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Hi all, in short, my family is wanting to adopt a cat/kitten, but we have dogs who have never been around cats. My dogs are my babies, and they are trained considerably well and obey commands for the most part despite some control issues. They are pretty high energy, but are great dogs and super sweet. They are 5 and 3 1/2, and both have never lived with another animal before besides fish. My daughter has been asking to get a cat for a while now, and we are finally willing to do so, and want to make sure it’s done right, and that the cat/kitten gets along with the dogs, and they with the cat. Has anyone else had this experience? If so, what tips would you suggest? Anything would be helpful, I’ve never done this before and just want to make sure we can be good advocates for both animals!

My boy weighs around 120 pounds and most of the perches i see online are either for small breeds or a max weight recommendation of 100 pounds. Hoping someone has a recommendation and a link for a perch specifically made for larger dogs over 100 pounds. I want to put one on each side of my window so he can go in and out through the window in the gated off part of the backyard made for him without having to go through the house. Price is not a major factor I'm willing to spend whats necessary.

Hi!

I am planning on leaving my fiance. He got me a dog for my birthday a while back and that dog is the light of my life. I adore my dog. The dog has known both of us for the same amount of time but I tend to be more cuddly and do all the feedings and my fiance and I do walks together or I do them alone.

This issue is my fiance is my dog’s favorite person. I know this. He loves me too but not like he loves my fiance. We both aren’t sure why he picked my fiance as his favorite person. We theorize led it’s because coddle him a lot.

How do I make sure my dog isn’t sad when I leave my partner? He will miss my fiance and I can’t bare to see him be sad.

I want my dogs to sleep with me, but both leave the bed after a while. My Pomeranian goes under my bed. How do you guys get your pets to sleep

In your bed with you?

hello 👋 I'm really confused by my dogs behavior. I think she doesn't like hanging out with me? She's nearly 3

For context, our beautiful older girl past in November and now Valerie is our only dog. We are very lucky to live at the beach so she is walked every day and she sleeps inside.

Everyone adores her and when I had my other dog they both snoozed in my office with me everyday( I work from home)

I'm not sure what to do. she ignores me, won't come inside if I'm in the office and basically I feel she would stick her middle finger up at if she could. lol

Can anyone suggest what to do. I' ve had dogs ally adult life so well aware of different personalities. Help…she hated me

We have a rescue cane corso mix (male, approx 2, currently unneutered). He's honestly near-perfect – no problem in the house, walks beautifully most of the time, fine with new people after some confidence-building, and is the most gentle soul. He was, however, previously abused, has a lot of anxiety in new locations and is dog reactive (this came on in the shelter and is definitely from anxiety/frustration).

We've been working with a trainer on his reactivity and have seen great progress, however recently there have been two incidents that have set all of us back a fair bit:

1. A dog reacted to him first in an area we walk daily, which set home off worse than he has in a very long time. Following that, he was extremely anxious/frantic on his walks for a few days. (I know cortisol can take a while to leave the system)

2. After an amazing session with my mum's dog where ours was on a longline (muzzled) and could look at him, then engage and play with us, he bolted at them as they went to leave and pulled me over in the process. No one was injured, but it was quite an ordeal for all of us.

Since these two incidents he's been improving again – for example, we saw a dog this morning and he had one "pop" and then continued walking, turning back every so often to just look at the dog. This, for him, is excellent.

Our next training session after the second incident is this Sunday, and I'm wondering if we should go back to ultra-basics to work on his anxiety before trying to put him in front of other dogs in a training session again? For example, working on staying in place and waiting, impulse control/prey drive etc. Part of me thinks if we could work on positively tackling the basics that make him feel anxious and build his confidence, it will be "easier" to work on his reactivity again.

For further context, we've had him 5 months and he's a completely different dog to the one we adopted. He was hand shy, terrified of people, and just-about knew "sit". I've no doubt, with patience and confidence-building, we can at least positively manage his reactivity and anxiety.

Thoughts?

my puppy is 10 months old, & this has been an ongoing issue for months. i didn’t really care having to chase her, but recently she goes outside to potty as early as 2am, & i am NOT in the mood to try and catch her then. she probably thinks it’s a game &/or is scared that i’m going to wash her paws in the sink (which she doesn’t like).if her paws are too dirty for a wipe.

any advice to help me with this will be so appreciated. i just spent 15 minutes chasing her around the house at 3am, & i am MAD 🙁

We just adopted a 4 month border collie mix, Roscoe, a couple days ago. He's truly such a sweet boy. Other than trying to get our cats to stop hating us and them being terrified of the new puppy, things are going well.

The biggest issue we're having is crate training. We were told by his foster mom that he was 100% crate trained. He slept in his crate every night and she had him crated between 8-3 when she was working. She said he may whine and be restless at first in a new environment but will settle down quickly. This is not happening. The first night he cried for a half hour after we left the room. My husband thought he just needed to get used to us, so he slept on the couch next to Roscoe. Roscoe calmed down and slept the entire night without issue.

We contacted the foster to see if there's something we could do to help him. She said she never had any issues like this when she had him. She said we needed to ignore him and he'd eventually settle down because this is a routine he's used to. She said not to comfort him because he'll learn that when he cries, we'll come.

So last night we gave him half a Greenies calming chew to help with a little anxiety along with another treat he always gets when he goes in the crate. He cried for an hour before finally calming down and going to sleep.

He's fine in the crate if he can see us. He's great when he's not in the crate. However, we have noticed he still freaks out when we leave the room even when he's not crated. So we're worried about possible separation anxiety starting.

Any tips? He needs to stay crated at night at least until our cats stop being afraid of him and accept him. they were here first, so we're trying to put their needs first by making sure they have rooms that are just theirs where they can relax. We also need to keep him crated when we're not home until we trust he won't destroy anything or accidentally hurt the cats (which isn't a huge fear since he adored the cats at his foster which is a huge reason why we chose him).

Our 5 year old lab/Golden mix is a very good and obedient girl, but if she's snuggling you and sees something that captures her attention she launches herself toward her desire, and has ripped 8" of my thigh since I was wearing shorts.

She's pretty good about not jumping, but 4 on the floor doesn't really apply here.

Can she tell the difference between hopping off the couch alone vs from a person's lap?