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Hi all. We've had our 6mo mutt for a little over a month now and he is overall a great dog. My one problem I seem to continually have is non-stop barking in his crate when are at home in a different room. My partner and I work full-time, so he is crated during the day (sleeps outside the crate at night), but I come home mid-day to care for him so he is not left the entire workday. His general schedule currently looks like this:

Morning- potty, breakfast, short walk

Mid-day- potty, lunch, longer walk

Evening- potty, longer walk/playtime in the yard, dinner

The times of each of these are consistent. When my partner or I leave the house, he is quiet in his crate. No signs of anxiety or distress even without some kind of stimulation or toy. Similarly, when we eat dinner we crate him and he is fine–but we eat dinner in the same room as his crate.

HOWEVER, as soon as I need to get something done in another room for more than five minutes, he is non-stop crying/barking/pawing at his crate. His crate has blankets, toys, etc. and I normally leave him with a stuffed Kong with his favorite treats & peanut butter. I have been doing the normal crate-training protocol with games, treats, etc. and he goes into his crate with a command no issues. My partner travels for work frequently so having someone to watch over him all the time when we are home is not an option. I am losing my mind over here as to what I am doing wrong and if this constitutes some kind of separation anxiety that I need to consult a vet or behaviorist for. Any advice welcome.

Hi, I am a new puppy owner! We have had our 14 week old bernedoodle boy puppy for about 1.5 weeks now. He has learned commands exceptionally well, especially when accompanied with gestures. He knows where to find his water, a mirror to stare at himself, and the door to come back inside.

Unfortunately, our puppy doesn’t seem to enjoy going outside to potty. This might be a wrong assumption so I would love any advice to help! We have him on a pretty regular schedule all day, 1.5 to 2.5 hours in the crate, immediately potty, play, then feed if it’s time. However sometimes during play he will just stop suddenly, no cue, and start peeing. We have a bell on our door that tried jingling and giving treats with every time we went outside, saying the word potty too. He still has yet to ring the bell or even remotely stand near the door if he needs to potty. Every time we go out to potty, he always pees. Immediately praise is given and an extra special treat is given too.

Would love any advice! Also any advice on getting him to listen better outside. Inside he does great but outside he is often exploring and doesn’t respond well to verbal cues but will eventually respond to physical cues.

Thank you so much for your help!

Hi all! My mini poodle/terrier mix is a year old. We recently adopted him from a shelter. He has been a great dog and so funny and cute. He’s reliably potty trained now inside our house. The issue is, his potty spot in the backyard is under about 1 inch of rainwater (as is most of our backyard) due to poor drainage. I have an astroturf mat with weeds he has peed on stretched out and ready for him on the garage floor. We have a covered backyard patio. He is interested in the potty mat currently in the garage, just won’t go potty. Do I need to move the mat to under the back porch? Would having it outside instead encourage potty success? Or does it not make a difference and I need to just be patient and wait him out?

Any advice or help here is super appreciated!! Thanks for reading!!

We have a 10 year old corgi. Very well tempered and loves humans. Getting shyer in his old age. In general he’s been around bigger kids but only one small toddler in the past. He seemed a bit overwhelmed by the toddler visiting but we figured because it was because he was not used to the energy being a kid free household.

So fast forward, we now have a 7 month old baby. When we brought baby home, we did the blanket thing, did all the stuff to “introduce” dog and baby with smelling. But I general, we kind of kept them separate. Dog has never ever shown aggression toward baby. Is often in the same room with us while she plays with no issues.

Baby is now mobile. Crawling all over. Dog wants nothing to do with baby, just wants to be near mom and dad which is fine. He turns his head and kind of backs away when she comes near. Did we mess up by basically telling dog that baby is “off limits”? Because now he seems afraid to even be less than 3 feet away from her.

Today I was petting him and she was crawling up to me, and dog went toward her and booped her face with his nose… did not make any aggressive noises or anything so I honestly don’t know what the intention was. But it kind of freaked me out. This is the first time it happened. Tips welcome… but please be nice.

ETA we do keep our baby in a playpen often to keep baby and dog separate, but I just want to know if there’s any hope in making my dog comfortable with baby in the future. (Not to be left alone, just to be closer). I’m looking into an in home trainer, but just looking for candid feedback now.

hi! i recently bought a 3 year old BC, wich had been started training on sheep.

it is mostly following directions, and have a good stop.

the problem is, when it is not manually stopped by me, or otherwise gets too close on the outruns, it will grip throat or the hip of the sheep, and hang on.

in light of this, i have now set up a smallish pen, where i am in more control/proximity. but almost every time im trying to train with it, shes gripping when she gets too close. wich is a problem now, as the sheep is sheared, and she breaks skin easily.

its getting abit better.

my question are. does anyone have a tip for this behaviour?

or is it just a matter of persistence and repeating, building dog confidence, and correcting the gripping when/right before it happens?

i guess it comes from insecurity/frustration- as she have been trained on dogtrained sheep. wich my sheep most definitely aint, yet

We have a 16 week old puppy. She does great during daylight hours, rarely has an accident and goes out to potty every couple of hours. However, it seems as soon as the sun goes down she needs to go out every 15-30 minutes and if we don’t take her out that often she will pee in the house. She has no accidents in her crate at night. This is just from about 5pm until bedtime, every night. We have never had this issue in the past with previous dogs and aren’t sure what to do, how to fix it, and why this is happening.

My dog is obsessed with the cat. Constantly stands at the door to our room where the cat stays sniffing & staring at the opening at the bottom. When she comes face to face with the cat, she whines & stares at her for extended periods of time, always ends with her chasing the cat until we intervene. Our cat is extremely patient/nice with our dog and will swat her in the face when she gets to be too much but our dog still doesn’t care. Any advice?

Hi! I adopted a lovely 4.5 month old cavalier king charles spaniel just yesterday. Her owner said she’s house trained, and everything I’ve seen so far agrees with that—except that she refuses to pee or poo on a walk. Her last owner had a yard that they would let her wander in, and unfortunately that isn’t a possibility when living in an apartment.

She had a single accident last night, but held it in for hours, despite me taking her for multiple long and slow paced walks that day. Her body language made it pretty clear she felt badly about it too. I cleaned it up thoroughly (no negative reinforcement ofc). I thought that it could just be a new and exciting environment, new people, and adjustment to walking on a leash.

Today, I’ve taken her out probably about seven times, for lengths of time anywhere from 10 minutes to nearly an hour. I’ve kept her on the same three small blocks, so not introducing anything new environment wise (besides the cars and people that come with living in a city). There are a variety of locations—wet grass, dry grass, turf, dirt, rocks, gravel, concrete. Her last owner said the yard was full grass, but it doesn’t seem like that’s doing it either.

I have sat in front of spots for a long amount of time hoping she would just go, but she refuses to the point of actually lying down. We’re now looking at 7:30pm my time, and she hasn’t pooped since at least 2:30pm yesterday, and peed a small amount last night once. At this point, when I take her inside she is clearly looking for a place to relieve herself (pacing, smelling the ground, getting ready to squat) pretty much immediately—I keep scooping her up and running her outside, but then she refuses to go.

Pretty positive it’s a case of new environment, distractions, not realizing the connection between relieving herself in the yard vs. on a walk, etc. and those are all things I’m happy to work on with her, I just really want to know how the heck I can get her to actually go outside so I can get her started on retraining. I’m dying here and really don’t want to take her inside for her to have an accident.