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My lab pup is almost a year old and in the past few weeks has been growling and/or barking at things at night when we go for our last walk or potty break.

It’s hit or miss on what triggers him, sometimes he’s totally fine, other times, someone walking with a flashlight really spooks him. I know this is a fear period and I have seen it progress and change over the past couple weeks. It started with Halloween decorations. Sometimes he’ll even see a random person during the day and get scared as well. He usually recovers quickly during the day and realizes it’s just a person, or an inanimate object, but at night it can take a while.

If your pup experienced a noticeably fear period around this age how long did it last?

I’m finding it hard with the time change, our evening walk is fully in the dark now and he sounds super big and scary when growling/barking. And I can see my neighbours sometimes getting scared of him. Sometimes they are just walking home from work/school and I feel bad making them uncomfortable. My dog is my first priority but I don’t know how to help with this, aside from mostly waiting it out. Maybe once a day he will see something and be scared of it. Our routine is move over if we can, sit, treat, treat, treat. Or I stand slightly in front of him if he isn’t taking treats and have the leash short until he can focus again.

Is the end near? I know there will be waves of it, but I feel like we’ve hit one for almost a month now and the early dark has made everything worse.

My dog has entered her “heavy sigh” era. Every time she doesn’t get her way, she lets out this long, dramatic exhale like she’s carrying the weight of the world. It’s honestly hilarious coming from a 50 pound fluffball.

Is the dramatic-sigh phase universal?

i want to start off by saying that the puppy were wanting to adopt is truly just being a puppy and it isn’t all his fault. he is a 7 mo old 35-40lb beagle lab mix. he is seriously so sweet and really just wants our dog to play with him.

the issue is that our original dog is a 14 lb pug/pomeranian mix. she loves playing, but our new puppy is very large and doesn’t realize he needs to be gentle. she has started to retreat and doesn’t want to play, she always hides, and doesn’t bother correcting him anymore. it’s like she’s given up, and it’s only been 2 weeks. she has experience playing with large dogs, probably 70-80lb dogs and has never had an issue.

we have tried a spray bottle (as suggested by our rescue), time outs in his crate, physically pulling him off of our pug, and we’re now on our last resort – an e collar. we have a session with a dog trainer on monday, but at this point both my husband and i have almost given up. he bites our pugs legs, flails his entire body weight on her, pulls her tail, etc..

we can deal with the puppy things such as potty accidents, digging in the yard, nibbling us humans, but we cannot take him harming our pug, even if he’s just playing.

if we have to stop the trial, i will feel so guilty that we “gave up” on him. he truly is so sweet but our pugs safety is our top priority… does anyone have any suggestions or words of encouragement? because at this point we both feel horrible about it.

I have a now 11 week old Shiba. First few days I brought him home he would cry and eventually settle after 30 minutes or so. Up until this week he was fine, and now he takes forever it seems to settle in the crate. He digs, cries and barks for at least 30 minutes. I also do nap reinforcement everyday, which would be 1 up and 2 down rule.

We do have a bed time routine; 2 hours before bed we do play time with my other dog and potty breaks, and then the last 30 minutes we get ready for bed. The only things I can think of causing this are that my housemate likes to stomp around and suspiciously become active around bedtime and maybe I’m either not playing enough or I am getting him too riled up before bed. I also noticed he started becoming more frustrated and while I appreciate he’s food motivated, it’s becoming harder on our routine because part of it is brushing/handling and he’s biting for the lick mat(he has not done this before). It’s becoming frustrating and I’m sure a lot of this is my fault, but I don’t know what to change. I want to avoid bad behavior on my part as a result of becoming frustrated too, because I know that will just set us back even more.

My puppy has pretty much got to a point that I'm very happy with her, crate trained, commands coming along, she's excited for bath time, and potty trained with a door bell.

What I am having difficulty with is potty training and rugs.

Background never used a pee pad, but breeder did have all her puppies trained to use either outside or wood pellets. She has never had an accident on hardwood or concrete floors. She's never had an accident at our house, we took her out every hour like crazy people for the first two weeks unless she was sleeping.

When she wants to pee or go outside she rings her bells and we go out with her. We always praise her and give her treats for peeing and pooping outside.

However, at my parents house and my partners parents house they have rugs. For some reason she will squat and pee on the rug. Never in the same spot. Rugs are always cleaned between accidents with an enzyme spray (nature's miracle). When I do catch her it's been 5 times in 2 months I always jump up, say no and take her outside to finish and praise her once she's done.

She does have a door bell at both of these other homes and knows how to use them. She just seems to think carpet=grass?

How can I teach her to not use the carpet? Thanks in advance

My dog is not a big chewer but LOVES to chew a Project Hive Fetch Stick! But the problem is it gets torn to pieces within days.

It’s one of those rubbery texture ones, and she can hold it in her paws to chew. I’ve gotten a similar texture (I thought) red Playology squeaky chew stick and she doesn’t fully ignore it but doesn’t like it as much as the Project Hive.

Does anyone have recommendations? She has enamel hyperplasia so she can’t chew on anything hard, but I want her to have the option to chew without eating a million plastic chunks and destroying it in two days!