r/Bernedoodles

Facts:

-My puppy is 1 year 4 months.

-We have spent a lot of time trying to find a solution for him in my 2025 Subaru Ascent.

-He is 82 lbs, and vet says he is done growing.

-He is too big to climb into the third row.

-We have two large teen girls that sit in the second row.

-We have taken a LOT of positive trips for him to parks, daycare, pup cones, fun walks; he always seems happy wherever we arrive.

-We have a tether.

-We have tried a few different beds in the back with the third row down.

-We have tried a ramp.

-We have tried all of the high value treats.

-We do our best to make sure it has been a little more than an hour between him eating and getting into the car.

-He takes a minimum of two trips a week in the car (right now it is closer to 3-5 trips a week).

Any ideas? It takes two of us fighting with him to get in the car at our house. He doesn't fight us when getting into the car elsewhere. I am so sad this is such a fight.

I have an 8 month old, 75 lbs F1B Bernedoodle named Roo.

He's been on Purina Pro Plan Large Puppy Sensitive Skin and Stomach (Salmon and Rice) since he was 8 weeks.

About 2 weeks ago he developed a gut issue where his stool is liquid. He was taken to the vet and they found bad bacteria in his stool and recommend going on anti biotics for a week and bland diet. That didn't work after a week. Stool was retested with same results. Round of blood work which came back perfect. They now recommended going on a Gastrointestinal Puppy food as a trial to try and get things better.

He's starting this today.

Has anyone else had issues with certain foods with their doodle? Did something change where he was fine before and all of a sudden it changed.

What did everyone else feed their doodle?

I'm also a bit cautious with the chicken formula as our breeder stayed away from chicken as she said they tend to have allergies to it. We've done the same since taking him at 8 weeks. The vet said the Gastrointestinal food doesn't come in anything other than chicken and should still give it a try.

Other than the stool, everything else has been completely normal. Personality, energy, sleep, drinking lots of water, etc.

Our buddy is 4 years old and pretty healthy, but he’s suddenly started regressing on things he’s been solidly trained on since age 1 and before.

1. the pulling. This was the hardest to train out of him for regular walks and took till about age 1. He is a big and kinda clumsy guy (135 lbs) and I think that contributes. Although as a puppy we had to deal with him yanking us into the street and that we trained out of him probably by around 9 months.

Back in the spring I had noticed he had started pulling on leash again. I do the morning walk (or dog park) and my husband does a late evening one. I have always been more of the disciplinarian on walks. There’s people and dogs around when I’m out with him and not so much for my husband. Plus husband was hit by a car as a kid and is easier to knock over as a result so I think he goes the path of least resistance.

Anyway, lately I’ve been dealing with some injuries in my legs and while I can walk I can’t walk as far. So our usually long disciplined walk though the neighborhood to the park where I lay off the discipline a little and we just wander while he sniffs, has been downgraded to me driving him to the park where we wander and sniff. Or I’ll practice a disciplined walk with him around the park a little bit it’s not the same. So he’s losing a lot of practice.

And then I took him with me to Petsmart and on the way out he yanked me so hard and suddenly towards the street -he had seen a little girl in the parking lot who said “hi” to him in the store- that I had to stomp down hard to brace and majorly aggravated one of my injuries, just to keep us out of the street. It was completely unexpected and I’m still shocked he did it.

2. the poop: Since about 6 months he’s been peeing and pooping on the same gravel area in our yard. Just in the last month he’s decided he wants to do it all over the yard and the grass. Now I don’t need a perfect lawn, but it’s made clean up really hard and I’d like to be able to walk on my back yard without having to search for land mines first.

Any advice? Anyone go through this kind of regression before? We had a great trainer when he was a puppy but the trainer is now living on the other side of the country.

Dog tax included