Blog

But of a silly question but my dachshund absolutely refuses to walk, unless absolutely everyone in the family is with us. If we drive somewhere with her, she'll walk perfectly on the leash but if I try and take her on a walk directly out the front door she just freezes and wants to go straight home. Does anyone else struggle with this with their dachshund and if so how did you fix it? I would. Love to walk through the local fields with my little baby but she just won't leave the front door

Hello,

We are moving our shiba inu/husky mix from south Texas to rural Wisconsin, along with us. He’s been used to the super hot summers with barely any winter, and blows his coat really early in the year.

My concern is how well he will adapt to a much colder climate in the fall/winter so suddenly, and any tips to help the transition for him so he us fully comfortable.

Have any y’all done this with this type of breed? Any advice is welcome.

Thank you in advance ☺️

Every time we make rice, our dog gets a little bite.

Eventually she learned that the musical notes of the rice cooker means rice is done and she gets to soon have rice.

What sounds have your dogs learned?

Dog owners… explain your dog’s nonsense to me 🐕😤

What is the most ridiculous thing your dog barks at like it’s a national emergency?

Mine just barked at a leaf. A single, motionless leaf.

Help me understand the chaos 👇

Hello everyone! So here’s the deal. I have three dogs, two are males (one intact) and I have a female (not spayed). I knew when we got our youngest, Finn, that we would definitely have to neuter him and he does have his neuter scheduled for the fifth. He’s a 3yo Rottweiler/ Border Collie/ Australian Shepherd mix and I’m honestly at a loss. I personally have put in so much work and effort to get him trained and out of the three dogs we own he’s had the most training; however, due to him being intact and him aging I feel that every year cycle my female goes through gets worse in terms of the roaming, aggression, and other behaviors such as not eating anything for days at a time (he’ll eat human food if hand fed, but will not touch his food bowl). His separation anxiety has always been severe and despite taking precautions, I feel that it’s just getting worse. Like I said we are getting him neutered on the fifth, there’s no negotiation there, but I guess I’m just worried that since we’ve waited so long to get it done that these behaviors won’t change. I also have a two year old at home so add the stress of that as well. I just feel like ever since I had my daughter, the dogs have taken a back burner and I do feel guilty and do try to spend time outside with the males specifically since they love to run and fetch, I just find myself always frustrated with the dogs. It doesn’t help that Finn consistently try’s to nip and rough house with the other male we have and Ducky my GSD mix is old and not having it. I just don’t know what to do anymore

My girl is a chihuahua Papillion mix, long hair, especially around the ears. I bathe her regularly and she does well in the bath, but she gets nippy and jumpy with any kind of maintenance. Even if she picks up a few stickers in the yard, she'll nip just at the attempt of removing them. She's missing a lot of teeth (rescue dog, she came with a few problems such as dental issues and some others) so her bites are nothing, but it's still not something I wanna make her uncomfortable enough to feel like she has to do.
She gets mats in her ears and her tail, but she won't even let me close with a brush and I end up having to cut mats I know i could work out if she'd just let me. Any advice??

I’d never heard the term before I started doing a lot of research into golden retrievers (puppy pickup in just over two weeks!) but I’ve been seeing it a lot since then.

I grew up with dogs, I got two puppies of my own in my early 20s, my parents have two more dogs, my extended family has almost as many dogs as people at any given moment, the neighbors have dogs, everyone has dogs and generation after generation of them and this is just nothing I’ve ever seen nor experienced in reality.

Part of me wants to say that it’s a mixture of over-researching everything imaginable before getting a dog (really not necessary; we’ve been raising dogs for millennia without any of this) which is great on the one hand to hopefully maximize the dog’s quality and quantity of life, but on the other hand it also seems to be a huge issue with the misery a lot of people online seem to experience with puppies. A constant in pretty much all of the posts I’ve seen seems to be something to the effect of “I feel guilty/like I’m not doing enough/I’m overwhelmed” and the vast majority of them appear to be putting human newborn levels of work into even the tiniest (and often largely superfluous) minutiae with their new puppy.

And then part of me is also concerned that maybe everyone around here and in my past experiences was a fluke. And part of me is also concerned that I’ll placebo myself into somehow getting depressed over it since I’m now just as guilty of obsessively googling myself.

How common are puppy blues, really?

I have a 5 and a half month Shiba Inu puppy and my house is literally all porcelain floors and hardwood with only a few rugs. I’m just so worried about his hips and joints and bones from him having to grow up on these hard surfaces.

I give him lots of time on the lawn to run and play, but he does get a little hyper sometimes inside and will try to jump up on us or jump from the couch onto the floor even though I try to set up little landing pads for him with nonslip rugs.

During normal pup antics he has slipped about three or four times since I’ve had him, he wasn’t hurt or anything and didn’t show it, but I’m still just so worried that he’s gonna have hip or joint issues.

I try so hard to mitigate this but being the puppy that he has, he gets happy and excited and sometimes even has zoomies inside. It’s rainy season so I am always worried about him slipping even more and always wiping his paws

Am I overreacting or should I start covering my house in more rugs? How can I prevent hip and joint issues? When do signs show up. I haven’t noticed anything yet. I never make him run too hard and only for a short periods of time. I also limit the use of stairs, especially going down stairs.

Has anyone made a sandbox for their fur baby? I cannot get my girl to stop digging, and someone gave me the idea to make her her own sandbox so that she can still dig when she’s bored and so she’s not digging in my plants. If anyone has any experience with this please share!

I know all the risks of dog parks and I accept those risks- my dog enjoys it, the crowd at our local park is pretty good, my dog is very well trained including years of being used to see how rescue dogs do with other dogs at a local rescue, she was also used to gauge new dogs at daycare because she adapts to their play.

That being said, something she picked up on with that was being recalled if a dog looked uncomfortable- stiff, tail, whatever the reason. So now, if a dog tries to play with her at the park, she'll play…. for 5-10 seconds before running back to me (not nervous, just habit). And she waits for other dogs to approach her, she won't initiate play….

Unless she has a rope.

If she has a rope, she'll carry it around offering it to other dogs, it's the only way she initiates play. Not just ropes, but anything that can be used for tug.

The park we go to has a bunch of balls and a frisbee. I know those are generally acceptable to bring to the dog park. But those are more solo play toys- my dog loves balls, but with only those, her only play initiation is bringing random people balls and staring at them until they throw it. Every park I've been to has balls, but I've only seen one with a rope.

So I'm trying to figure out- would it be okay to bring a rope to the dog park?

It'd be a new rope- not one she plays with at home (she doesn't resource guard anyways), she's large but she adapts very well to the other dogs strength- she can hold her own (easily) against a pitty, but she can also fake losing to a chihuahua. I also know to expect to lose it at some point, whether it's just forgotten or if other dogs run off with it, or someone takes it. So I'm not worried about that. It's more just… would people care?