Hi!
My friend and I have been co-playing SDV on the switch for the last few months. We have been wondering if there are any other games similar ish to SDV that we could try out.. that do online play? Theres approximately an hour between us in distance.
Tia!
Hi! We have two dogs. One is an almost 8 year old, his name is Newton. And we have Suzie, who is roughly 16 months old.
We had an older guy who would have been 13 in April. He passed away in March 2025, and it completely wrecked Newton. He shut down and grieved for a long time. They were an extremely bonded pair and totally inseparable.
By August, he wasn’t doing any better. We went to our local shelter and found Suzie. They did okay when they met.
He has been doing better since she has been in our house. We’re getting him to leave our porch to potty, and in general, he’s doing great compared to where we were.
But he’s usually so open to playing with other dogs, and I feel like he’s just not super interested in her.. and fairly closed off still. He has done a play bow and they have chased each other a little, but he always comes running back to me. I told her vet, it’s almost like she’s speaking Spanish and he just doesn’t understand.
I do sometimes think it may be because she has so much energy. Turns out, she’s a poodle pit mix, so that will last a long while.
But she also constantly gets in his face. I have read that it’s something that young dogs do with adults as a sign of submission. But I can tell it’s a lot for him and he doesn’t care for it. He’s always turning his head or moving away from it. I will often intervene when it seems like it’s overwhelming for him and try to get her to focus on something else. I worry that if it gets to be too much for him, he may snap and it could cause a huge rift that would be difficult to repair. He’s not usually that kind of dog, but he does have anxiety that he’s medicated for, and I know dogs often have limits as well.
Is there anything more I can be doing to kind of help them interact positively? The vet said that it’s likely she didn’t have much interaction with other dogs prior to us having her, so she just doesn’t know how to play.
They do seem to have genuine interest in being around each other. But as soon as I put them outside together, he loses interest and wants to go inside again. They’re separated inside because she can be a bit much and I don’t want her encroaching on his space too much.
I will say, in the first two weeks she was here, they both found a tennis ball that my neighbors dog accidentally knocked into our yard while he was playing. Newton’s favorite toy, are his tennis balls.. and he snapped and went after her immediately. I go out and make sure there aren’t any when they’re outside together to prevent it from happening. But I do worry that this is contributing to some of the behavior from him. 😔
Pic of both of them from my lunch break for attention. She was running laps in the yard as she does, and he went into the shade to lay down. She would go over to him often and check on him. But that also meant she was getting into his face a bit.. so I would intervene. Then she ran past him after the pic was taken, and accidentally kicked him in the face 🤦♀️ that’s when we all went inside.
We do “pack walks” when able. Most of the walks we take, I’m just taking Suzie because I’m working on her training (we walk 2-3 miles a day). It’s hard to take both if I’m working on her training and he’s with us.
So, my girl is over 51% standard poodle. And she does have the poodle fluff to prove it.. but she also has a double coat. She sheds pretty bad. Her hair isn’t dense or thick like your typical standard poodle. It’s not even wiry… it’s actually more wispy?
That said, would it be recommended to have her hair cut? When we first adopted her, someone at some point prior to us had taken her to have a hair cut. It’s not even 80 degrees F out today, and she was panting like crazy during our walk.
Additionally, does anyone have any booty recommendations? Something that would work well for an almost 50lb dog and they stay on. With summer coming, there’s really no way to walk her with the ground getting hot (I’m in the US MIDWEST for reference). And she NEEDS at minimum a walk a day. I try to do two.. so by the end of the day she walks almost 3 miles with me between my lunch break and when I’m off work. She has so much energy, though 🫠
Pic for attention