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We have a 3 year old cat and a 1 year old mixed breed 90 pound dog (possibly retrieved and pit bull?).

We did the recommended slow starts. Had them both is separate rooms. Then did the baby gate. Then did the baby gate with only the opening for the cat. We are still at this stage.

The dog shows absolutely no aggression to the cat whatsoever. However, he is obsessed with her. He will stick his head through the baby gate to watch her, run up to her to lick her, and follow her around. He will jump on counters to try and get up to her high places as well. He is always very exited, tail wagging, and just wants to be around her.

The cat, to be fair, doesn’t seem scared of him. Sometimes she sits behind the gate and just watches him stare at her, and she will be purring during this. Other times, if we have the doors closed, she will meow at the door to be let out to see the dog. The cat seems to enjoy following the dog around, but gets mad when he follows her, and will hiss and bat at him. She never uses her claws.

We are at a loss. The dog, if he sees the cat in his space or through the baby gate, is unable to focus on anything else. It’s obsessive. We can distract with food or toys but once they are gone, he is right back to it.

I am so unsure about what to do with this dynamic. It has been days of this and it is getting exhausting.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

My puppy (22 weeks old, Dachshund/Yorkie/Jack Russell Terrier mix) has been with us for 12 weeks now. She’s our first dog, and we’ve put a lot of work into training. She's a loving, intelligent pup and she learned really quickly: she stopped biting hands and clothing within 2 weeks, is reliable with basic cues, crate trained within a week, and housetraining has been really successful over the last few weeks.

The issue is, last weekend she had to stay with my in-laws (without me or my partner), who have five small reactive dogs. When we normally visit, we either keep her on the leash, on our lap, or in a separate room because their dogs bark at her and we didn’t want her to pick up their reactivity or have a scary experience.

While she stayed there, she had free access to their dogs and a lot went wrong:

-No meal structure. mealtimes became social/play time, and my in-laws played with her during meals, came when she was attention-seeking, and she had access to lots of toys during mealtimes.

-24/7 access to kibble (huge open bowls for their own dogs) + 24/7 access to real bones, which she never gets at home.

-Their dogs bark nonstop when anyone enters/leaves; they also barked in her face whenever she tried to play.

-She started barking at people for attention, which she has never done. My MIL rewarded it. When we returned to pick her up, I witnessed my dog bark at my MIL for attention, and she responded by picking her up for a cuddle. She never used to bark like that.

-Multiple skirmishes and barking matches between her and their dogs. My in-laws encouraged free, unrestricted interactions all day.

Since coming home (6 days now):

She is a completely different puppy. We’ve kept her on her normal routine, but she:

-Has almost no appetite and plays with food she used to love

-Whines for attention or when we leave the room

-Protests in the crate. This morning she escalated from 0 to 100 into a meltdown when my alarm went off. Zero build-up. She's generally much more vocal in the crate at nap times, too.

-Flinches when we reach to pet her (even though she still chooses to jump into our arms).

-Is suddenly reactive/vigilant. She paces, stares out windows, and fixates on the neighbour’s dog. I can't keep her calm around other dogs outside now.

-Vocalises way more than before

-Struggles to hold sits/downs

-Completely ignores cues outside (she used to be great in low-distraction areas)

-This morning she pooped inside, despite having gone out just 10 minutes earlier. Her housetraining was amazing- for the last 3 weeks or so she would let us know if she needed to go out. She learned that she was supposed to do her business outside.

We’ve been consistent with boundaries and training all week, but she’s only getting worse, not better.

I’m worried that this weekend created either a fear period setback, a stress/trauma response, or that she’s picked up reactivity/social stress from being around five reactive dogs. Has anyone dealt with something like this? What helped you reset your puppy afterwards?

I know that regressions are normal in adolescence, but the dramatic change since spending the weekend away + the timing seems too suspect.

We’d been slowly introducing our cat and dog. (Cat is 10 years old, dog is new rescue, almost 2, lab-pit mix).

We have a baby gate/entire room the dog doesn’t enter where the cat has been since we adopted our dog, and have fed them on opposite sides of the closed door. They’ve progressed to a point where we supervise them as they are in the same room together.

Dog doesn’t chase the cat at all, the cat is comfortable in the same room as dog (except when she’s zoom-y). Generally the dog will sniff the cat, vice-versa, and then cat will go about his business and so will dog. We reward the dog for ignoring the cat when he’s around.

We give her (dog) freeze-dried chicken treats often when she does something we like, and the cat is also very interested in them. So when we reward the dog for laying in her bed calmly while the cat is around, he’ll (cat) will come up and sniff/try and have one too. We’ve been feeding them both some of the treats when this happens, (the cat on one side of our bodies, the dog on the other), but the dog doesn’t like it.

When the cat gets a treat too, or she finishes hers first, she starts huffing and snapping at the cat when we feed him treats near her. Not lunging, but jumping up on her front paws sometimes and getting in his face. (Trying to intimidate him away??) We do not want her to bite him, and are worried it could progress to that— but since she’s already getting a treat too, she shouldn’t be so defensive to him.

Additionally, she gets very upset/barks/whines when we pick up and/or pet the cat around her. She doesn’t like the cat getting attention when she isn’t.

Any advice is welcome.

My 3 year old lab loves the park in our neighborhood. He is extremely well trained with recall, sitting and calming down, and many other things. But I think I have to stop taking him.

When he is playing with another dog or running in general, he won’t notice a person is there because he’s having fun. And he will see them too late and body slam the person. This hasn’t been too much of an issue it doesn’t happen every time. No one falls over and I take him home immediately if it happens because I feel horrible. But recently an older woman was at the park and she fell. Thankfully she was okay, but I’m mortified if she wouldn’t have been. One wrong fall and not only would she have gotten hurt but she could have sued or something and forced my dog to be surrendered worst case.

I truly don’t know what training options I have here. It happens so fast I can’t recall quick enough. People usually say it’s totally fine but I don’t want to risk it. I’ve tried long leads and warning people not to come in our zone but people don’t listen. He’s great with play and lives off dog interactions and I’m so disappointed if I have to take this out of his routine because it’s his favorite part of life.

My dog doesn't have a problem with other dogs, in fact she loves em' she's always excited to meet them. When they try to wrestle though or move too fast or whatever she seems to freak out, she doesn't bite them or anything but tries to run away, sometimes she hides behind me. Usually the owner will take notice and tell their dog to back off if they're being too much, if it's just a dog being a dog though I try to walk away from her to not reinforce this anti social behavior, or to not end up coddling her.

She's never responded aggressively, except for one time but that was after a stockier dog kinda ran her over and freaked her out when she was younger, some dogs came up to her after that and she started baring her teeth while trying to hide and at that point I took her out of the dog park to walk so she could relax. We came back about half an hour later and she was noticeably more timid but she had no resentment towards dogs, she played like a normal dog but only with smaller breeds while shying away from the bigger pups.

I'm guessing that's the root cause, so how can I go about safely building her confidence back up? She can't play with the small breeds forever, the world is full of other dogs! And I'd like to see her run and play happily

Our dog is having a really rough time post-surgery. We'd appreciate any help y'all can offer!

We have a very anxious 8 year old pit-cattle dog mix. A lump formed on his arm that we needed to remove (it was bleeding all the time and cancerous). They also had to do a skin graft as a part of it. But there have been some complications in his recovery. He was unable to lay still (even on so many meds), and some of the stitches came undone. The vet couldn't stitch it back together because of the tension on the skin graft, so we've shifted to open wound care. But this means keeping him in a crate whenever he's not eating or using the bathroom. The rough parts is that he's never spent time in a crate before this.

He's been fighting through his meds and barking a lot (like hours non stop) even after he's gotten water, food, and an attempt at the bathroom. We can't stay with him 24/7, and are worried that checking on him too much will reinforce the barking. But also, it feels wrong to do tough love (just letting him bark) for too long.

The other challenge is that he usually pees outside, but to limit his movement, we're trying to have him use the bathroom on pee pads on our deck. But it hasn't been working, so he's been peeing in the crate (we're trying to check often enough to make sure he isn't sitting in it too long).

Does anyone have any advice for how to help him settle and/or use the bathroom on the deck? It seems like there are no good options, and tbh were going a little crazy. Any help is appreciated!!!!

I have a 7 month old mixed breed (23 breeds, mostly herding and companion) and she’s great. Crate trained, potty trained, all good things. The only thing we’re stuck on (other than the playful mouthing which gets really frustrating) is leash training. We’ve tried SO many things, and the only thing that has helped is a front clip harness. We’ve tried practicing indoors, treats for leash slack, consistency, all of it and none of it seems to stick. She zigzags all over to be sniffy which is fine sometimes but she never really turns it off and the leash seldom has slack. Does anyone have like a foolproof slack leash method?? She’s smack in adolescence and it came at us like a truck so we’re struggling 😭