r/Havanese

Hi everyone! I’ve been loving everyone’s Havanese pictures posted here. These dogs are adorable.
I’m a mom of two small toddlers and I’m researching a few breeds. Like that Havanese are small and sound like they’re pretty low maintenance / good with kids.
Do you feel Havanese are great family dog? I work full time (from home) and have 2 kids. Other breeds I’m considering are golden retriever and cavalier King Charles. Just looking for any input

He's three years old, very spoiled. He barks whenever he hears someone outside of apartment, only at night sometimes when tired, he doesn't bark. Now, he's technically not my dog, he's my sister's dog. My sister's husband, his brother has a 9 year old kid, he's really good with that kid even they see each other rarely, they live in different state but he loves the kid. Few times all of us together were in places with a lot of kids and there's an issue, he gets very scared and literary jumps on my sister's shoulders and she always had to leave with him. Anyway, my sister is having a baby in three weeks or sooner. How to prepare the dog on that? And how do you think his reaction could be, just on baby at home and crying how he could deal with new situation?

I am a 28 year old whose worked with dogs for years, but I never actually took classes or truly know the science of dogs:
SO my dog has always been funky with food, I’ve free fed her all her life. Up until a year ago I was doing kibble and now she’s eats Stella and chewy freeze dried patties (only the duck flavor tho :-) ) because she would constantly spit the kibble out. She also gets bored of her food so I have to give her jerky treats or those kabobs in the white and orange package (I don’t think they are very good for dogs but she’s obsessed with them….)

I started giving her sundays for dogs, she didn’t like it, I went back to patties. Time passes blah blah and now she’s not eating really and I tried out the sundays for dogs jerky and she ate it. Now for dinner she won’t eat it.

I don’t know how to tell if she’s hungry (besides low energy and the obvious signs) if she has free feed choices available, yet she’s avoiding it to the point she’s hungry because she knows I will give her something better if she doesn’t eat.

TLDR; if my dog has food available to her, will she eat it before she goes hungry?

Our Havi pup is teething and is gums are paining seems like so he is unable to eat his Kibble. We give him Purina Pro Puppy Sensitive stomach- Lamb Oatmeal. He takes a Kibble and then drops it. What should we do? Anyone else face this?

Please tell me some Havanese take 12 months or longer to really figure out potty training.

Our Havanese boy is crate trained and sleeps through the night with no problem. But during the day, we still have accidents two to four times a week, and from about 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., it feels like a full-time job staying ahead of him.

When he was 2 months old, we were taking him out every 20 minutes, day and night. Now he can usually go anywhere from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours before barking in his crate to go out. When we take him, he does pee. Sometimes it seems urgent. Other times, I honestly think he just wants company.

The confusing part is that he can go 3.5 to 4 hours if we leave the house, probably because he naps and everything slows down. But when we’re home and he’s awake, the window is much shorter.

He also seems completely unbothered by getting pee on himself. Sometimes he doesn’t lift his leg, pees on his front leg, then just walks right through it or through any pee that got on the edge of the cement and the grass. Our 14-year-old Yorkie has always carefully avoided stepping in his own potty area, so this is very different for us.

His potty signal has also changed. He used to paw at the back door. Recently, he decided that instead of doing that, he would just sit there and look at me with loving eyes for about 30 seconds before peeing on the floor while still sitting down and getting it on his chest. I installed a potty bell today, but he’s scared of it.

So I guess I’m asking: is this normal for some Havanese? Do some of them just take a long time to mature with potty training, or does my dog simply not care where the potty area is as long as he gets to go?