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Hi,

My dog is a border collie and is very aggressive to vacuums and robot vacuums. I've been able to train him to ignore them while they are off – but once on, he requires constant supervision and/or distraction (either via play, pats, treats, or commands to leave it or go to his mat) to leave them alone.

He listens well to commands and will stop and leave it when told, but only for a short period of time, then will return to attacking it. Ideally I would be able to run a automated clean without the need to constantly distract/supervise him.

I'm not sure how to get him to leave it in general without intervention. When being supervised and distracted, he will eat treats off the top of the robot vacuum while it's running (and leave it alone otherwise), and playing fetch around it will have him running back and forward past it (and even jumping over it). On a few occasions the robot vacuum has even bumped into him while playing fetch and he's just ignored it. However, no matter what training I try, he will only leave it alone when supervised – and I've had no luck with extending this to unsupervised (which is my main goal).

Does anyone have any tips on how to make this next step from supervised to unsupervised? I've done lots of desensitisation work with him (which led to him being willing to eat treats off the top while it's running), command training (ensuring he listens to what he is told even with it distracting him) and even tried association training (where I've been teaching him to go play with different toys and/or going to his mat and getting treats there). All of these have worked well for when I'm supervising him when I set it running, but the moment I try running it unsupervised, that all disappears – and I'm at a loss of what the next step for this would be. All advice is welcome and much appreciated!

I used to walk him outside 2ce a day but I no longer feel safe in my area, so I had to switch to walking him in the backyard. We don't use the backyard at all, so he doesn't see it as part of our house.

To get him to pee, I got a spray bottle that I filled with his urine and spray a plant. He goes immediately, no problem. But he doesn't defecate. He didn't go for 2 days in a row, he went yesterday morning (he started urinating, and randomly started defecating), he didn't go today. Any ideas on how to encourage him? I already tried putting his feces in the backyard but he doesn't respond to them. When I used to walk him, he'd defecate every single morning. Any ideas I can try?

Trying to train our dog to ring a bell that's hanging from the door when she needs to go out, and she's getting the hang of it, but is just doing the most gentle of touches and the sleighbells we're using hardly ring. I'm worried I won't be able to hear it from upstairs or the other room. Any suggestions for bells that are easy to trigger and loud enough that it'd be obvious? thanks!

So this might sound weird, but our 10 month dog barks at any black dog she sees – regardless of it's size or how far it is – she barks at it.

Weirdly enough, she was raised with a big black lab before we adopted her, but they have no issues with eachother.

I've seen tips to socialize her more with black dogs, but this is very difficult as she get down right hysterical – loud barking, growling, aggressive pulling, teeth, wants to bite, we can't distract her with treats, sounds or anything. Redirection does little, just she stops barking as she does not see the other dog, but she quickly turns and continues barking.

She has no issues with other dogs, plays with them, is friendly, again regardless of size or breed, it's only with black dogs.

We are honestly a bit lost what to do. We have a black dog in our family (not our house), we can't have them meet because she started barking at him from 400m/1200ft away. There are also a few black dogs living around where we live, so it's a gamble what type the walk will be.

If anyone can help, it will be highly appreciated.

Hello,

My mom and I adopted two small (> 15 lbs and > 7 lbs) adult, male dogs that were previously rescued from a terrible hording situation, there were over 65 animals in one house. They got fixed when the shelter aquired them. Naturally, they are fairly anxious but fiercely trusting of me and my mom. Our problem lies in their house breaking. We think that before we got the boys, they have never been outside before. It's been well over 6 months and they do well outside when we are with them and they do very well on their leashes. The smallest one is very eager to potty outside and go right back to the comfort of my bed, which I am very happy with. However, the larger one will not potty outside at all, and will intentionally hold it until we get inside, even if I wait with him in one spot outside for over 45 minutes. He will sit at my feet and look off into the distance for the duration that we are out there. I take them both every 2 hours, right after they eat, and if I notice any ques. I'm desperate to get them trained by the end of the month so we can take them on a weekend vacation with us. We put them in a kennel previously for 4 days the last time we took a trip, and they didn't fair very well and has GI upset for a week after. Please, if you have any suggestions, I would be more than willing to give them a try!

He’s a 1 year old dog who’s pretty well potty trained otherwise. No accidents in his cage or when people are in the room with him. And he’ll tell you when he wants out if you’re with him. But if he’s left alone for any length of time he’ll poop.

It just happened a few minutes ago. I needed to grab something from upstairs (which is off limits for him), and I decided to test him since he he’d just been outside, hasn’t been left alone recently, and hasn’t had any accidents. I was upstairs for maybe 30 seconds and when I came back down he’d pooped multiple times.

I’m not sure what to do about this other than never let him have free rein of the house when people aren’t watching him. But my goal for him is to be able to stay out of his cage when I’m at work. So any help would be greatly appreciated

Hello!

I have a 4 month old chocolate Labrador, she's been great with learning basic commands (sit, come here, lay down, play dead, turn around)

She just recently finished her final round of vaccines, so we've started to walk her, first 5-6 times were ok, she sometimes pulls and likes to jump up on random people walking by who give her 0 attention.

Now that spring is in full effect (almost at least in Toronto) when the wind picks up and leafs start blowing around is when she starts to fixate extremely hard on the leafs (or even a cigarette butt blowing around) she will scream yelp so loud it echos off the condos. nothing I do can break it she wants whatever it is that's blowing around.

It has made walks extremely hard and quite frankly I avoid it, it's embarassing. I've tried normal treats to no luck, then moved on to hot dogs (she gets 0 human food at home) and still nothing.

We're deciding if we should hire a trainer, or if anyone has one last Hail Mary?

Thanks,