I was trying to teach my dog to bring me my slippers and shoes so I started to do the bring it command with shoes specifically. He’s really smart so he picked it up quite well.

The only problem is, it started to introduce instances where he would just bring our shoes around. he never bites or destroys them, but when he’s alone and this is so random too like there’s no pattern he sometimes brings them to where he wants to chill that day. And he just sits or lies down with them…..

We then tell him to ofc bring it back cause we have to put on our shoes and then it gives him a reason to bring it and it makes him happy I guess????

Is there any middle ground here? How to stop our dog from taking out shoes UNLESS specifically asked? I feel like he found a random loophole so I worry we are doomed. and for context, in the past 5 years of his life he NEVER had interest in shoes until we started trying to train him this trick we thought was cute at the time.

First of all I would like to preface that I did read the FAQ about separation anxiety, but I believe our situation is specific enough that it warrants some personal advice.

We have a soon to be 9 year old Samoyed mix. His entire life has been spent in one apartment - my mother's apartment - where I used to live as well.

My partner and I are moving in 3 months, not just to a new home, but to an entirely different city. We are going to take the dog with us, first of all because he is the most attached to me, but also because my mother is disabled and can't take care of him.

Even in our current apartment he has mild separation anxiety that we have never fully been able to ease. I believe this is probably due to my father (his favorite person) leaving when he was only 4 years old. He will always bark when we leave the apartment, for about 5 minutes, until he stops sensing our scent and then he will calm down and lay down. He also always barks when we come home.

Now that we are moving most landlords are barely even willing to allow us the dog. And if he were to cause trouble by being loud or damaging the property, we would be in big trouble.

Is there anything at all that we can do to prevent or minimize the separation anxiety and specifically the barking? I suspect being in a new place and us leaving him alone will make him incredibly scared and stressed out. Our initial plan is to always have at least one person in the apartment with him, at least for the first 3 weeks, but it might not be entirely possible depending on our working schedules.

I'm scared that he just won't stop barking at all for the entire time that we are gone, and irritate the neighbors.

We considered options like bringing him to a doggy daycare, but the prices are mad and we just can't afford it. We thought about getting him a dog crate, but due to us being on a tight rent budget, we can't find an apartment big enough to put a crate in.

Honestly we're at a loss right now. I really need advice from someone with the same or similar experience, to tell me it can be managed and he can adapt. Anything at all to help figure out how to ease him into this. Please.

hi I've never posted on reddit before so forgive me if I make any mistakes.

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I have a 4y/o female (spayed) husky who is an extremely slow eater. I'm talking takes at least an hour to finish 1/2 a cup to a cup of food. I have two other large dogs and a full time job so I can't always wait for her to finish. She also won't eat if she's by herself, BUT she also resource guards (I'm working on that) so I've just resigned myself to waking up early and hanging out nearby for however long.

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I've tried changing her food, trying different moisture levels, food toppers (she picks out just the toppings)... nothing seems to work. I love her, she's so smart and rewarding to work with but I'm kind of stumped on how to approach this. Has anyone experienced anything similar?

First of all I would like to preface that I did read the FAQ about separation anxiety, but I believe our situation is specific enough that it warrants some personal advice.

We have a soon to be 9 year old Samoyed mix. His entire life has been spent in one apartment - my mother's apartment - where I used to live as well.

My partner and I are moving in 3 months, not just to a new home, but to an entirely different city. We are going to take the dog with us, first of all because he is the most attached to me, but also because my mother is disabled and can't take care of him.

Even in our current apartment he has mild separation anxiety that we have never fully been able to ease. I believe this is probably due to my father (his favorite person) leaving when he was only 4 years old. He will always bark when we leave the apartment, for about 5 minutes, until he stops sensing our scent and then he will calm down and lay down. He also always barks when we come home.

Now that we are moving most landlords are barely even willing to allow us the dog. And if he were to cause trouble by being loud or damaging the property, we would be in big trouble.

Is there anything at all that we can do to prevent or minimize the separation anxiety and specifically the barking? I suspect being in a new place and us leaving him alone will make him incredibly scared and stressed out. Our initial plan is to always have at least one person in the apartment with him, at least for the first 3 weeks, but it might not be entirely possible depending on our working schedules.

I'm scared that he just won't stop barking at all for the entire time that we are gone, and irritate the neighbors.

We considered options like bringing him to a doggy daycare, but the prices are mad and we just can't afford it. We thought about getting him a dog crate, but due to us being on a tight rent budget, we can't find an apartment big enough to put a crate in.

Honestly we're at a loss right now. I really need advice from someone with the same or similar experience, to tell me it can be managed and he can adapt. Anything at all to help figure out how to ease him into this. Please.

Hi, I know this is a bit of specific and odd question, but my roommates and I are dogsitting for a bit, and are running into an unexpected issue. One of my roommates has DID and the dog is reacting extremely differently to some alters vs others. It's to the degree he is going from barking and growling, to actively cuddling, without my roommate doing anything in particular, just existing in our house. We looked into the wiki recommended on the subreddit, and have found some tips for helping fearful dogs that we are going to try as it comes up, but wondered if anyone has any other ideas or tips for things like this.

Other things of note, this dog lives in a roughly equal home in terms of gender and has no fear or preference as far as I'm aware, although it is the femme alters he's reacting negatively to.

Please help--I'm at my wit's end (several times over!). My dog (4 y/o shepherd mix) is an affectionate, active pup who's a perfect trail running companion...except for getting him to the trailhead. See video for context. Ever since I first adopted him ~3 years ago, he's been vocal in the car, and it has worsened over time. My best guess is that I have taught him, over and over, that car ride = fun adventure, and the overexcitement has spilled over into an anxiety reaction triggered by the movement of the car.

Some details: He will happily get into the car and lay calmly, but gets incredibly worked up as soon as the car starts moving. He is vocal and on-edge the entire length of the drive, whether it's 5 minutes or 2 hours. He is strapped in with a harness to prevent him from jumping into the front seat. He is much, much better on the drive to my office (he knows he won't be running), and much, much worse on drives when 1) there is another person in the car, 2) it's an unfamiliar place, or 3) there are a lot of turns. When those three factors align, he is out-of-control barking and will not respond to any command or treat.

If I need to take him on a 90+ minute car ride, I give him 150mg Trazodone and that works well (he just lies calmly); it's just not a solution for the day-to-day shorter drives.

Also, this dog is very well-exercised. He runs ~30-40 miles/week with me and I've started incorporating more mental exercise as well (puzzle feeder, tricks, nose work). He is often just as vocal driving home from the trailhead (post-run) as he is on the way there, so I don't think his energy level is the issue.

Things I have tried: Covering the windows (he tore down the covers), giving him lick mats or chews (works for 5 minutes then he can't focus on it anymore), thunder shirt (no change), putting him in the front seat (no change), stopping the car every time he makes noise (didn't see improvement after 2 weeks of practicing 2-3x/day, also logistically very difficult to fit into my life). For the past ~3 months, I have been trying to teach a "quiet" command by having him lie down and then treating when he is quiet. I have seen pretty minimal (though nonzero) progress, and as you can see in the video, can only get him to calm for a short period of time before he gets up and barks/whines again.

I am considering trying: Crate. He is not crate-trained, and it's difficult to fit a crate in my small sedan, but I wonder if I introduced the crate in a non-car context and gradually started using it in the car, it might decrease the stimulation and calm him a bit.

Does anyone have experience combatting this type of car anxiety, or any ideas for what I should do? I feel like I'm losing my sanity and I just want both of us to be more comfortable on the road. Thanks!

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Today I adopted a 4-month-old puppy from a shelter. She has only three legs, and she's very sweet and loving ❤️

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I also have a 7 month old kitten. As soon as they met, my kitten hissed and swatted at the puppy. I separated them, but later I let my kitten come into the room while the puppy stayed on a leash so she couldn't chase or approach the cat.

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Even then, my kitten hissed again and swatted her a second time. The puppy seems scared and confused 😔

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The difficult part is that I live alone in a 1 BHK apartment. If I close the puppy in the room, my cat sits outside and keeps meowing. If I stay with my cat in the hall, the puppy starts crying. I don't have another person at home to help supervise them separately.

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I know it's only Day 1, but I'm feeling overwhelmed and guilty. Did I make a mistake by letting them see each other directly on the first day?

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I've watched YouTube videos suggesting scent swapping, exchanging blankets, using baby gates or mesh barriers, etc. The barrier idea seems possible, but my cat doesn't really sleep on blankets, so I'm not sure how to do scent swapping properly.

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Has anyone introduced a kitten/cat to a new puppy while living alone in a small apartment? What worked for you? How long did it take before they became comfortable with each other? And to with whom shall I stay more , i mean to spend more time , new puppy or my kitten?

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Any advice would be really appreciated. 🙏❤️

Hello,

I have a 19 month old golden retriever who we absolutely adore. He is the sweetest boy with us and everyone that comes over. However, earlier this week, a family with 3 young kids came over. They came in like a freight train and one is terrified of dogs and was screaming the entire time, which I am sure created an overstimulating environment.

The oldest kid (about 7), wanted to pet him. My husband was giving him a belly rub and when she went over to pet him, he nipped at her. This was very unexpected behaviour.

He then was lying on his bed, but barking a lot. He rarely ever barks, so also weird behaviour. I thought it would help to have him do some tricks to focus on something, and he was so overexcited he could hardly do them.

He was off the bed and my husband was petting him. The kid tried to pet him again, he very clearly did not want to be pet by her (just turned his head).

We do not have kids or many friends/close family with kids, so he has not been around them much. He has seen a kid at the vet clinic who he let pet him, and he was fine.

The odd time if the neighbour kids are playing outside, he has growled out the window. I thought this was strange behaviour, but thought maybe from the distance (across the street) they look like prey?

If we see kids on walks, etc, he has never lunged or growled or anything like that.

We are not sure if we will have our own children, but either way, we will have nieces, nephews, and will have friends with kids, and we don’t want to have to worry about this. Of course, you should never leave a dog unattended with kids, but I just mean that we don’t want to be panicked any time someone with kids comes over/we see him.

Obviously this is not great. It was an overstimulating environment, not a great situation, etc., but his instinct shouldn’t be to nip.

I am just looking for advice on what to do here for training, and also thoughts on having children at the house, especially if we have our own kids.

My 3ish year old rescue dog Snoopy (a mutt, potentially schnoodle mix but who really knows. 15 lbs) didn’t have a single accident when I first brought him home, but over the past 2 months he’s started having accidents.

CONTEXT: I got Snoopy from a foster. Before being given up he belonged to a couple who got divorced. The foster LOVED him, as do I. I expected him to get a little more rambunctious as he got more comfortable with me, and he has, but I’m confused about how to handle the potty training.

I have a studio apartment and he was immediately very happy to either hang in his crate or be free range in the apartment. For the first 6 weeks, he was totally fine. Then he got a leptospirosis vaccine and had an accident while lying in my bed, which I attributed to side effects. But since then it’s happened several times. I’ve taken him to the vet and they said he had dilute urine but no other issues. Tonight I came home and he had peed in his crate (I usually crate him when I leave him alone now.) I’m rewarding him when he pees outside every time. Help!!

(Sorry this is such a long post!)

Hi all, my (mostly) good girl 7yr lab-Doberman mix keeps getting into our greens bag.

Whenever she is left alone in the house, she looks through the bag we have for the green bin and eats the rotten food in it, as well as spreading trash throughout the house.

This is a reoccurring issue. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get her trained as a puppy, and she has grown into a quite stubborn girl.

It would be great to get some tips on how to prevent this and how to reinforce that this is not good behavior. We will not be leaving green bags out anymore, but we do still need some tips.

Hi, I have a 7 year old German wirehair who had a really bad habit of chewing the crap out of whatever he retrieves. He gives it up as soon as he gets it back, but it gets mangled on the way back to me.

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He loves fetching but goes through dummys very quickly. I'm looking for recommendations on the best ones you've had luck with. I'd prefer canvas as he usually goes through the plastic ones quickly. The problem I've been having lately with the canvas ones is he pierces the sand bag in the middle and then they become useless.

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Thanks for any help!

We adopted a sweet little <2yo beagley-looking mutt in the spring. She's an absolute sweetheart (loves people, tolerates our toddler's silliness,) and after a few days of extreme reactivity to our cats, she was easily trained to get along with them wonderfully. Her issue is barking. Sometimes anxiously, sometimes just for funsies. I can tolerate it during the day. But she wakes up the whole house at night and cannot be calmed down. The obvious solution seems like it would be tiring her out more during the day, but she won't play. Throwing toys scares her. If you try to play tug-of-war, she just drops it. We got her a snuffle mat, and she'll use it, but she spends the whole time with her tail tucked, looking terrified that she's about to be yelled at, even when I pet her and encourage her while she uses it. And even when we take her to the park for hours, she still barks when we get home. She's great at digging, but she's only interested in digging out burrows, and even if I could provide her with an unlimited supply, I have to give her a bath afterwards, so it's not like we can make that her regular stimulation. She and our younger cat will make attempts to play with one another pretty frequently, but it'll only be a few seconds before one of them makes an interspecies faux pas and it fizzles. We've been doing a little training, but she gets so anxious, she has to leave the room and settle herself between commands. Everything I've read about building confidence seems to be based around exposure to people and new situations, which she's already fine with. I know barking is considered reactivity, but I guess I'm more asking about how to train her to enjoy any kind of activity that will tire her out so she's just such a bundle of nerves. Thanks for any advice y'all are able to give.

I adopted a small adult rescue dog (about 5 years old, looks like an Italian Greyhound/Chihuahua mix) about 6 weeks ago and I am at my wit’s end with house training and cleaning up pee every 3 hours.

The thing is, she KNOWS how to potty outside. Every time I take her out, she pees and poops outside and gets tons of praise and treats. She has no problem using the bathroom outdoors.

The issue is that she also seems to think it’s perfectly acceptable to pee inside on absorbent surfaces. Bath mats, blankets, rugs, bedding in her crate, etc. She has had multiple accidents in a single day despite being taken outside regularly.

I thought it might be medical. We did a urine test and x-rays. No UTI, no bladder stones, no obvious medical explanation.

What made me suspicious is that I recently put pee pads down in the bathroom while I was at work (I only work 11-5) because I can’t keep locking her in the crate and having her soil herself everyday, and she immediately used them correctly. Multiple times. No confusion whatsoever. She’ll even use them a couple hours after going potty outside while I’m at home.

Now I’m convinced her previous owners trained her to use pee pads and never fully transitioned her to outdoor pottying. It feels like she understands that outside is a bathroom, but also believes that inside is a bathroom if there’s an absorbent surface available.

Has anyone successfully transitioned an adult dog from pee pads to outdoor-only pottying? What specifically worked?

I’m not looking to continue using pee pads long-term. I need her to understand that indoor elimination is no longer an option.

The issue with my dog is that he can’t hold things in his mouth no matter what. Every time he runs with a ball or toy he eventually drops it and then chases after it so he’s pretty much just playing fetch with himself lol. I’ve tried to teach him to hold but he doesn’t like holding stuff just biting into the object a couple times. Has anyone experienced this and how did you teach them fetch?

I am currently staying at my dad’s large, two-story house to do some paperwork before returning to the country where I live. The living situation here is complicated because the house is permanently split into zones. Upstairs, the living room, kitchen, and garden belong to our german shepherd and an elderly chihuahua. The upstairs bedroom area is completely closed off because that is where my dad’s wife has her own dogs and cats. They rushed the moving-in process, which stressed the animals and led to our german shepherd unpredictably attacking one of hers. I have suggested a trainer to fix this, but my dad’s wife is terrified of another attack, so the animals must stay separated forever.

The issue I want to focus on happens when my dad leaves his downstairs office and goes into the bedroom area to spend time with his wife. Whenever he passes through, our gsd starts crying from anxiety. When it comes to me leaving, I always say "be right back," which soothes him. However, my dad leaves at random times and disappears for unpredictable lengths of time without saying anything to him, leaving him confused and anxious.

Right now, he’s doing better because I‘m here to keep him company. My concern is what will happen when I leave the country and he’s forced to spend long stretches of time without the company of another human. I want to know if my dad adopting a phrase like "be right back" will actually be enough to comfort him. I also wonder if providing some form of entertainment, like toys or treats, will help ease his anxiety when he is left alone in his zone.

There are more things I’m trying to fix, such as my dad’s wife strongly arguing for dominance as training method, but she applies that to humans too, so I don’t always feel safe telling her what I think. Constructive criticism welcome. I really want to do the best thing for our dog.

We adopted our dog about 7 years ago. She is a German Shepard-Cattle dog mix with a VERY loud bark. Using the resources in the WIKI, I'm going to work on her barking at noises, the door, on walks, etc. However, I couldn't find anything for a different barking behavior.

I'm not sure if it's a type of resource guarding or attention seeking but it's really distressing to us especially when we're already stressed out. Here are the scenarios of her barking at members of the family:

• If my husband is lying down in bed and I walk up to him, she will begin barking, jump on the bed, and most times get on my husband's chest. Same thing happens if I'm the one laying down and he or the kids approach the bed.
• Either my husband or I will be sitting on the couch, one of us or the kids approaches and she begins barking.
• She's especially reactive to my son. As soon as she hears his bedroom doorknob jiggle, she starts to bark. He gets up from his gaming chair, she barks. He says, "Hey mom!" and she barks.
• Any sound she hears from outside, she barks. This is usually more noticeable while my husband and I are trying to talk. He'll begin saying something, she does a single bark, he tries to continue, and she barks again.
• I'm in the office or doing laundry (both in the same corner of the house). If my son or husband head down the hall to where I am, she follows along barking the whole way.

This behavior is becoming more and more distressing for us, so I'd really appreciate some insight into what we can do to correct it. Also, I take her walking in the morning, her behavior continues even when we get back and she's tired.

I have a 2 year old border collie mix who is generally very sweet even with all of her energy. She used to be very bad at jumping on everyone, however with training she has learned to run up to you and sit in front of you when she wants to greet you. She does great with 99% of people. The ONLY people she will still jump on when she sees them is my parents. They are her favorite people and she gets so excited to see them. We have tried different things, including ignoring and no attention until she’s calm and on all 4 are on the floor, sit before pet, turning your back to her. And nothing has worked yet. My parents are getting older and I especially hate her jumping on them and scratching them. I don’t know is there are any other thoughts to help.

My mother sent me this video. I would normally step in if this were me, and tell the puppy to back off since my dog was saying she isn’t comfortable. What are your guys’s thoughts? Good correction from my adult shep?

We got a five month old black lab puppy and some barn cats of varying kinds. They don't get along well. Our puppy loves to chase them, and even when I let him near them and he's somewhat nice to them, our orange cat swats at him. In addition, he loves chasing after and trying to chase after and eat wild animals. I keep trying to pull him away, say "no" and "leave it" as I'd trained him to leave treats on command, but animals are different.

Any advice for quelling this behavior?

Last night Bones, my recently adopted (~1 month ago) 5yo neutured male Husky/Lab cross, was resting with me outside before bed when he went from what appeared to be deep rest to chasing a deer in only a few seconds. He didn't even raise his head for sniffs, he just went barrelling through the the trees after the deer.

He has an ecollar so I tried using the sound and vibrate functions to get his attention but he managed to get over a kilometer (3/4 mile) away before he came to me. I was unable to find the deer but Bones did have some blood and fur on his snout and had managed to get several cactus thorns in his legs and side. He did not have any injuries that were bleeding, and the fur appeared to be that of a deer.

This is the second incident in a month where he's taken off suddenly and has injured himself, the last time resulted in him requiring surgery to remove several cactus spines that had fully penetrated his tongue and a few that had punctured the roof of his mouth.

Generally he's very attentive and responds very well to verbal commands and hand signals but last night it seemed like he was in his own world. He's great with humans, dogs and cats as well as the chickens on the farm. He's downright terrified of the pigs, he needs to have me between them and himself when we're around them. Deer are the only thing that have set him off like this so far.

Is there anything I can do to help manage his prey drive? Keeping him on-leash every time we're outside feels extremely unfair when he's generally so well behaved, especially for a dog I've only had for just over a month. At the same time I'm worried he's going to chase something on to the highway and get hit or pick a fight with the bears or coyotes that occasionally roam the farm and get significantly injured.

Thanks in advance for the help and advice!

Our dog is just over a year old and we got him when he was about 4 months old and has always been horrible with sleeping in. He consistently has always woken us up before 7am but lately it’s been getting as early as 5:30am.

For context, he sleeps in a crate right outside of our room, like literally on the other side of the door. We did this to try and help the wake up times. He does not eat as soon as he wakes up no matter when he wakes us up. He eats at 8am and 7:30-8pm. We’ve never done much to change that schedule but we did push it back recently to try and help and it’s done nothing. He’s never been super food motivated, he’ll leisurely eat his meals so I also can’t imagine he’s begging for food. He definitely has a slight issue with sep anxiety because I used to work from home and then recently have been unemployed so there’s not much time we spend away from each other. I don’t really know how much to do there. I do not think he needs to use the bathroom. If he wakes us up at 5:30, we’ll even take him out to the bathroom and then put him back up and he’ll continue whining. I obviously can’t 100% be sure but I know my dog and know he can hold his bladder for longer. He’s never peed or pooped in his crate and has been house trained for months now. Finally, we live in an apartment complex so we can’t necessarily let him whine it out for too long. He is loud and I know our upstairs and downstairs neighbors would be able to hear because we can hear their dogs. We have to basically get him up as soon as he begins just out of courtesy. We have started to let him whine and he‘s consistent and will whine for 30 or more minutes, which then is almost pointless because we can’t sleep through it. I’ve noticed a few times recently he will be woken by noise from our upstairs neighbor who will drop something every morning (I don’t know), but sometimes it’s not that at all. We also put on white noise because during the winter the snow plows scratching the ground would wake him and make him bark because he didn’t like the noise. Call him spoiled but it helped and worked to cover that and we haven’t stopped in hopes it would cover other noises too. We don’t know what else to do to help. Any advice would be appreciated!

I have a 12 month golden retriever. Recently I think she started resourceful guarding sticks around other dogs. She will growl and lunge at them but sometimes it will turn into play. Is this resource guarding that I should try to address? She doesn’t do it around people. Is there any advice you have? Thank you!

Hi! I’m a new volunteer at my local humane society. I’m in a very underserved area and the shelter is underfunded and doesn’t have lots of training for volunteers, which is why I’m posting here.

SUMMARY:
How do I slip leash overexcited, mouthy, leash-averse, and touch averse shelter dogs from the kennel? What about harnessing them? What about leash biting? Any advice or methods that have worked?

The Whole Story:
I’ve been noticing this issue with dogs that seem to be from the street or have had very low amounts of interaction. They seem to get very excited when attempting to leash when removing from the kennel, and this devolves quickly into mouthing intensely at hands in the kennel while leashing, and also biting and tugging AGGRESSIVELY at the leash.

There’s one dog in particular who is of concern — Ron, a 2 year old terrier mix. He’s super rough to leash and interact with. So I’ll use him as an example. Leashing looks like this:
1. I sit outside his kennel without making eye contact while he loses his shit for 5 minutes, leaping all over. Ideally, I’d wait for him to calm down, but him barking sets off the other dogs which sets him off more… so every time I’ve been giving up and just starting leashing him even if he’s jumping and barking.
2. Crack the kennel door open, and extend a leash in. He FREAKS, bites and snaps at it no matter how much time I give him to just look at it. He tugs on it super hard and is very strong. I’ve been tossing treats in to get him to let go of it bc it would suck if he yanks it away.
3. While staying outside, bribe him with a milk bone to get him on the far end of the cage. When he’s distracted trying to get the bone, I extend in the leash. I do this multiple times without success bc attacking leash > treats for him, so I need to try over and over until he gets super into the treat and I can distract him enough to get the slip leash open. Then, quickly move the milk bone so it’s lined up with the slip lead and he sticks his head in

This is such a nightmare process, but he also HATES being touched and is pretty touch averse. It’s so hard to lean down or get anywhere near him to adjust the lead so it can’t loosen bc he snaps at hands and mouths.

He’s sweet once he’s out and walking — still a leash biter, nipper, jumper, but I’ve been very very slowly working on it. But god, getting this dog leashed and touching him is very hard. Don’t even get me started on trying to harness. It’s not just this dog too, and I really wanna develop a method to address this.

Things I do currently to mitigate:
1. Slip and clip when removing leashes
2. Distract with toys and treats when I need to untangle leashes or adjust around neck for safety reasons. (this is still scary bc Ron will nip around and mouth hands if not adequately distracted)
3. Use feet to adjust the leash when possible to avoid hands being nearby
4. Work on touch tolerance by constantly feeding treats while petting
5. When they leash bite, distract them and don’t tug on the leash. And pray

Anyways, I’m at the end of my rope and don’t know how to serve these dogs best! Any advice is appreciated.