Do you let your puppies sleep in or do you wake them up to fit your schedule and then adjust nap times during the day? Mine goes to bed around 21:30 and sleeps until ca. 9:30. Sometimes it’s difficult to fit in his meals, or a second nap or it’s already too hot for play outside and walks in the morning.He’s a 5 month old staffy. I get up way before that. Should i wake him up when I get up?

I came across this post on Reddit and it is pure honesty. The language is a little crass so, be prepared for that. Just a very honest opinion from one redditor. Think long and hard before just "getting a puppy." https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/s/FMOs8NXzok

Hi there. I have posted here a couple of times but I’m at a loss right now and I’m sitting by the street crying. I have been trying to potty train my puppy. She hates being outside and doesnt like pottying outside. She refuses to pee, and then starts getting really mad, barking and biting me non stop. Our neighbours are starting to have issues and I have tried everything. I take her to puppy classes and the trainer told me to give her treats, or bring a tug toy and when she gets like this give her the toy to make it “fun”, but she starts going for my hands on purpose ignoring the toy, refuses the treats. I’ve tried not giving her attention, but she’d bark non stop. I have tried taking her back upstairs and resetting, she does it again. Most of the days I’m outside hours on end, getting bit, and just not able to do anything! I tried picking her up, and it was working, she was calming down, except now she bites me while I’m holding her and barks more when I put her down. She continues doing this even if she pees and after we come upstairs. I’m gonna post a couple of videos but I cant post them here. I’m truly desperate right now…

Puppy is 10 weeks old, male, jack Russell cross miniture poodle and has been with us since he was 8 weeks old. His name is makepeace think this relevant to show how different his name is to sit.

I taught him to sit a few days after getting him. Now his kinda mastered that I thought I'd work on his recall. I've tried luring him to run to me with a treat but as soon as I get the treat out he sits. I've tried running my hand in the treat bag and saying makepeace with my hand out to him but he just sits as soon as I say makepeace. I've even tested if he understands that makepeace is different to sit by saying it with no treat around and he insanely sits.

Bassically he thinks if I speak to him he'll get a treat if he sits i think.

How do I get him to understand that I want him to come to me when I say his name?

Picked up our 9-week-old puppy yesterday, and I’ve never owned a puppy before, so I’m completely new to this.
He isn’t food or toy motivated at all. We’re having to hand-feed him his breeder-provided food because he barely touches it from a bowl, and he’s not interested in treats either. We’ve tried several bowls with no luck.

He’s otherwise very confident, playful and loves attention, so I’m assuming the food issue may just be nerves from the huge change. He’s also having very loose stools, and although the breeder thinks it’s stress, we’re seeing the vet tomorrow to be safe.

We’re also trying to crate train him. He’s sleeping in our bedroom for now, but last night he cried when put in the crate, so I sat beside him until he settled. He woke at 12:30am and 3:30am to toilet, but after being put back in the crate he cried for around 30 minutes before settling.
I’m mainly worried because he isn’t food or toy motivated and doesn’t seem to like the crate, which makes me wonder how we’ll successfully train him.

Any advice from experienced puppy owners would be really appreciated!

Hello all,

I recently purchased an Alaskan Malamute puppy from a reputable breeder here in my state. She is overall a very good girl, currently 12 weeks, but I am solo and struggling with the potty training.

I take her out very often and she is slowly getting it but not perfect yet. She rarely indicates before she has to pee. Pooping, i will notice her sniffing more. I am very sleep deprived due to getting up every hour or so to let her out, and today I attempted to take a short nap while she slept in her crate. I took her out right before I laid down, but she peed all over the crate and herself while I was asleep and I had to give her a bath. I'm frustrated because nearly everything I've read has told me that puppies won't pee/poop where they sleep but clearly that's not the case. Has anyone experienced this before, and what did you do?

i keep reading that you should cover it but i think my puppy feels very isolated with it like that. he’s a 12 week old poodle.

Hi all,

Have a golden retriever puppy who is now 12 weeks old and had her just under 2 weeks.

Firstly doing this alone is tough work i feel I am needing to monitor 24/7 am exhausted and nobody here to take the slack off me at all.

Really struggling with the toilet training.

Im logging everytime she goes, pee roughly every 2 hours and poo every 4. Am taking her outside when she wakes up, after feeding and after play. Rewarding her everytime she goes outside.

But she will continuously pee and poo inside. When accidents happen I am using enzyme cleaner and cleaning up immediately.

She doesnt indicate that she is about to go at all and sometimes will take her in and out, knowing she needs to go ans after an hour or so of that she'll go inside anyway.

What am I doing wrong, am I wrong in thinking there should be less accidents by now? Any help is much appreciated.

I’ve had my puppy for 6 days now and I’m honestly all over the place emotionally.
One second I’m crying and thinking that maybe I secretly don’t want him because I can’t handle how much my life has changed.

I feel overwhelmed and sometimes I just want my old life back.
And then, at another moment, I’m completely enjoying him, feeling happy and thinking he’s the cutest thing ever.

The change has been so much bigger than I expected, and I feel guilty for having these thoughts because I obviously love him.

Has anyone else experienced this during the first days/weeks with a new puppy? I’d really love to hear that I’m not the only one.

It's Wednesday!

Welcome to our new Wednesday Wins post. Someone mentioned wanting a day where we can focus on the positive aspects of puppyhood. So let's get it done!

Share a win that you and your puppy had this past week! Learned a new skill? Overcame a challenge?

If you're new and just starting, set a goal!

Hi everyone,

My puppy just turned 5 months old. Seems like every week he has a new behaviour he discovers. This week is barking at every little sound he hears, many that we aren’t able to hear.

We live in a semi detached home so I’m sure he can hear the people next door. Any tips/tricks? He barks and will keep barking until we get his attention to something else. It’s also not a playful bark, it’s like a “protection” or “alarm” kind of bark.

I have an Australian shepherd and he’s 11 weeks old as of today. I got him 3 weeks ago at 8 weeks old. Our biggest issue is biting and nipping us and he hasn’t even started teething yet and my pain tolerance cannot take it anymore. My legs are completely scratched up, my arms are covered in bite marks, he tears open skin and at this point I’m worried about possible infection because of how many open wounds I have. He bites HARD and constantly. If he didn’t bite SO hard I probably wouldn’t care but I’m constantly bleeding and I’m in pain.

He excels in many areas - no potty accidents and alerts us. He has no separation anxiety. And he also sleeps like an angel therefore I don’t think lack of sleep is the issue. He sleeps 10-11 hours at night, sleeps two 3 hour naps during the day and a 2 hour nap in the evening putting him at 18-21 hours of sleep a day. He is extremely independent and has no issue with hanging out in his pen playing with toys solo with no whining even if I were to leave the room.

The issue is when he is out of his pen and excited to hang out with me. Even after a well rested over night sleep (10+ hours) his idea of “play” with me is extreme biting. I redirect him to a multitude of toys of different textures, even a bully stick (that he LOVES and will go crazy on in his pen) but my arms and legs are significantly more fun for him at every given awake moment when he access to me outside of his pen.

He has no clue what human/dog play is. I’ve been trying to teach him tug and when he does play tug with me I treat him but he does not find it fun and will stop tugging and go for my arm instead. If I let him win easily he will take the toy away from me into a different room then return to bite me.

I tried fetch but he will only go after the toy maybe ~10% of the time and then take the toy to a different room or his pen away from me, and come running back once bored to bite me.

As far as enrichment goes for such a high energy and smart breed we do tons : large snuffle mats, an array of puzzle feeders, scatter feeds in the grass. Lots of training time. We tried flirt pools, herding balls, and the like but he still would rather bite me than bite those unless I am not present then he will enjoy it on his own.

He gets to run around in a fenced multiple acre property for fun but will still run up to me play bow and follow me biting excessively leading to going back inside into his pen.

Things we’ve tried :

1. leaving the room and saying “no bite”. He doesn’t care. He will find something else to do and bite us on return.

2. keeping a toy on us and putting it in his mouth when he bites us then rewarding with treat. Works less than 10% of the time where he will bite the toy for a treat but then return to biting us

3. putting him in his pen (also where he sleeps at night and takes naps so I hate to use it as a punishment) he doesn’t care and will usually just go to sleep or bite at his crate. If he just took a nap he will whine until we let him out because he’s wide awake and that will mean more biting once out. So we normally do something else like commands, lick matts, puzzle, sniffing, etc.

4. distracting him with commands. This will work! He will listen to commands and do them (sit, paw, spin, middle, heel, lie down, etc) but once he is bored with the commands he will go back to biting us.

5. we taught him what “get toy” is and he will go grab the toy for a treat but will return to bite us once the toy is dropped he does not grasp playing with the toy with us

I truly believe his biting is not from over tiredness / over stimulation but from his idea of playing with us.

He’s an angel during puppy class because when there is a lot of distractions (other people, dogs, etc) he likes to sit silently and observe and will check in with me for treats so everyone thinks he’s an angel.

I feel so bad not being able to walk my 5 month old much right now but it’s MISERABLE outside. We’re in Georgia and it just hit 97 a few days ago. Our walks are typically 10-15 minutes 5 times a day right now, or we just sit in shade and people watch. He doesn’t seem super upset about this and I have to convince him to go outside at times, but I know he enjoys sniffing and a full sniff adventure is not doable.

We got our shiba pup when he was 8 weeks old. He is gorgeous and I love him so much. I think he likes me too. He listens to me fairly well. Recently my husband has difficulty calming him down. When we signal him “bedtime”, he goes straight to hump my husband’s leg, quite aggressively. I can call him one or two times before the humping, but he will go straight back to my husband’s leg after the command breaks. We put him into the playpen if that starts to hurt, but again he will go straight back to my husband and wouldnt stop. Eventually he will calm down after my husband leaves the space and he will fall asleep quickly. I can tell my husband is getting really annoyed that he is not enjoying having to live with him. If anyone got any advice that we can try on, it will be helpful.

PS1: my pup doesn’t sleep in playpen or crate. He can lie down and calm himself but would not fall asleep. We tried for weeks and it harmed him more than its good so we decided he is not required to sleep in a confined space.

PS2: All his meal is fed by my husband. I walk him, my husband joined 2 out of 3 walks but I’m the one holding the leash. We do grooming together with him. We both spent 2 days per week working from home. Our play time with him is quite similar.

My goldendoodle puppy is 7 months old, we've had him about 4 months now.

We started crating him from Day 1, but only at night. He wouldn't stay in there during the day, but once he was half asleep at night he wouldn't care if we put him in there and would settle pretty quickly until around 6 a.m. when we'd take him out.

But as soon as he entered the dreaded adolescent phase a few weeks ago he stopped going in there even at night. Gets up and runs away from me if I even just stand up around bedtime.

We asked a trainer who said he may have developed a strong negative association with the crate. So we started letting him sleep wherever he wanted (sometimes our bed, sometimes other spots around the house).

He's technically fine outside the crate and sleeps through the night without accidents or destroying anything, but now I'm worried he won't ever go back to the crate if there's any situation where we need him to.

I've started dropping treats in there at random times during the day but he'll only go and eat them if I'm not standing close enough to potentially close the door.

How do I get him comfortable with the crate again, or is it too late now? Any advice much appreciated!

We picked our puppy up 2 and a half weeks ago. I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew it was hard. But I’m concerned. He’s a cockapoo and he is nearly 15 weeks old. We picked him up when he was 12 weeks old.

When he came to us, there were a few issues. He wouldn’t really eat, obvs hated his crate at first, only ate treats,had worms, can’t stand us leaving the room for 5 seconds and was too scared to walk. This has been mostly resolved now. Worms have been treated, he is now VERY food motivated, eats regularly etc. the walking is still off. He won’t go further than half way down the road of our back alley street. His separation anxiety is also still awful. Won’t sleep unless we’re sat right next to his crate. Won’t even sleep when we’re sat on the sofa that’s less than a metre from his crate.

For the first week and a half, we could train him. We trained sit, leave it and crate trained him. None of it’s perfect of course because it was only a week of training. He sleeps in his crate (1 hour awake, 2 hours sleep), he sits on command pretty much every time.

Fast forward to the past week or so, he’s become imposible. Here are the issues we’re dealing with:

- barking and howling in his crate when we stand up to grab something that’s literally in the same room. Is constantly finding excuses to get out. We’ve fed him, gave him water, gone to the toilet. He’ll still find something to let us know about just to get out and play.
- takes us 4 hours sometimes to actually even get him to go to sleep.
- wakes up really easily when he sleeps. Any noise we make he wakes and struggles to get back to sleep.
- is an absolute maniac on walks. And when I say walks, I literally mean just past our driveway.
- wakes up after a 2 hour nap like he never napped at all. Biting us, running around like a crack head, grabbing anything he can find.
- training is out the window. Gets so frustrated for anything other than “sit”. Can’t even train him for 5 seconds with any kind of treat. He just starts lunging himself at me and biting me.

I know these kinds of things are just puppy behaviour. But there’s absolute no minute of calm. No lick mat or sniffer game calms him down. I do a “find it” game for him to find treats around a room to calm him down. It works during the game but he goes right back to it afterwards. I try to use our structure of train, play, walk, calm time, nap. But the train, play and walk is entirely taken up and ruined by him refusing to do anything. Last week it was hard but we managed to find those small gaps where we could train him and follow his structure. Now it’s just surviving the hour he’s awake.

I’m worried there’s something wrong with him. Like something physical that’s suddenly causing these changes where there’s no one second that he can be calm. I’ve tried tethering - he just flips himself around the lead. I’ve tried bonding with him - he sits for like 2 minutes and gets right back to it. I’ve tried a stuffed Kong - not interested unless the reward is instant. I’ve tried long lasting chews - he just gets bored and starts all over again. I’ve done every mental stimulation game you can think of. He is all of a sudden only interested in biting me and zooming around.

When my partner goes to work, I can’t shower, eat, go to the toilet, get dressed, NOTHING. Everything is taken over by him. I wouldn’t even say I have puppy blues as such. I love him and want the best for him and couldn’t dream of giving him back or taking him to a shelter. I’m just really stressed and worried that there’s another issue here? Could this all be down to teething?

Hi all - I’m a new puppy dad, have had him for two weeks now. He’s a 12 week old golden retriever and is legitimately a wonderful dog and I love him to death.

He is also, unfortunately, a level-5 clinger. While normally that doesn’t bother me too much, it makes it relatively easy to keep track of him during the day, he also doesn’t like getting into his crate during the day. To be clear, he sleeps just fine in his crate at night and during the day when he’s really tired. But otherwise he is just loud when I put him in his crate, always barking and whining and trying to bite at the crate. He will eventually settle down, usually only for a couple minutes before he starts back up.

I have been following the advice of another user on a different post who trained their dachshund out of this behavior by rewarding when quiet and progressively waiting longer while quiet before rewarding and by increasing distance. I have been doing that method, but with only limited success so far. I was wondering if anyone else had any ideas on this problem?

Second, my puppy is absolutely a tiny little land shark 😂. He will bite almost nonstop. We do work with him on redirection, handing him a toy to stop the behavior, but shortly after he goes back to trying to bite us. I know puppies especially like to bite, and goldens are bred to put things in their mouths, but do any of you have any tips on how to train him out of this constant biting?

Thank you all in advance for your help!

Sorry in advance for the long post but we’re at a loss.

For context, my partner works full time Monday to Friday, and I only work weekends. We work around each other because of the issues we’ve been having (our pup not being able to be left alone).

I have a 13 week old Whippet, we had him at 10 weeks old. He’s overall a good puppy, he’s been very easy to train, however he is a proper Velcro dog.

Straight away we noticed he couldn’t be alone for any length of time. He’d follow us room to room, and if we put up barriers like a baby gate, he’d immediately cry and scream until we got back. This was the same for the crate, he’d cry, scream, bite at the bars etc constantly and he wouldn’t stop. He just has to be touching us in order to settle.

With previous dogs, we always allowed them to sleep where they wanted, which usually was our bed. So we allowed the puppy to share our bed with us because he slept really well that way and we’ve never had an issue with dogs in bed. I know this likely hasn’t helped, but we needed sleep and are conscious to not annoy neighbours with the endless crying.

However, now he is starting to be destructive at night time while we sleep and during the day. I don’t care so much about the damage to my house as it’s all replaceable, but what I do care about is his safety, so we are now looking at crate training - I have never had to crate dogs before.

Things we’ve tried, but haven’t worked:
\- Kong/licky mat with peanut butter - unfortunately he seems to have an intolerance to peanut butter as his bowel movements went very runny so we had to stop that.
\- Tried covering the crate both partially and completely.
\- Tried playing the radio etc.
\- Tried making the crate cozy with beds, blankets etc.
\- Praising him for going into the crate.
\- Putting a worn item of clothing in the crate.
\- We’ve tried both a smaller crate, and a larger one.
\- We’ve tried feeding his meals in the crate.
\- He has teething/chewable toys in the crate, including Bamboodles.
\- Tried making sure he’s physically/mentally tired, and all his needs are met.

We’ve tried leaving him in a puppy proofed room with the same things as above, still the screaming persists.

This isn’t a fear of the crate or a fear of confined spaces, this is a fear of being alone or not being able to get to us. He will go into the crate willingly to play and he will sleep in there if he’s really tired and I leave the door open. But freaks out the moment I close the door or leave the room.

Our hope is to crate him at night, and to hopefully be able to crate him during the day if we need to go out. At least until the destructive phase passes.

Any advice will be appreciated…TIA 🖤

This is going to be a long one. My Fiancee and I recently got an Aussie, he came home at 8 weeks and despite our best efforts he has not been able to stop peeing in the house. We got him tested for a UTI, sent multiple urine samples, blood tests, exams, everything we could test medically and nothing is wrong according to those. Then we moved from taking him out every 30 minutes to every 25 and he still can't hold it long enough/doesn't want to hold it. We are giving praise and treats outside when he pees and have been the entire time, he has been living in a pen in the living room under surveillance every day until recently we let him run around in the kitchen with us while making food. The vet told us to distract him when he is drinking water for a long time to see if he is actually still thirsty or if he is just drinking to drink, that has not seemed to help at all. At this point we are spending about as much time outside getting him to pee as we are inside. When he does pee we are cleaning with Nature's Miracle Urine Destroyer and waiting 15 minutes to wipe it up as per the instructions. We have also been speaking with trainers who are now completely out of ideas as to why this is still such an issue. I'm not sure what else to try but I'm willing to hear anything at this point.

Edit - My Fiancee did keep a log for 2 weeks and no pattern was discernable to us or the trainers. Sometimes he will bark before he pees but he also does that for attention and our trainers told us not to take him out every time he barks because that can become a problem later as an adult, the puppy also doesn't sniff and circle most of the time, he will just be walking around then stop and pee. (I had her look at the post and add things I forgot)