r/puppytraining

Puppy is 12 weeks old Pitbull/Lab mix rescue and I’ve had him for almost 2 weeks now. He refuses to sleep in his crate unless he falls asleep on the couch and is transferred into his crate while drowsy in mid sleep. And even then it’s hard to get him to settle unless you pet him for multiple minutes, close the crate, and then slowly pull the blanket over the crate while saying “yes” his key word for training learning other commands. I don’t know how to break this habit. Any advice?

If placed straight in crate when not exhausted he whines and barks constantly even if we let him try to whine it out (which is hard to do living in an apartment with neighbors below us and beside). He doesn’t settle in his crate ever during the day even though it is open and we randomly will place treats in there to entice it as a happy place.

Edit: we also allow him a parent scented shirt and a Snuggle Puppy for all sleeping (nap or night), he will eat the snuggle puppy if allowed to see it all day.

When we first began crate training we had his crate in the bedroom and he did not need to fall asleep on couch and we slept on an air mattress on the floor with hands in the crate, and then next night we were able to try again and without hands needed. We then moved his crate to the living room where it has been since the third night and we slept on an air mattress and slowly each night moved it further from the crate until back to bedroom.

Also if he falls asleep on the couch and you try to put him in the crate and he wakes up, game over you have to start all over again because now he’s awake and upset. We’ve even tried giving him a pupsicle to lick and settle in the crate but as soon as you close the crate or leave the room he freaks out even with the lick toy.

Any advice is welcome! Please help, a tired pet parent.

Hi everyone, we have a 9 week old Labrador who is general is a joy. The only slight thing we have an issue with is that we live in a condo with a shared garden with other dogs.

We are doing potty training on special grass patches on our private terrace. Our little guy often gets REALLY distracted outside and starts trying to chew and rip up the edges of the grass patch. This means that even when he CLEARLY needs to poop (as in literally starts the little poop circling) he starts playing with the grass instead.

Over the last couple of days we have been working on leave it with him and he is actually very good with it given the short amount of time he’s been doing it. The problem is I don’t want to potentially make him start chewing it MORE because he then thinks he’ll get a treat after.

I have some bitter anti chewing spray that we got just in case he was a major chewer of furniture etc. I tested it a bit on an old cable I was going to throw away and after smelling it he didn’t even try to chew it so it must have a strong scent. I also tested it on myself and it is very unpleasant to lick.

Would it be fine to liberally spray just the edges of the grass patch with the anti chew spray or do you think it would then put him off actually doing his business on the patch? He has heavily used the middle of the patch for toileting already so he is used to going on it but I’m worried that the spray would stop the toileting as well as the chewing. It would just be the edges we would need to spray as the thing that seems to be fun to him is lifting up the edges and dropping them back down.

Any thoughts? Happy to hear any other suggestions also :)

My 4 months old Shih Tzu is very sweet and friendly. He's pretty well trained and very social. I take him on daily walks, and he always has someone at home with him too.

He is trained pretty well and even potty trained. He does his business outside or if it's an emergency at 3 am he even pushes the washroom door and does his business there.

The issue has started this week. At night (around 8-9 pm) he has started becoming aggressive towards just me. He barks at me and bites me, and if he is pissed when I don't respond he jumps up to my bed and pees on it. He even jumped up on my bed and peed after he was bathed. Even in his play pen he doesn't sleep and keeps hitting pretty it's wall to get out.

I am scared this will become a daily issue. He is very sweet and friendly and he is still just biting me. Apart from the bathing incident I can't put a finger on why. Plus it's just started happening now. I would love any advice.

Thanks in advance! 🌻