r/DogTrainingTips

I have a 2 year old dachshund who has the normal stubbornness and hyperactivity of the breed, and I love her. But she has one quirk that I have tried to break, but it has broken me.

She is OBSESSED with playing fetch. I spend an hour a day outside throwing the ball with her. That’s fine, it makes her happy so I’m happy.

But when we’re in the house, she still wants me to throw the ball. But instead of bringing it back, she shoves the ball under the couch or under an end table — any piece of furniture I have to move to retrieve the ball. Then barks and whines until I get it.

My floors are scratched from all the furniture moving. If I take the balls away she goes into full on withdrawal and has a panic attack.

I’ve resorted to putting blockades beneath all my furniture, but now she finds ways to move those when I leave the room.

Anyone else have this problem? How did you get your dog to stop or be less obsessed with playing fetch or putting things under the furniture?

I’ve spoken with a couple trainers, but their help didn’t fix the issue.

Anyway he's way too timid, I wanted a gaurd dog. I just took him for a walk and some assholes dog came running at us barking and my dog ran i had to stand between him and this other dog. I know if you want to make a dog mean towards other people you keep them away from other people their whole lives. But what can I do to give him the courage to at least protect me the next time it comes down to it? Will he grow out of the timidness with age as he gets bigger?

I have a one-year-old lab, he barks for everything. Ever since he was a puppy, he would bark when he wants food, attention, to play, or if he’s mad. We’ve been trying to train it out of him, but nothing works. We tried distraction, when he’s quiet, rewarding him, in his crate to take naps, and ignoring him but nothing works. Recently, I’ve been trying to ignore him, but we can’t do that where we live because we have three reconnecting walls in our townhome so you can hear his barking in the other homes so I can’t ignore him until he decides to give up barking especially because he can bark for hours. My other dog doesn’t bark at all so it’s completely opposite behavior.

I am not sure what to do anymore, I work from home and he’s a complete distraction and he’s always screaming for something.

Please help

I have a 2 year old male who is plainly just obnoxious to other dogs. He just doesn’t get it when other dogs don’t want to play with him. He’s obviously dominant as well as he will stand over them and/or circle mercilessly- obviously we make him stop. But how do we teach him about doggy etiquette? I have 2 other Labs who are older and just don’t ever tell him off. He had an elbow injury and surgery when he was 5 months old, which kept him away from the other dogs for some months, so I’m assuming that is part of his obsession with other dogs. Looking for suggestions!

I have a 2 year old mutt, Lucy, who is extremely food motivated to the point she only focuses on the treat and not what I’m teaching her. This causes me to get frustrated and give up on training sessions all together. I want to be a better owner and teach her basic obedience and commands but she won’t focus on anything but the treat and refuses to listen when I don’t have one. She isn’t motivated by her dog food and I can barely get her to eat breakfast most days so I don’t think using her food instead would help much. I’ve tried not showing a treat while asking commands, I’ve tried using one hand for commands and the other for treats, I’ve tried using her food. I don’t know what to do and feel like I’m failing her because I can’t teach her anything beyond sit. There are no trainers in my area, I’ve looked. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Update: thank you all so much for the advice! I just finished a training session with Lucy and neither one of us was confused or frustrated!! I started by calling her over and waiting for her to come to me, then asked for a sit, clicked, rewarded. Then when she was staying sat with her attention on me, I waited for eye contact then clicked and rewarded even for small glances. By the end of the 3-5 minute session she was consistently looking at me instead of the treat. I’m still going to try other suggestions and see about an online class. Thank you all again so much, I hope you all have an amazing day/night!!

So my dog, Sasha, is one years old and has been having trouble getting potty trained. I would take her on a nice long walk at the park or out into our backyard with tons of areas for her to use the bathroom, and she’ll still end up peeing and pooping inside. She isn’t pooping inside 24/7 btw!

It’s super frustrating, and I’m starting to lose hope. My brother is suggesting that we “get rid of her” and I do not want to do that.

I’m not really sure what to do. We also have an older dog who is 4, and she doesn’t having issues with only using the bathroom outside (she does have an accident very rarely though).

Sasha is a very obedient dog and has no problems with other forms of training, but getting her to not poop in the house as often is sending me into a spiral. Im still in high school (graduating soon woop woop) and I work from home so naturally I’m not able to monitor her 25/8 to insure she doesn’t use the bathroom inside and no one in my household is willing to help me. My older brother, who is less busy than I am, only ever takes both of our dogs out for no more than maybe 30 minutes a day (my mom does help out a lot tho with taking them out).

Even though our dogs are **OUR** dogs, I feel like I’m truly the only one taking care of Sasha and I just don’t know where to start with getting her fully potty trained.

Do I need to take her out more? Should I start putting her into her crate more frequently? Any advice is helpful!!

Hi, I’m hoping someone can offer some advice on how to get my dog to eat. We are taking him to the vet for some recurring tummy issues, and as this is a problem he has been seen for before, I expect to be prescribed probiotic dog food. This issue is he absolutely will not eat it.

He is a 6lb bichon bolognese, 8 years old. He only likes to eat what his two larger breed sisters eat, while they are eating it, and from the same bowl. We have genuinely tried everything, but this dog will look you in the eye as he unfolds a pill from pepperoni, eats the pill, and spits out the pepperoni. He won’t eat treats, table scraps, deli meat, cheese, or chicken except chic fil a. I keep having to delete descriptions of his eating preferences because Reddit is flagging it as a medical condition, but I promise we have tried EVERYTHING, including custom made mail order fresh food.

The girls eat natural balance fat dogs (they are a few lbs on the heavier side but nothing extreme, well managed by the food), and historically have not liked probiotic food, meaning he will not eat it. He will only eat natural balance fat dogs.

Since it seems like a lot of his eating habits are social and dependent on his “pack”, I’m hoping someone might have behavioral tips or insights on how to leverage this to get him to eat his prescribed food.

Thanks for any suggestions, we love him so much and just want him to feel better. Dog tax in comments.

**never mind, I can’t figure out how to add pics

We got our pit/mastiff puppy in winter when there was a ton of snow in our back yard and he was limited in how far from the house he could get. So we tolerated him going on the deck, as our older dog does too sometimes when weather is nasty and snow is high. Now that the snow has finally melted we are struggling to teach him to go off the deck, even with an escort to appropriate areas and treats when he goes off the deck. He will literally spend 20 minutes running around off deck then pee right by the door when we walk back in.

Anyone have any suggestions to help?

TL;DR: My dog and my boyfriend’s dog had a bad incident over a ball after initially getting along, and now my dog is scared of her. Both dogs have some resource-guarding/reactivity issues in different contexts, and we’re trying to figure out how to safely help them coexist for walks, camping, car rides, sleepovers at each others places etc.

My dog is a Lab, and my boyfriend’s dog is a Great Pyrenees/Lab/Pitbull mix. They met for the first time back in October, and it started off really well, they played chase, swam together, and seemed comfortable around each other.

The issue happened while playing fetch. My dog loves fetch and brings the ball back. My boyfriend’s dog will chase the ball but doesn’t usually retrieve it. We brought two balls to avoid resource issues, but at one point his dog picked up a ball, dropped it halfway back, and my dog picked it up to bring it back. His dog reacted by latching onto my dog’s face. There were no puncture wounds or major injuries, and my boyfriend was close enough to separate them quickly, but it obviously scared my dog.

Since then, my dog is terrified of her. She seems like she wants to be friendly with him again, but he avoids her, runs away, and doesn’t want to interact. We’ve tried parallel walks and taking them to a neutral park, but he still wants nothing to do with her.

I also want to be fair and add that my dog has his own resource-guarding tendencies. He can be possessive of people. For example, if he’s being pet and another dog approaches, he may growl or bark. He also resource guards around food/people eating, so when we go camping, we put him in the car while people are eating to prevent issues with the other dogs around. So while the incident with my boyfriend’s dog scared him, I know both dogs have behaviors we need to manage and correct.

I know my own anxiety is probably contributing too, because I’ve seen her be reactive toward other dogs and I’m afraid something else could happen. I’m trying to stay calm, but I’m not a trainer and I don’t know how to safely rebuild trust between them.

My boyfriend and I both live active lifestyles in Colorado, so ideally we’d like the dogs to eventually be able to coexist for car rides, camping, hiking, etc. That said, we understand that may not be realistic if they can’t safely be around each other.

What steps should we take from here? Should we keep doing parallel walks? Avoid toys/resources entirely? Work with a trainer or behaviorist? Is it possible to rebuild their relationship, or should we focus more on neutral coexistence rather than friendship?

Any advice on how to safely move forward would be appreciated.

I have a German Shepherd who already knows heel pretty well, but he struggles with maintaining position consistently. He doesn’t pull on the leash, but he tends to slowly creep ahead of me while walking.
What helped you teach your dog to stay in position instead of forging ahead?
I’ve been rewarding when he’s in the correct spot and stopping/changing direction when he moves too far forward, but I’d love to hear other training tips or exercises that worked for you guys.

I want him to keep a invisible line and don’t go further.

Hello! I adopted a ~1 year old maltipoo about a month ago and I’ve been struggling to house train her. I’ve been reading some things online and I’m worried she’s “reverse house trained” - she only will go to the bathroom indoors and never outside. I take her outside constantly (about once an hour) and she won’t go to the bathroom. I watch her like a hawk or crate her if I can’t and try again an hour later and she won’t go. Then we come back inside and if I take my eye off her for a split instant even just to get my shoes off, I find pee on the floor.

Today I was extra good about keeping an eye on her and she still managed to go inside - we had just been outside for a pre-dinner attempt to pee, as she hadn’t peed since the morning. After 20 mins without going, I gave up and brought her back in for dinner. She ate, and soon after I put her in the crate so that I could take a quick shower. I came out and she had peed in her crate, which she has never done before.

Her refusal to go outside and ability to find some way to go inside the house is really worrying me, because all of the strategies for house training seem to revolve around rewards - it’s hard to reward her when she almost never does the right thing. I can get her to pee outside once a day usually and it’s just first thing in the morning, so I’ll give her a treat and lots of pets then. Otherwise she finds some way to go inside no matter how many times she’s been out without going.

Has anyone dealt with this before? How can I incentivize the good behavior if the good behavior doesn’t happen? And how can I reverse what seems to be a negative trend here?

Hi ya’ll, I’ve been a dog trainer for three years. Ive worked with nonprofits, trained service dogs for veterans, reactivity training, and much more.
I’ve gotten every dog to lay down on command and with a hand signal except MY OWN. I have a collie super mutt, she has golden, German shepherd, husky, and a few others in her.

Let me say, she does know down. She will lay down if I guide with my hand about 80% of the time and with a treat 100%. We have done the phase out of treats with success, capturing, etc. she knows exactly what the command means.

But when I tell her down organically she straight up ignores me. She has no medical issue aside from EPI which is well treated. She is just a sassy girl who doesn’t like that command. I reward her every time with a marker word including high, medium, and low value treats but sometimes she just decides she doesn’t want to and just won’t. Does anyone else have this issue?

I’ve also tried not letting her break from training until she does the behavior but this girl is so stubborn she will sit there for however long it takes (once it was hours) and just ignore me. Otherwise she is fantastic and will do literally any other behavior, won’t jump up and throw tantrums, she just sits there in undeniable defiance.

I’m aware that some breeds think they know better than their parents and will try to do something else but why is it only down? 😭

I just rescued my dog yesterday and I’m honestly obsessed with him already.

The rescue estimates he’s around 3 months old and he was already neutered, picked up as a stray. But I’m starting to think he might be a bit older and just really small. He has all of his adult teeth (they look pretty new), and he doesn’t really have that chaotic young puppy energy. He’s actually pretty calm and observant.

Because of that, I’m guessing he may have spent more time on his own than we initially thought. He’s not aggressive at all, just cautious. He’s definitely skittish, but still curious. Once he realizes something is safe, he warms up pretty quickly.

We have an older, calmer dog at home who I think will help a lot, and overall I’m not too worried about building his confidence long-term. He seems like a great candidate for that.

There are just two things I want to get ahead of:

1. He barks at certain people when they approach him, especially if he’s unsure. It doesn’t seem aggressive, more like fear or “please don’t come closer.”
2. On walks, he’ll frequently stop, sit, or try to hide. I completely understand why, since everything is new and probably overwhelming, but I’m not sure how to handle it without accidentally teaching him that he gets to control the walk by stopping.

I want to build his confidence without scaring him more. He’s so sensitive right now that I don’t even feel right using a firm correction.

Any advice on working through these kinds of fear-based behaviors, especially this early on? Would love to hear from anyone who’s raised a shy or formerly stray pup.

I know what I’m asking. If you are against this, please just move on from this post. I recently got a dog (Akita,Shepherd, Husky mix) I live alone, and I am a female. If I wanted to train him how to attack, how would I? Of course this would only be used in emergency settings. Someone harassing/hurting me, break-in, etc

He’s learning different commands now, and I’ve researched this online but ultimately didn’t find anything useful.

Thank you for your help.

So, to make an incredibly long story somewhat shorter, I live in a county undergoing an extreme crisis of dog overpopulation. We knew this when a pregnant stray ended up at our home over the holidays. What we didn’t know is that every other county in our state (and seemingly, as we broaden our search radius, possibly every state in the US?) was dealing with their own mounting crises.

Stray Mama gave birth to 7 pups. Before the birth, we had 4 friends/acquaintances committed to taking puppies. We have been able to adopt out ONE, and not even to any of the original 4 adopters. We email rescues in further and further states daily (we have contacted over 100 rescues and shelters in total). There is seemingly no end in sight for us, except for the one where we drop them off at our local overfull shelter to be euthanized, which I’m not willing to do for obvious reasons.

The remaining 6 pups are now four months old, quite large, still living in my moderately sized home, and they’re starting to become more difficult to manage. We have used gentle correction since they were small and started treat training about a month ago. So far, they all know “sit.” A few have picked up “down.” Jumping has become a major issue and half of them are now able to clear the puppy gates and our front fence (which means we are having to install a taller livestock fence inside of the existing fence). True potty training/housebreaking feels impossible, though they do (mostly) go on the pads provided while inside.

My question is… how the hell am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to obedience train and potty train 6 large puppies at once? I’ve done some research and there seems to be zero advice for this particular scenario, but I have no choice. If you were me, how would you go about this? I’m unemployed currently so I have a very flexible schedule, though obviously I do have other chores and obligations during the day (laundry, showering, cooking for the family, caring for our actual pets, etc). The other two adults in the house both have full time jobs, but help as much as they can. We can’t afford a trainer (we could maybe manage one session, if we scrimp), because our money is constantly going to things like new fences and endless puppy pads.

Please. Point me in some kind of direction. I need help.