure she goes outside.

Recall – her recall is pretty much nonexistent, while we know she’s only 12 weeks and it’s not going to be anywhere near perfect, she doesn’t even seem to know that we’re calling for her. We have sat there with her and just her calling out her name just to maybe get a slight look or a headtilt, but that’s all. Our 5 year old GSD knew her name within days around the same age and by 4/5 months could be off leash in the backyard and we knew with a yell of her name she was at the door within seconds.

Leash training – horrible, not sure how else to explain it, we’ve started trying to walk laps with her in the backyard on the leash (because we don’t take her on real walks yet due to not being fully vaccinated yet) she just bites at the leash and feels like she needs to be dragged, even when bribed to take some steps with treats.

We love this dog, BUT we’re tired, and we also understand at the end of the day she’s ONLY 12 weeks old and she’s still just a baby at heart, but are we insane for thinking that she should be better at this point? Or is this just the puppy blues??

(I should also mention the rest of the litter her family has is potty trained by this point, and one of them seems to be almost fully leash trained, while knowing sit and shake too.)

my 6 month irish wolfhound x rottie mix might be dumb. since i got her 4 months ago, i’ve been trying to teach her basic tricks (sit, lay, paw) every day with training treats and affirmations, but she just doesn’t seen to get it. i’m trying to consistently train her, but it either might not be enough or she’s just a little slow. the only thing she’s gotten down was letting me know she has to go out, and she’s good at waiting for her food. i don’t remember training being this hard with my other dog.

Hi guys I was hoping for some guidance on this weird thing that's been going on. My 1.7 yo yellow lab is by all means a very gentle, nice, and sociable dog. I take him to the park every weekend and in general he plays really well. He generally always loves to be the more submissive dog, rolling on his back, letting other dogs kind of wrangle him. he's not possessive of toys and will drop his toys for other dogs as soon as another dog shows interest in them, he tolerates other dogs being aggressive or standoffish towards him and doesn't engage in aggression in return. all this to say he's generally a really good boy with other dogs.

However, when we are the park there is sometimes there is an elderly little male dog present. The owner has two dogs, a big dog and a little dog so she just brings the little dog into the big dog area to have them both in the same place. My dog is obsessed with this elderly little dog. He will follow this little dog incessantly and when other dogs approach the little dog or my dog when the little dog is around my dog goes full on aggressive; growling, snarling, snapping at other dogs. He isn't aggressive towards the little dog at all (other than following him around and trying to lick his butt incessantly) and when the little dog isn't around my dog has no problem playing nicely with these same dogs. So why is my boy having such a behavior change which this little dog around?

lots of people have said that it seems like he is trying to protect the little dog because it is so small. does that make sense? Is there any way to train out this behavior?

note: he's not neutered yet and I understand that may be the issue. we do plan to have him neutered we just have not been in a rush since, other than this weirdly specific aggression, his behavior is stellar.

I want to pamper my dogs but as per many of us in this group I am BROKE. I plan on brushing my dogs really well and giving them a “bath” using no rinse shampoo but I wanna watch somethigg my on tv they will like. How can I give my dogs the best day ever from home with no money.

Edit: I can’t take them on a walk because I have multiple disabilities that would make it unsafe for both me and my dogs to go on a walk.