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I have a neighbour who’s moved in this month. She has two dogs. Whenever the neighbour is out, her dogs don’t stop barking. I know this because I’ve been sick this week and stuck at home trying to rest, and the dogs are outside barking at every car that goes past. The dogs start barking early in the morning, waking us up. I think this is when the neighbour leaves for the day.

I’m looking for advice on how to bring this up with my neighbour. I haven’t even properly met her yet and I don’t want our first interaction to be a negative one. I know (hope) the dogs could just be adjusting to a new place, but is there anything the owner could do to stop them barking constantly? How would you as a dog owner bring this up?

Welcome to the fortnightly loose leash walking virtual workshop!

Join us as we compete with the squirrels, cats, other dogs, fresh urine scents and things that go zoooooooom!

Resources

Articles (All have videos embedded)

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• Train Your Dog For Perfect Loose Leash Walking by Casey Lomonaco. (With links and descriptions of several great videos, which we'll link to below.)
• Loose Leash Walking Tips by Casey Lomonaco
• Silky Leash by Grisha Stewart (blog post + videos.)

Youtube (Many of these are videos which are embedded in the above articles)

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• Silky Leash intro video with an excitable puppy
• Clicker Training Loose Leash Walking by Casey Lomonaco
• Loose Leash Walking II by Casey Lomonaco
• How to Train Your Dog Not to Pull – Loose Leash Walking by Emily "kikopup" Larlham
• Dog Training Tip- Leash Walking: Go Sniff and Marking by Emily "kikopup" Larlham
• Choose to Heel by Loridressage
• Loose Leash Walking by Stacy Hiebert Greer
• Clicker Training a Heel by Amy Norcal
• Shaping Loose Leash Walking With a High Rate of Reinforcement Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 by Helix Fairweather and Lynn Martin. (Read the text below the videos too!)
• Loose Leash Walking by Turid Rugaas

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See our page on leash reactivity for help managing and training dogs that bark and lunge while on leash.

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APDT webinar

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• Loose Leash Walking presented by Gail Fisher

4 month male Chihuahua, is taken out every. Single. Hour. To pee. I REPEAT: EVERY HOUR. Usually he pees immediately and I wait 5-10 mins to see if he needs to poo as well. He DOES recieve positive reinforcement. I'm convinced it's NOT a bladder control issue since he is taken out so often, and at night time he holds it up to 5 hours.

He still has minimum 3 accidents daily, usually more honestly. He has not had one day with zero accidents. Everywhere I look for advice online, it seems when potty training, they're not supposed to have any? I don't understand how you can constantly have your eyes on him that often to the point where there is zero accidents. I'm wondering if there is a problem with what I'm doing, but I can't figure it out for the life of me.

It seems like the bottom line of the issue is he doesn't understand that he's not supposed to pee inside. Like he gets that we go outside specifically for him to potty, but doesn't realise it's also because he's not allowed to do it inside.

He does not get punished as I believe there is an extremely fine line between whether or not it is traumatic.

I've posted here looking for potty training advice and the replies I recieved were completely useless, as if nobody read or comprehended my post.

I am asking: is it normal for him to have so many accidents? How do I make him understand he can't go potty inside the house? I am not asking how to get him to potty outside; I'm asking how to get him to potty ONLY outside.

My 5 year old lab/GSD mix loves playing fetch in the water. It’s one of his favourite activity to go on a walk at the waterfront and then go play in the lake. I know labs are natural good swimmers, and do well in water since they were bread to help out fishermen. Currently the outside temperature is around 5C, and my gut tells me it should be fine since he loves playing in the snow in -25C weather, but the water may be a different story and I wanted other people’s opinion. Thanks

My guy is 9, we got him at 6 months. He's had a stuffed dog for years, and he's never really destroyed toys. He nibble a hole, or take eyes off, but never rip them apart. Anyway, this stuffed dog was my son's that he gave to the dog. Whenever Jack has his "puppy" he whines. Never with any other stuffy, it's only with this one. Any ideas why? He used to carry puppy around, up and downstairs and take him to bed. Is he upset that puppy isn't real? These days he doesn't pay too much attention to puppy so maybe I should take it away? Is it causing him concern? I keep forgetting to ask my vet when we go.

It seems overnight my almost 5 month old lab whippet mix has become extremely fearful of other people and other dogs. He is so stressed that he won’t even take treats when he sees another person on a walk. He has even been fearful of people he’s met previously and was fine with. I try to take him on 1 mile walks 1-2 times a day. What can I do while on these walks to help him combat his fear?

Hey everyone.

So my partner and I adopted this beautiful 4-month old Labrador (his name is Sirius) a couple of days ago. My partner has had some experience looking after a dog but I have none. All of this is new to me and it's already been a wild ride. I have so many questions in my head so I figured I'd come here and see if anyone could give me some help or any advice. I'm also going to preface that we both work full-time from home.

Sorry for the messy format, I'm just throwing my questions down and hoping I don't forget any.

• What is the best way to train a puppy to stay in their play pen? (We had a situation today where Sirius broke free of the pen. Like… literally forced his way out of the fenced off area in the living room)
• In relation to the first question, how do we train him to be okay with us leaving the room? We're trying to get to a point where we can leave the house for a few hours at a time.
• How do we stop him from jumping up on the fence of the play pen? My partner is concerned if we try to remove him that he'll think it's a game
• How many toys should he have in the play pen? I'm worried he doesn't have enough, even though we have 5 toys in there at the moment.
• When should we consider transitioning him from play pen to free roam the house? And how do we go about doing that?
• Something that I'm really struggling with is when he jumps on me. I get very tense and scared. How can we teach him not to jump on people? (I know he's a pup and has a lot of energy to burn)

• Any other general advice for someone who is very new to all of this 😅

  I appreciate everyone taking the time to read this! 💖

Just shattered, he has CHF. We are doing it at home, I’m going to stay strong but I’m dying inside. Do I play music? Anything that helped for those who went through it?