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I am taking a 2-day / 2-night trip and a trusted auntie will come stay with my dog, at home, to keep her company, feed and administer meds. since she's inexperienced in walks, our regular dog walker will come 3 times a day to take doggo out. thing is, there's a 14-hour gap of time between last walk at night and first walk in the morning due to the dog walker's schedule. my girl is a champ and can hold it, but i don't want to put her in that position and cause her needless discomfort.

so i'm again trying to set up an astro turf situation on the balcony where she can be let out and relieve herself for a quickie either before bedtime or first thing in the morning. she's not having it. i had tried this before when we had massive snowfall and she was struggling to pee outside because the snow was burning her paws. didn't work then, either. this time around i've taken the astro turf to the yard and stomped on it so it would "absorb" outside smells. i've also slid it under her when she's doing her business so she has peed on it 4 times and pooped on it as well. i brought the turf home and placed it on the balcony but she's not interested. i lead her to it on her leash and give the "go potty" command with treat in my pocket, which of course she smells and she just sits waiting for the treat LOL

any tips how i can get her to recognize this is a new spot where she's allowed to pee? forgot to mention i also sprayed those toilet training sprays on it. for reference, she's about 15-lbs, approx. 9 years old and refuses to potty anywhere but outside. preference is grass.

thanks in advance.

I randomly came across this breeder on Instagram and I honestly can’t tell if what they’re doing is even allowed. They’re posting litters of “micro” bulldogs and bullies with exaggerated features and exotic colors, and the puppies are getting picked up or shipped out.

There was also a video of them doing artificial insemination. It looked like some kind of clinic/office, which just made me raise an eyebrow a bit idk.

I personally don’t support breeding, especially with these kinds of breeds, so I’m just trying to see if this considered normal or ethical? And if not, should it be reported?

Just throwing the account out there in case anyone else has thoughts.

IG of the breeder: paranormal_pupzz

Hello everyone I dont know where else to go with this and kinda wanted advice. So I work as a driver that drives kids to an after school center and while I was driving I witnessed an accident happen. A truck ran over a little black dog and it was a nasty hit. When that happened I swear my body was in shock and I felt like guilt and sadness. I wanted to so badly come around and try to help the little guy out but I was on the clock and also had children in the car. When I got back to the center all I could think about was what happened and really couldn't stop blaming myself if anything happened to that dog. When I clocked out I went to check to see if the dog was still there but I didn't see him.

As of 7 hours after the accident I still feel some sort of blame. Should I have just went back? Should I just have dealt with the consequences just to try to save this random dog? I still have dry mouth and tightness In my chest still thinking about it and even tearing up. Is this normal? If anyone has dealt with this please give some wisdom cause its killing me

Hi! We have a jack russell (2.5 years old) since he was 8 weeks. I did have a case of puppy blues, but after 5 months they passed, and we settled down into a nice routine with each other. We were getting along.

But over a month ago, something happened to our dog. And I am not sure what could it be. Could it be hormonal changes? We did go to the vet who said that there's nothing wrong. He's become a lot more vocal, he howls (which he would never do), and he's constantly restless. He used to take naps, but now he won't nap. But the thing it is that he is not most interested in playing. I will try to play with him, he plays for a minute or two, and then he gets bored. He constantly wants to go outside. So I assume that there must be some female dogs in heat.

And even if you give him attention, he will turn around a minute later and will go to do some harm or damage to the house, chewing off the wooden surfaces. I instantly notice him doing that. I thought he had aged out of this behaviour. Now he has turned into a teenager. It's been stressing out family a great deal. We have no idea what is going on on with him. It is like he had changed all of a sudden. We have not moved recently or did any major changes.

We even started worrying if we don't give him enough exercise or spend more time with him. We would take him outside several times in the morning just to tire him out, which he does enjoy. We try to play with him a lot in the evening. We take longer walks with him. We have not had castrated him, though we are considering the idea.

Could the hormones be an issue? Or could he just be unhappy?

I have a 4 year old chihuahua/maltese mix (I think?) named Teddy that we adopted from my friend who couldn’t take care of her anymore. My friend told us that Teddy is house-trained. Well, when we adopted her, she peed and pooped on our rug almost weekly. I let it be since it is a new environment for her and slowly trained her to stop doing it when we are around. Then she would only do so overnight so we started crate training her and she sleeps in her crate now. Problem solved, she doesn’t pee or poop on the rug anymore, only when we forget to put her in her crate at night to sleep.

However, I sometimes have friends or family dog sit Teddy at their house when we go on trips and she always pees or poops on their carpet or rug. Any tips on how to stop this behavior?

My dog likes to collect socks and take them to wherever she is hanging out. She does it more often when she is anxious like when we are out of the house or if there is scary weather, but will also go find one when she wants to play.

It’s not a huge issue but a little annoying to be constantly picking up socks from the lounge and missing pairs who knows where.

Was wondering if there is a way to train her to bring them to the laundry when she is done with them instead of leaving them strewn around the house and if so, what would the steps be to training this behaviour?

Hey y'all!

Recently, the breeder we got our Samoyed from let us know that a new Samoyed owner was going to be unable to take care of their 5 month old puppy because of unforeseen circumstances, and that, since we had an established relationship, they'd wave the adoption fee. Of course, given my dad's obsession with Samoyeds, he jumped at the opportunity.

We just got the new puppy a couple days ago, he is very friendly, problem is, our 2 y/o Samoyed isn't very good around other dogs. She wasn't socialized early-on and was timid to begin with, so she has had a really rough time getting used to the new puppy being here.

I'm a very "Research and do it right" kind of person, but my family leans more towards "figure it out as you go" approaches, so while I've tried to insist that we slow their introduction and try to keep them separate, they'll let them coexist close to each other all the time, resulting in a lot of barking and the older dog throwing out some bites/nips at the puppy. The puppy has now also started nipping at the older dog to bait him into chase. It also seems my 2 y/o dog is now stealing the pups toys and biting if the pup tries to grab them. Not sure what to do in a situation like this. (We tried adding a puppy gate, but the puppy just crawled under it, so we may need to look at other puppy gates.) So far, it has been rather stressful, so I was wondering if you guys had any good advice for introducing such a playful and curious puppy to a timid/slightly grouchy adult dog that wasn't properly socialized when young. My 2 y/o dog seems to absolutely hate the pup

The title says it all. My dog, and 8 year old, short legged pitbull mix, is extremely clumsy at receiving treats.

(I say clumsy. Honestly, he's just a really good boy and is very careful when taking treats out of our hands.)

Nine out of ten times, he'll try to take the treat out of my hand and drop it on the ground. The treat rolls away, he sniffs a bit and grabs it.

End-result, after getting a treat his first reflex is to start sniffing the ground around him.

This is becoming a bit problematic when trying to teach him things like heeling – which we're starting by teaching him to stay close to us while walking backwards. The problem, while walking backwards we mark with a "yes", reward with a treat, and then he's gone sniffing. He'll come back, but it's impossible to get him to continuously stick to us.

The other option I guess would be to mark "yes" but not give the reward, which I'm not sure will be productive; or simply mark "yes", reward, and "free".

We're new to all of this, but the clumsy treat receiving makes it hard to follow any tutorials or videos, because most require some sort of rewarding while continuing the behavior.

Any tips or tricks? Any other clumsy eaters?