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Hi everybody!

I have a very high-drive 10-month-old Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who’s obsessed with chasing leaves. We noticed this behavior over the summer, so we trained her a lot to try to manage it before fall. We’ve made good progress, but in the past few weeks, the amount of leaves near where we live has become almost unmanageable.

Before we started training, a leaf passing by 20 meters away would make her go crazy—lunging, screaming, the full Toller reaction. Now, she can mostly stay calm if leaves pass by at least 6 feet away. The problem is that it’s very unpredictable since there are so many leaves, and it has caused a bit of regression.

What we’ve done so far is desensitization. We used to go outside with a fan and picked up leaves on non-windy days so we could control the stimulation better. Once we felt she really understood the “game,” we also started to add some mild positive punishment, which helped quite a bit.

We’re also careful not to suppress her prey drive without giving her an outlet. We go on two 1–1.5-hour walks each day, which are a mix of loose-leash walking, obedience, and mostly play (flirt pole, tug, chase and catch, etc.). During play, we also do a lot of impulse-control exercises like waiting for the cue before chasing the ball or flirt pole.

Has anyone else struggled with something similar? How did you resolve it?

Hi everyone!

My boyfriend and I recently adopted a 3 month old retriever mix (we suspect he’s a lab/german shepherd mix) and he’s been doing great with training and getting adjusted, aside from this one thing that I’m looking for help on.

Every time we take our puppy outside, he constantly is trying to chew on grass, twigs, rocks, etc. We’re very vigilant and instantly take out whatever’s in his mouth, but that doesn’t stop him. He will go right back to looking for the next thing to put in his mouth.

I’ve had to put my finger almost down his throat to keep him from swallowing anything, lift his tongue, you name it, which I know can’t feel good for him, but even that doesn’t stop him from wanting to eat everything outside.

Is there any advice on ways I can try to redirect him? I tell him “no” which works for everything except this, and apparently he doesn’t care about us having to be all up in his mouth, so I’m at a loss. I also don’t want to confuse him and have him think he can’t sniff around outside because, of course, we’re potty training and he needs to be able to use the bathroom outside and explore. And, of course, we don’t want him ingesting something and getting sick.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you 🙂

Our pup is almost 4 months old and still has 1 more set of vaccinations to go. Just in the past week or so, she seems to be more afraid of things outside than she used to be. She moves people and dogs, but is afraid of machinery. Our neighbour was mowing, and she wanted to run away. Later in the day, a delivery driver came and she was afraid of the vehicle (but not the person who got out). 3 houses down the street there's a dumptruck and a backhoe doing some work and she wanted to run back inside.

However, if I play these sounds inside the house, she doesn't care and is fine. It seems like it just the sight of these things that bothers her.

She's normally treat motivated, but when she's in those situations, she could care less about treats. I can put them right up to her mouth and she just doesn't care.

I'm not sure how you improve this besides re-exposure.

I have a 1 year old golden retriever and a 4 year old Australian shepherd and live in town and am wondering if anyone has had any luck with collars lie halo. I have heard good things on YouTube but have heard very mixed things on Reddit and was curious if anyone had any luck.

We currently rent so we can’t put in an underground fence or put in an actual fence and we usually go to my parents/ in laws on the weekend which is 2 hours away so we have to take them with us and it would be nice to be able to set boundaries for each location but before I spent the money I wanted to see if anyone has had any luck with them.

Thanks for the help!

She has always been protective of her food. Whenever I get close while she’s eating, she stiffens up, lowers her head, and growls. It seems like she’s guarding her food, and I’m trying to understand why she does this and how I can help her feel more relaxed during mealtimes.

Recently re floored our home (vinyl plank hardwood) and since doing so my almost 3 year old micro sheepadoodle has been peeing all over the house multiple times a week; sometimes even peeing on objects. I was thinking he was marking his territory but I’m not so sure. My 7 year old bernedoodle doesn’t seem to partake in this activity.

My first post here, so I am just posing a question. How do others feel about iVet? My family’s been using them for almost a decade and a half, since they were a small company before being bought out. Many people I’ve talked to have never heard of it, but it’s on par with Royal Canine and Nutrino as well as a few others.

Hello everyone, honestly I'm probably going to keep this post short because I've tried to write a long-winded and detailed explanation in another dog community but it got deleted. So for context I have a miniature schnauzer and two cats. So as you can imagine I have to do a lot of management. Currently that will look like place training, rewarding for giving me her focus to me after looking to the cats, if she does try to chase and play with the cats (no I'm not downplay the situation, my girl genuinely wants to play with them which still of course is bad but I think full transperancy on how the animals see each other is very important for training), I’ll recall her off them and treat her.

As you might guess I've also recently gotten a crate, and am currently working on crate training her for multiple reasons. The issue is my silly little schnauz pup, has recently with her create training started mixing up her marker word, and her release word. So our training will look kinda like this, lure her in, mark, reward. She’ll eat the treat that I slipped, then I’ll mark again trying to build duration, but before I can slip the treat through the top of the crate (I don't hand feed her the treats in the create, I want the reward to come from the create), she’ll leave the create. I know this isn't a confidence issue and more a mix up on her cues because of how confidently she leaves her create, the same way she would when I give her, her release word (honestly it's kinda funny and cute but of course not what I'm looking for). She always had a habit of mixing up her commands but those would be things like “sit”, and “down” (which seems to me like me and my girl have to go back to the basics of reteaching those until she has a better understanding and foundational skills) but this being her marker and release word of course it's different. It might be handler error with how I tought her, her release.

That would look more like “down” she downs, mark “yes!” gives her the treat, “free” she releases, “yes!” mark and reward. So now I have this mix up. If anyone has tips on how I can help her understand the difference in differentiating this I'd appreciate it. Honestly this applies to both her mixing up her marker and release, as well as just commands in general. I'd appreciate help in both territory.