Our 2 year old mixed hunting breed (setters, german wire haired pointer, etc) dog will cry endlessly if she doesn't get her way. We have always ignored it, or given a sharp no, and gone back to ignoring it. But she will not stop until she gets her way, and will slowly escalate louder and louder, sometimes turning into yelping at us. When I say she won't stop, I mean, she recently had to wear a cone and stood staring at us and crying for 7 days straight. It wasn't pain, she just wanted the cone off and would stop the moment the cone came off. She would cry any time we were in the same room and stop as soon as we weren't in the same room. In the evening, she knows it is exercise time, and she will cry until exercise starts. If we wait it out, she will just cry for 4 or 5 hours until we go to bed. So it is very hard to not "give in" in the sense that she has to get exercise so she eventually gets it while crying.

Things we have tried: endless ignoring, saying a sharp no, giving treats when she stops crying or doing the activity she wants when she stops, very gently holding her snout while she cries and looking at her saying no and walking away

I have never met a dog who has this kind of stamina for crying, literally 7 days of crying. She is also extremely stubborn in other training e.g. will only do things if she likes the treats we have and isn't all that food motivated, exactly zero toy motivation. She truly just wants to only do what she wants to do. We have another dog now and a dog in the past that both were very well trained, so I don't think it is just a problem with our training.

I will take absolutely any advice because I am very close to removing my own ear drums.

We have an almost 6 month old Newfoundland puppy who is already around 70 lbs. He’s very long and lanky and as you can see, too long and lanky. How do we transition to him having free roam at night?

Notes:

A bigger crate isn’t an option for us

We have an older newf who free roams and sleeps wherever she wants.

It’s an open concept living space with an open kitchen, living room, and dining room.

He likes to eat and chew on things he shouldn’t, and he doesn’t mind bitter cherry spray.

He is a gremlin and will find something to get into.

We sleep upstairs and he’ll be contained downstairs under surveillance via pet cams, but there’s a lot he can do quietly without waking us up.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

Hello,

I have a 6 year old Golden Retriever. Recently, I made some rearrangements in my home that resulted in some issues relating to our balcony. Previously, I spent 1-2 hours in the evening gaming in the office on a separate floor while my wife and dog relax on the floor below. Because I wanted to be closer to them, I moved my desk setup to the main floor where the balcony is. However, now my dog constantly asks to be let out on the balcony. Interestingly, my dog does not bother my wife about this when it’s just them, perhaps he sees me as the one that provides ‘balcony time’?

The issue with the balcony is that he periodically barks with certain triggers (big dogs, skateboarders, janitor cleaning the lobby in the building across the street lol). About 0-3 barking episodes in an hour. I would like to curb this and not reinforce the behavior.

What I have been trying:

• Being on the balcony with him and giving a treat when the trigger appears before he barks. Just being with him reduces his barking SIGNIFICANTLY to the point that many times the same triggers don’t even prompt any barking. However, it is starting to get cold and we would like to do our own thing indoors too. 
• Denying him the balcony altogether. He becomes a little bit of a brat and may bark and seek attention. When distracted with other activities, he eventually circles back to asking for balcony time.
• Putting a privacy tarp around the balcony. He becomes less interested in the balcony and comes inside and becomes a bit of a brat like above. 
• Trying to encourage ‘settle’ next to me but eventually pops back up and wants to go on the balcony.

I am confident he gets enough exercise and stimulation per day (1-2 hours daily); we spend a lot of time together outside before the evening. I want to de-emphasize the balcony such that he finds other ways to relax and be content in the evening while allowing us to also relax and do our own thing. I don't want to resort to just not being around them (which does work, he ends up napping)

Thanks for reading

Hey all! I’m moving and I will soon be taking a sweet pittie girl my cousin rescued from an abuse and neglect situation a couple years ago.
Unfortunately, his male lab likes to bully her, so for awhile now they’ve kept the dogs separated, safe, and loved. However, it’s a lot of work and she’s been failed by so many others, he had never thought about giving her up, but when I offered he accepted. he likes that he can still see her and she won’t feel abandoned if I take her.
I don’t know her super well but she’s a happy, sweet girl who doesn’t seem to have a bad bone in her wiggly body 🥰 I am also very confident in my own knowledge and experience with animals. I plan on doing a lot more of my own research, but things are constantly changing and I thought it would be a good Reddit discussion on advice and resources.
I have four indoor cats who will have their own room and catio in the house and on the property before Iggy comes home with us. As far as I know, she’s not reactive to cats but she does want to be friends with them and gets a little rambunctious 😂
My cats all have different comfortabilities with dogs but my 3 that have been around them, do well with them when I make sure everyone is comfortable and do slow introductions.
They have experience living with dogs before but it’s been awhile and it will be a new house for them too. We’re all a bit rusty on living with a dog and especially an older powerful dog we don’t know well yet. The last year or so, I have only babysat rescues for a few days and always kept them separated from my cats since they weren’t staying long. They’ve only been around puppies not much bigger than them lately 😂
I won’t be taking her for several weeks but I have been going over there more to get her more familiar to me and knowing that she has to listen to me even at her home now. I’m starting to brush up on my skills/knowledge, gain any new advice, get prepared to make it a positive experience for all 😂, or just have a good discussion about it 😂

TLDR at the bottom cause this is longer than I thought it would be lol.

Hi, to start I know a lot about dog behavior and body language. It's one of my special interests. I have spent years reading articles about how to fix this or that, what to expect from different breeds, how to deal with specific issues whatever I've probably read 20 articles about it.

I am kinda lost about this and wondering if this is just how he is, or if I can work on it with training.

Male dog, he will be 3 at the end of December. He was fixed as a baby by the rescue we got him from at 6 months old.

When we first got him, I was like well it takes time to assimilate to a new environment, the 3/3/3 rule so we kinda waited for his "instincts" to kick in. They just never did. He has danger reacted to .... 5 things since we got him. Full mohawk, growling, deep bark. A soda bottle laying in grass. A hoodie draped over a fire hydrant. A bush that had been cut and tossed next to a dumpster. A roll of gardening wire that he had already walked past several times on different days. A bag of dirt sitting next to a gardening plot. A soccer ball. All inanimate objects, mostly things that just had not been there earlier, but it's so random and he sees things "out of place" all the time with no reaction.

He doesn't bark at the door. Ok well not all dogs do that. That's also breed specific to an extent as he is 37% Siberian Husky. But, he seems to not have any natural danger warning signs at all. He has no "Stranger Danger" at all. Part Husky I know, but it's at a dangerous level. He has never boundary checked a single area, scanned for danger, checked for weakness in fencing, danger scanned a single human, put himself between other people and myself in a clear calm "I am keeping space here". Literally nothing ever, no warnings about anything ever. I am used to a high level of intelligence from our last dog and this is just bizarre. Like ok, those aren't Husky behaviors but his other breeds are German Shepard, APBT, and Staff Terrier.

When I was walking him with my young child a while back there was a man in a unfenced yard having some sort of mental health or drug thing. The man was extremely aggressive, was screaming and violently waving their arms. I was trying to get past as carefully as possible when my dog saw him and immediately began forcibly dragging us over to the screaming man. I was doing short jerks to get his attention, stomping my foot, using angry voice, eventually just trying to forcibly drag him the opposite direction via the leash. Chopper fought the leash as hard as he ever had in his entire life to drag myself and my child right up to this man, within arms reach of this violent stranger, so he could greeting bark at him and after getting the man's attention he immediately play bowed to him. By some insane bit of luck the man calmed down, started petting him and saying how cute he was. I was beyond furious at literally being dragged into a very dangerous situation with my child.

He is now walked with a pinch collar because without it he will drag me to whatever he wants to play with. Everything. Strangers in the dark. He will happily drag me into traffic if he sees a dog, a butterfly, a cat, literally anything that catches his eye.

I tried a variety of training methods, and cues, different collars, he has a heavy duty harness for adventuring but we have to include the training collar or he will ignore all his training and learned commands every time he sees something he wants. When he's wearing his current collar, he listens to his learned commands, and behaves well. He is also trained for specific behaviors when he is inside a non home building wearing his harness, which mostly include staying right next to me and laying down and being quiet when we sit down, not greeting anyone only focusing on me. But, if he's walked in his identification tag collar, as in no training collar added, he ignores everything he's ever learned. Like how is he only obeying when he wears that specific training collar? Is this a situation where it's "I wear that that means work" "Ok no work do whatever wearing something different" or what? I don't think it could be that because we never had a strict training regimen of "wearing harness behavior expected/wearing something different relaxed behavior whatever behavior allowed" this behavior just slowly emerged and I just realized regardless of just using it for some training and transitioning to other collars he just won't obey if he's not in that specific training collar. Is he just really stubborn and it's on such an extreme level it's coming across as dumb? I can recognize stubborn, and this is different.

So do I have an intelligence problem? This is just who he is? Is this trainable? I can't find anything on Google for making a dog understand danger. I found a lot for getting a dog to be less reactive, but nothing for getting them to not rush every stranger in happy greeting ignoring commands.

TLDR;

Male 3 year old dog will not obey learned commands unless wearing a specific training collar.

Has no understanding of danger, and will drag me to strange men in the dark to greet and play bow at them.

All advice welcome. And thanks!

Hi everyone! I’m really hoping someone here has some advice, because I’m honestly running out of ideas.

A little backstory: I’ve been dealing with an autoimmune skin condition that causes chronic pain during intimacy. After months of treatment and having to put that part of our relationship on hold, I’ve finally been given the green light to be intimate with my partner again. The problem is that we can’t, and I’m absolutely devastated. I miss that closeness so much.

I adopted a rescue pit mix two years ago. He’s an extremely anxious dog who’s scared of his own shadow. We’ve made a lot of progress managing his fears, he’s on medication, and overall we’re doing well with consistent training. But there’s one major issue we haven’t been able to solve: he completely freaks out whenever my partner and I try to be intimate.

As soon as we start doing anything remotely romantic, even just kissing more passionately, he starts barking, jumps onto the bed to try to separate us, and refuses to listen. He’s normally not allowed on the bed, but in these moments, it’s like he can’t hear us at all.
It happens even when we’re in the shower with the water running and we’re being completely quiet. Somehow, he seems to notice that something is happening and starts barking and whining until we stop touching each other.

I’ve tried distracting him with his favorite bones, treats, and other things he usually loves, but once he gets into this state, he won’t take food at all or only for the first 5 minutes. He pants excessively, barks, and seems genuinely panicked and/or aroused.
Unfortunately, simply closing him out of the room isn’t a workable solution because we don’t live alone, and he would bark continuously. He’s normally fine being alone in another room; we’ve worked on that separately. Even if he’s elsewhere in the house and we try to be quiet, he somehow notices and comes running.

At this point, we’re actually considering booking a hotel just so we can have some privacy, which feels absolutely ridiculous.

I want to be clear that I’m not looking to punish him or force him to tolerate something that genuinely scares him. I want to understand what’s happening and help him feel safe, but I also need to find a way for my partner and me to have some privacy.

Has anyone dealt with something similar with an anxious dog? How did you approach it? Could this be fear, overarousal, or some kind of guarding behavior? And how would you work on it when he’s already too distressed to take treats?

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!

I’m desperate for help at this point, I don’t want to take my dog anywhere ever anymore cause she goes ballistic in the car. I’m talking full on whining, crying, barking and yelling my eardrums into oblivion. She’s the most well behaved outside of the car getting compliments everywhere about how calm and gentle she is. She used to be AMAZING in cars and it slowly progressed into this. She used to sit quietly in the car and just chill, then one day she was a bit whiny on the way to the park once we pulled into the parking lot. That continued for a week and turned into her whining and occasionally screeching on the way to the park, then any parking lot we pulled into and now to the past few months she’s just screaming, screeching, whining everything. She’s deaf so it can be difficult at times getting her attention to give a command. We’ve tried treats to encourage when she’s quiet, tried soft covered crate in the car, ignoring her (if it was for attention), short drives where we don’t get out of the car and just go back home. I don’t know what it is (excitement, anxiety, etc.) in order to train this out of her but it’s to a point I don’t want to take her anywhere. Please help 😭😭

EDIT Video linked, as far as how she rides in the car she has always just sat in the back since I’ve had her. So for the whole first year and a half she was perfectly chill like that. Since then we have gotten her a seatbelt that clips to her harness (the video I took won’t show that cause it’s in my car and we were driving in my boyfriends car tonight) and that doesn’t seem to change much, she still is just as loud. But typically she has that backseat cover/extender and a seatbelt to her harness.

She has no medical issues other than she’s deaf, she’s also not been crate trained cause I’m in an apartment and I did try but she would non stop bark the entire time. She’d willingly go in and eat her dinner in there so she wasn’t afraid of the crate but I think she has a bit of separation anxiety just built in cause she’s deaf and can’t hear or see us or anything in the crate. I would have tried more to crate train but I don’t want any complaints from the apartment complex:(

https://youtube.com/shorts/l50681HMDCw?is=4FQyel_NCnTDDZgp

Dog is a large border collie mix, 6.5 years old, generally well trained, and very responsive to commands.

TLDR - Dog never went on the blue couch for 3.5 years. Then we moved the blue couch and now he goes on it, but only when home alone. Various options for blocking off the couch or making it less rewarding are either not possible or seem to defeat the purpose of trying to keep the couch nice to begin with. Hoping someone here has an idea I haven’t thought of yet.

We have 2 couches in 2 different rooms - one the dog can go on (gray), and one he can’t (blue). The blue one is the “nice” couch we use for company. When we bought the blue couch 4 ish years ago, we established right away that he couldn’t go on it. For 3.5 years he respected the rule whether we were around or not, with no physical barriers to stop him.

About 6 months ago we swapped the 2 couches so the blue one sits in the same room in the same spot where the gray one used to be. He stays off the blue one when either human is home (whether we’re looking at him or not), but we come home from work to obvious evidence he’s been lying on the blue couch while we were out - fur, a dent in the cushion, sometimes pine needles or other debris he tracked in through the dog door. He never tries to go on it when I or my husband are around.

The blue couch is self reinforcing because it’s in front of the big front window where he likes to watch the street. He has an elevated dog bed right next to the couch so he still has a spot to watch the street, but I think he likes the couch better because it has a better angle to see the driveway.

Things we’ve tried:
- Putting stuff on the couch (cardboard boxes, mail) to discourage him from going on it. That worked but it was ugly and made the room look cluttered. It defeats the purpose of having a nice looking couch in the first place, and it’s frustrating to have to move piles of boxes around to use my own furniture.
- Closing the blinds so the window is no longer reinforcing: I tried that but he went kind of insane from being able to hear noises from the street without being able to see anything. He started pacing and whining and shaking in corners, it was bad. And he barked way more because he couldn’t assess if sounds were a threat so everything became threatening.

Things we can’t try:
- We can’t close a door to the room with the blue couch - it’s an open plan space. There is no door but the front door.
- We can’t put a big freestanding collapsible gate around the couch. We have one of these but it’s just as ugly and annoying as the boxes, and also dangerous because we have a toddler who is big enough now to pull it down on himself.

Any ideas?? Either for training techniques that will work when we’re not home, or miracle products that will deter him from going up there with minimal ugliness and inconvenience for us?

Hi all! I’m writing for some help with my 2 1/2 year-old pitbull rescue. I’ve had him for about a year and a half and he is crate trained. I’ve never had any issue with him barking in his crate or whining. It’s really been a good safe place for him and he goes in there all the time just on his own. He has always been good about being in the crate for long periods of time while I’m at work, things on a routine, things not on a routine, and I do a lot to make sure that he has had a lot of exercise before he’s gonna be in the crate for long periods of time.

Here’s where I made a mistake. He is very sensitive boy and doesn’t do well with changes or new things. Things scare him easily. Well I thought that he might want like a better crate (furniture style; he is used to a traditional wire one) so I got him a new crate and did the whole acclimation process of having both crates available and then slowly moving over his stuff into the new one and he was going in there to take naps. When I gave him the crate command, he would go into the new one, so I thought he might be ready so I put him in there and left and immediately I was getting notifications on my camera that he was barking a lot so I came home and let him out and then put the new one away and put him back in his old one in the same spot that it’s always been in and he was still freaking out.

I thought maybe he was just scared so I gave it some time and took him to his doggy daycare the next day so I wouldn’t have to worry about it for my morning meetings and then I put him in it when I had to go to a different meeting and he was fine during that. Then this morning he was fine as part of the normal work routine being in his crate today, but then I tried to leave for the gym at 8, which is not part of the typical daily routine, but you know whenever I go, and he started barking again. It’s just causing me a lot of frustration and anxiety with maybe neighbors being mad about the barking and I know I need to let him bark it out, but I can’t when I have neighbors and I just I don’t know what to do and I’m really nervous and frustrated about not being able to do anything because of him barking and being worried about it. Any need advice is welcome! :)

We adopted my 10mo rescue 6 months ago. We were told she's likely a jack russel or foxie mix, but as she kept growing we knew that was wrong. We got a DNA test and she's basically half and half border collie and pitbull, with a bit of random mix in there.

She's a super lovely and friendly dog overall, hella cute and nice. However, she's very anxious and reactive to anything that's not me, my partner, and my living room. By reactive I mean that she gets way too excited by it all, loses her mind, acts like we don't exist, lunges, jumps, locks on, whines, and takes a long time to come down - she's never shown aggression, but she's a very frustrated greeter from her anxiety and excitement mixed together. This includes birds, other people, dogs, cats, cows, trucks, etc - either in our garden or on walks.

Initially she was an absolute nightmare inside, constantly stealing and eating anything that's not tied down, jumping at counters, biting, barking, etc. We realised that she wasn't able to settle because we were essentially trying to fill 100% of her time to avoid these behaviours, but that meant that she never learned to chill out and couldn't relax - we'd basically followed the advice online of "they must be bored" and ended up creating a demon that needed something to do 100% of the time she was awake, and if you didn't give her something, she invented something. Once we realised this, we've worked on settling, rewarding calm, managing the environment to make it as low stimulation as possible, fulfilling her need for play/training/exercise etc but then ignoring her until she chills - and she's generally great inside for her age now, I'm happy with this aspect.

However, she's still super overstimulated by anything that moves outside and I'm not sure how to address this. Meeting people and other dogs is a particular issue, since she'll sprint at dogs, jump all over people, and lunge/pull at both.

I'm not really sure which way to go with this since she's an anxious dog. Should I be letting her meet lots of people/dogs to get her used to it and make it normal, and if so, how can I train her to be calm? Or should I be not meeting people/dogs until she thinks they're boring, so that I can then meet them calmly?

I've tried a lot of "look at that" at varying distances for the last few months, which works really well when she's laying down. She can often lay on a path and let someone walk past to get the treat. However, if they give her any attention at all she lunges and jumps all over them. When walking, it's like I don't exist as soon as she sees a person, and she won't take a treat most of the time even though she has a very high food drive. I can get in early enough from a large distance and give her a treat, but I've been doing this for months and it doesn't seem to be having a positive effect.

I honestly feel like I've watched every Youtube video, read every Reddit post, tried getting two different professional trainers come over, read blogs and done courses - and none of it has worked.

Another issue I'm seeing is that she's intelligent enough to find loopholes in our training. She has realised that she doesn't have to do something or stop doing something if she'd rather do it instead of the reward (which could be contributing when she's rather pull towards a person than take a treat). I'm not really sure how to stop this.

Hey all, first time poster here and I have an issue that not only has me stumped as to how it happened, but more so how to fix it.

We adopted Loona six months ago. Other than some initial issues with her separation anxiety, she’s been an absolute dream. Rings the bell to go outside, plays with our other dog, respects the cats and even walks better on a leash than our pup who’s had classes.

But Loona is apparently scared of rain.

I don’t mean thunderstorms. She handles those just fine. Not even the sound of rain bugs her. But, if it’s raining it’s almost impossible to get her to go outside. She won’t follow me or her brother out, she fights if I try to take her out on a leash, and this is the ONLY time she has accidents in the house. She’d rather go in the hallway than go outside.

Anyone ever dealt with this and, if so, how did you overcome it? I’ve been using her favorite treats to lure her outside and that works for now, but she’s a really smart girl and I suspect it won’t work for long. We’ve also put down puppy pads, but she’ll go out of her way to avoid them and go on the carpet, even though we clean it thoroughly with Nature’s Miracle Urine Destroyer.

This is a problem because I’m in Oklahoma and there are points where it’s literally raining all day, so waiting isn’t always an option.

Hi, I hope this post is ok, I read the wiki and couldn’t find something that applies to my exact situation.

Basically I have a 4 1/2 year old Great Pyrenees Aussie mix. Ever since we’ve adopted her (4mo old) she has had accidents in the house. Not every day but multiple times a week. She knows how to whine to go outside, we have a big fenced in yard that she runs around in multiple times a day AND I take her on long walks twice a day. No matter what we do she will not stop peeing and/or pooping in the house at night. It’s not that she hasn’t been out and really needs to go or can’t hold her bladder. She refuses to go outside about 60% of the time. Even on days that she did not go in the house overnight, she almost never goes potty when we let her out in the morning. She will go in the afternoon all 4-5 times she’s let out, but at night she again refuses to go potty. She knows that if she whines at the door we will let her out, and we have a very regular outside schedule. She has an older brother of the same breed mix who has never had this issue in all 8 years that we’ve had him. She is otherwise extremely obedient, we took her to doggy boarding bootcamp when she was a puppy for a month, she knows the commands “go poop” or “go pee”. It’s so frustrating because it feels like it’s on purpose. I find myself so detached from her because almost every morning I’m cleaning up pee or poo off the ground. I haven’t been able to have a gd rug in my house since we’ve had her. I’m at my wits end and I don’t know what to do. Please help 🥲

We adopted our dog 5 months ago and she was already house trained. She only went in the house the 2-3 times when she was sick (diarrhea that we treated with meds from the vet) and never on the carpet. We just brought a new baby home and her play area is now confined to only the fully-finished basement instead of the whole house. We go down there and play fetch and tug with her toys when we have time but obviously we have a lot less time for that.
The problem is she keeps peeing on the carpet when she has even a small moment by herself. If she is ever on the carpet without eyes on her, she will pee, even if someone is in the basement with her but not looking at her.
We block the basement off now but I want to actually train this behavior out of her. I’m not sure what to do though because I never see it to correct it. We have already tried rationing her water during her access times but she’ll still pee a tiny bit.
We still give her 3-4 walks per day so it seems to be behavioral. She doesn’t pee anywhere else in the house, including area rugs. She won’t pee anywhere else if left alone.
Any help would be appreciated!

This is our first time raising a dog with children. Our 6 month newfoundland is excellent with me and my husband— only mouths on us if shes really excited and worked up (which feels age-appropriate; I don’t expect perfection). HOWEVER she has learned to love chasing and nipping our kids! My husband and I are very strict about giving a little yelp, stopping play, and ignoring her if shes mouthy, but we simply cannot get our kids to do this. Maybe I need to cross-post to r/parenting. The kids run from her—which she loves—and she has now reached a size where the kids literally couldn’t physically ignore her if they tried, because she is larger or as large as they are.

Tonight she made one of our kids cry because she bit onto him and he couldn’t get away.

To be very clear, she is trying to (roughly) play. She isn’t being aggressive and she isn’t treating them like prey. She isn’t being reactive or defensive. She’s trying to treat them like her big retreiver buddies we visit: They spend hours chasing each other and chewing each others ears. She likes to bite the kids sleeves/shoes and she’s never broken skin. She especially loves to bite their feet if they get on their bikes or wear flashy shoes.

We keep reiterating to the kids that they have to yelp and turn around if she so much as opens her mouth against them, but now she’s so big that I don’t know if it’s even a viable training solution anymore.

Will comment a picture for dog tax.

I need some advice from the community. I have reached my patience limit, please give me some ideas. I really like my dog but this habit of his is driving me insane, I wanted a dog my whole life and now I am even considering rehoming him.

So, like the title says, I have a 1 year old Samoyed who every day digs in the yard and eats. The problem with this is that he gets VERY dirty (and he spends most of the time indoor, with us), and also is very destructive. He broke a small plastic fence with his digs, some shadow foild and decorative rocks, and the whole garden (it's already small) is jsut dirst and small rocks. And this happens almost daily.

If I stay outside with him, he just sleeps somewhere and avoids doing this, so I don't get a chance to tell him "NO" while in the process.

Please give me any advice that worked for you in similar situations.

For years I've had the habit of eating a small snack in the evenings around 8:30-9pm and giving my pets a little treat at the same time. This has never been an issue until about 2 months ago. Around that time, my 8 y/o lab mix started getting weirdly needy and begging for her treat earlier and earlier. At no point in this have I changed any of her habits. She gets the same amount of food at the same time for dinner as she did before. I haven't rewarded her begging for the treats earlier by giving it to her any sooner than normal. I expected that after a few weeks of waiting until the normal treat time to give it to her, she'd realize it wasn't making a difference and stop bothering me about it.

Unfortunately, she's only been getting worse. She's continued begging at earlier and earlier times for her treat. She has a specific whine she does when she's looking for a treat and today she started doing that whine and standing in front of the treat cabinet while I was cooking dinner around 6pm! I checked and she'd finished her dinner so it's not like she could actually be hungry.

It's gotten particularly frustrating because she'll just follow me around, panting on me and whining for a treat. If I'm sitting at my desk on the computer, she'll camp herself behind the chair and even the slightest movement seems to be interpreted as getting up for the treat. I'll move from typing on the keyboard to grab the mouse and she'll leap up and start running to the treat cabinet, then run back and whine at me for not getting up. If I'm on the couch she'll get her kong and throw it in my lap to try and express her need for the treat. I'm at my wits end. I have no idea what could be causing this behavior change or how to fix it.

We have two ladies who, somewhat suddenly, do not get along. The older is 7, a Husky/Pyr mix. The younger is a GSD/Aussie mix and about a year old. She was running loose in the neighborhood and was unclaimed when we tried to find her people. No responses, no chip.

They got along like they'd always been together until the pupper hit her first heat ( we had delayed spaying while she finished up a little bit of treatment ) and since then ( which has now been finished a spell and she's been spayed ) when the older gives any warning to give her space, the younger goes after her hard enough we've had to keep them separated since. Neither one has any issues with our other three dogs ( two older hounds and a Pyr in between the problem two in age ) - and both roughhouse with the Pyr.

Everything I've looked at on reactivity suggests much more general targets, and the training I've found so far doesn't really seem to cover this kind of very specific spat. We're worried we're going to have to rehome the younger, but that's just moving the problem, not fixing it.

Am I looking in the wrong places, possibly misunderstanding advice, or um? I don't know.

Thanks.

I have an incredibly cuddly dog. She always wants to be in my space, and I love it because I always want her in my space. But I also want to respect when she doesn’t want me in hers. I see people break down dog behavior and where they showed signs (usually before a bite or harsh correction from dog to human). Although I don’t think she’s showing OBVIOUS signs, or that it would escalate to that level without me seeing signs, I want to make sure I read her “please get away from me” if that’s what she’s saying.

People have also termed the phrase mlem, when dogs are so happy they make the lip smacking noises but that’s often accompanied by a tongue lick. How do I know the difference? How do I know a lip lick that is “hey please stop” vs “I’m really enjoying this”?

She tends to do it most often when I kiss her head, or sometimes she will pull away when I pet her head. Other times she will lean into my hand like “scratch harder”, or lay her head into my hand and I just hold her head.

Her cuddly personality makes it hard to believe she’s saying leave me alone. But I get she may need her space sometimes too, just like humans.

Hwllo! first post here.

i have a 2 year old poodle mix. hes been sleeping in my room at night for the last month and its been going well until about 2 nights ago when he has decided to start peeing in my room.

he never pees there during the day when im not working, and the rule was the same at night. he wouldnt go if i was in the room. However at work when alone he pees when he feels like it. hes neutered. hes kinda always been like this, but it was improving when his eldery sister who had that habit had to be put down. which is why hes been sleeping in my room at night, hes been too depressed to sleep alone

whats rhe solution? kennel him all day and night? he used to be fine at night and im not sure what changed. he is walked before bed.

A Little General Background: I have a 2yo, 8lb rescur pup. We've gotten genetic testing that shows she's a mix of toy poodle, pomeranian and yorkie. We've had her for a year. The rescue told us she had been in a hoarding situation prior, and she was apparently the most timid of the dogs that came in with her. She's improved so so so so much in confidence and learned a wide range of skills with LIMA (least invasive, minimally aversive) positive reinforcement - really proud of my girl! Even so, she's always had resource anxiety, which mostly shows up as separation anxiety, nervousness when eating, and growling at our cat when she gets too close on the couch. These behaviors have all increased with a vengeance since she was attacked by our neighbor's dog a few weeks ago.

Training & Health Background: Since the start, she has been very hesitant about eating (didn't eat anything for several days when we brought her home, frequently declining meals) much of which improved with a daily stomach medication and change of kibble. However, she is much less inclined to eat if alone. We had seen improvement with gradual positive reinforcement, general socialization, and adjusting expectations to support her learning. We consulted with our vet and she is taking daily Fluoxetine.

My Main Concern: Since the dog incident, she will not eat without me directly next to her, and she frequently stops eating to look at me. In an effort to encourage her and help her feel safe, I would give her verbal praise when she settles and eats. Now, she seems to expect the praise, and will stop eating and mope if I'm paying attention to something else while she eats (especially my phone, she hates competition for my attention). I think she's trained me to pay her compliments while she eats - it's not a big deal, but I worry that it reinforces codependency.

My Actual Training Question: How would you recommend encouraging her to eat independently without resorting to aversive reinforcement (e.g. letting her not eat)? I had seen that recommended on some Reddit post ages ago, and it doesn't sit right with me.

TLDR; How can I train my dog to eat without praise in the least invasive, minimally aversive way?

I have two dogs (Chihuahua and Terrier/Poodle mix) who are 3 and 4. They are house broken and because I work from home, we go on walks every 4-5 hours for potty breaks. Well I’m starting a new in person job in two weeks with weird hours, so itll basically be about 8-9 hours before my husband gets home to walk them and still another 2-3 hours before I’m home. THEY WILL STILL GO ON MORNING AND EVENING WALKS.

I bought them an indoor potty box, but they are still spending allll day holding it. I take them to the box every hour and give them the command to “potty”, but they just jump out. My boy dog treats it like a discipline box and his tail goes down and he gives me these big sad eyes. The girl dog has used it three times, but still holds it in all day. I’m so frustrated and don’t know how to communicate that this area is safe and is where they should potty.

Any advice and/or encouragement?

We have 3 dachshunds:

12yo M who I adopted at 8yo, very sweet calm old guy.

9yo F who I adopted at 2yo, very protective and formerly abused. We have done a lot of work but she still has issues with reactivity. I have organized my life to ensure she is confident and happy at home.

5yo M who we foster failed this summer, we are coming up on the three month mark this week.

The issue is with the younger two, she is getting aggressive with him and snapping at him, including growling and lunging. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything to instigate. This was very occasional while mixed with plenty of playing and cuddling at other times.

Until yesterday, when she went after him a number of times and seemed very focused on him. Each time he seemed defensive and a bit confused.

We took her to the vet today and they didn’t see any obvious pain issues or neurological issues but said that I might want to follow up with a Neurologist. We are doing that later this week and hope there isn’t any medical issue behind this.

The vet also suggested starting her on Clomicalm and until that kicks in she is on a Gabapentin/Trazodone combo. We are also quarantining them so they are separated by a barrier which neither one loves.

So my question is, if this is behavioral and she checks out medically, what do I do? How do I make this work?

Note-
I did adopt her first, had her alone for 4 years, then adopted the older guy 2 years ago. So she was an only dog for 4 years and adapted to having him very well. He stays out of all the drama but she clearly adores him. This new brother is younger and definitely asks for more human affection.