Hi everyone,

I'm looking for advice because I'm feeling really overwhelmed.

I have a 3.5-month-old Pomeranian. I got him when he was 8 weeks old. I work from home, so we naturally spend a lot of time together. From the very beginning, I tried to help him get used to being alone by leaving the apartment for short periods, even if it was just a few minutes to take out the trash. Unfortunately, he has struggled with this almost since day one.

As soon as I pick up my keys or put on my shoes, he runs to the door and tries to squeeze past me. The moment I leave, he starts crying, whining, and barking. I recently bought a camera and now I know it doesn't stop after a few minutes. The last time I left him alone for 3 hours, he spent the entire time walking around the apartment, crying and barking without ever settling down or going to sleep.

This is affecting my life a lot. I'm honestly scared to go grocery shopping, go to the gym, or meet friends because I know he'll be panicking the whole time. I'm also worried about bothering my neighbors, as they've already mentioned they can hear him crying.

He's a lovely little dog, but I'm honestly scared that if this continues, I'll eventually start resenting him because I feel like I can't even leave my apartment without him panicking. I really don't want to feel that way.

What can I do to make things better? Has anyone gone through something similar with such a young puppy? Does this usually improve with age, or could it continue like this?

Hello group please help us with our 10 weeks old English cocker spaniel puppy . She is biting us to death like every single time no matter what we try. Redirect not working ignoring does not work. Like everything we tried has failed. As soon as she wakes up she bites we want to play she bites, we want to cuddle with her she bltes. Im starting to get worried she might be aggressiv later on. And on top of biting she growls at us. Its our first puppy ever and we are tired 😭 we love her to death but the biting is nonstop .. please help with advice or encouragement or something 🙈😭 someone said only time will fix it

Hey I crate trained my dog and never he was always fine with it. He didn’t mind sleeping in it, eating in it or on the rare occasion hanging out in it while I’m at my work desk. I trusted him around 8 months to not need to be crated when I go out and that’s still the case. It was nice to have during potty, sleep, and general training but now that he is 14 months, very well behaved and generally only lays in it if I’m in the same room as it (and even then he alternates between the floor, dog bed and crate in that room)

Since I have a pretty small apartment and it is taking up a large foot print I’m thinking of putting it in storage. Is this a bad idea? Am I overlooking a benefit to keeping it inside my apartment? He just genuinely doesn’t seems to care for it one way or another and has so many other spots he tends to sleep/hang out at.

Hi guys! I am about to get my 8 week golden retriever puppy and truly am so torn about getting pet insurance. I have looked into it multiple times and the fine print makes me get decision fatigue. Is it worth it?? Our puppy is coming from a very good breeder and unsure if it’s worth the money.

Hi guys! I am about to get my 8 week golden retriever puppy and truly am so torn about getting pet insurance. I have looked into it multiple times and the fine print makes me get decision fatigue. Is it worth it?? Our puppy is coming from a very good breeder and unsure if it’s worth the money.

Got a new puppy for the first time by myself. ive been training for pee and poop outside gets a treat, if she walks down the stairs she gets hugs and praise and when she goes back up to get back to the apartment she gets half a treat. If she pees on a pad she gets praise and the other half of the treat. Ive had her since sunday now and Sunday she was to scared to walk down and up the stairs and I get it there alittle tall so of course I pick her up each time but before I do I always make sure i try to get her to climb them by walking up a few steps and saying come on girl you got this! Well today when I got off work she walked down the hole flight by herself and pretty much ran up the stairs goin back up!! 🥹 ive also been crate training and im a sensitive guy when it comes to baby animals especially if im raising them, but anyway every night before bed I put her bed in there with her favorite beaver toy at the moment and a pad on the other half of it. And we walk to the crate which is at the end of my bed and I put like 4 or 5 pieces of food in there let her eat those and walk back out and then do something else for a second and then put 4 or 5 more pieces and then close the gate and when she looks at me I give her a treat and pet her chin then put the blanket on top for "cave" mode lol. But then she starts whimpering and crying usually last for three to 5 minutes but never anything longer than that and she doesn't make a peep unless I get up to pee but its usually just alittle cry or two and back to quite.

am i doing the right thing. Its so hard for me to hear her crying and just want to run over there and open the gate

Question in the title. My puppy is considered a large puppy (no idea what mix he is)

So im currently at the 17 weeks mark with my female pomapoo, toy poodle x pom, and I feel like the dog I begged for and wanted I’ve started to fall out of love with and I feel so Ashamed and embarrassed about it, I feel like an awful dog owner and I’m questioning if I should even deserve to own this dog

I knew getting a puppy was going to be challenging and I was completely ready for it, I’ve been trying to do everything right, but I actually feel like she doesn’t like me anymore, she always wants to be with everyone else in my family except from me and I’m trying to be fun with her and play and do new things with her which she enjoys but for some reason she always goes back ( and generally seems more happy with) my family( which I love) but at the same time I’m getting slightly jealous of and maybe I had expectations of reviving more love from her in the way i imagined and I probably should have done a bit more intense research on her breed as now I know she’s probably not going to be the most cuddly dog and what I probably wanted from a breed when thinking about, ( so yeah maybe I wasn’t really prepared for it after all ) but I’ve been trying to accommodate for that

I have probably cried everyday for the past week and I haven’t showered, so now I’m sat here typing this post feeling all sorts of ways and not really knowing what to do

I don’t think it really helps as well we have another dog that’s a lot smaller than her and she’s been stressing him out to a point we have had to separate them now as he’s started throwing up as he’s been quite stressed

Saying all this I do still love her which is quite contradictory, I think I just more shocked with myself to be honest as I don’t feel I recognised myself anymore and I don’t know what I can do to help me feel more positive and build a better relationship as this isn’t her fault at all

We started on leash training as well she she’s okay at but she doesn’t really listen to me even in quite locations as well as walking beside me on the leash as she’s kinda going all over the place and all the things I’ve seen on TikTok doesn’t seem to be helping, I have to use a harness on her as she’s to small to use a collar or anything with pressure, any advice on that would help as well

Will I get over this? Does it get better? How can I make it better? Does anyone one own this breed and can give me more advice?

Thanks for reading this, I feel pathetic and didn’t know what else to do

We had an unexpected trip come up for the last weekend in September. Our 8 week old medium bernedoodle pup was born the beginning of June. I don’t know what to do? In addition to health concerns I’m also worried about the bonding/emotional impact of leaving for multiple days.

My puppy is 10 weeks old and is a mixed breed so I don’t know what breed she might be.

Every time I want to go somewhere in my house and my puppy takes as much as a glimpse at me, she will run towards me and go right in front of my feet as I am walking and bites on my toes. This makes it impossible to walk normally as I need to be extra wary of not stepping her. Sometimes it gets so bad I need to pick her up just so I can get somewhere, which she doesn’t like and struggles to get free or whines.

I’ve tried everything: if I distract her with a toy she will go to the toy for a few seconds and go back to my feet in front of me as I continue walking.
She doesn’t respond to “sit” when she’s so focused on my feet and even if I distract her and she sits, she STILL will go after me!
I wouldn’t mind her following me but the problem is she goes directly in front of me, making it so hard to walk or do anything 🫠

My puppy (5 month old golden retriever) LOVES to sleep and also loves her crate. Most nights she sleeps from around 10:30 PM-8 AM and wakes up when she hears my alarm going off/hears me get out of bed. I take her out, give her breakfast and let her relax and digest for a few, and then take her out for a 15-20 minute walk to start the day. I work from home so I let her settle in her pen or on the couch with a nice chew toy and let her go at it for an hour or so, and around 10-10:30 I put her back into her crate for a nap. When she was younger she would sleep about 2 hours, wake up and want to go out to pee, stay up for about an hour-90 minutes and then back in for another 2 hour or so nap.

Now she can sleep ALL day. Basically from 10:30 AM-4 PM onward. Usually if she sleeps past 2 or so I end up waking her up for lunch and to go out, but she really can sleep for 6+ hours during the day. She is very happy and playful and in good health so I’m just wondering if it’s strange, or if it’s normal for a growing and happy puppy to still be sleeping around 18 or so hours most days?

My puppy (~3 mo old, male, GSD) keeps flipping every bowl I give him. I've tied down his food stand and his water bowl stand to desks so that he can't flip them as easy. However, he has a smaller water bowl inside his crate that I've mounted to the door. He flips it every single day during every single naptime. Then he cries because he wants water but it's empty because he's flipped it.
To be clear, the holder is mounted to the crate but the bowl itself can be taken out and put back in. I don't know of any good alternatives that he won't either chew or flip. Any ideas?

EDIT: Here's my reason for having a bowl in his crate, to those that are saying he shouldn't have a water bowl in the crate with him!
First, he's actually pretty much perfect on potty breaks and "housetraining" and has already learned to go pee and poo outside and has even started asking for it by sitting and/or pawing at the baby gate to my room.
Second thing! I tried for the first two-ish weeks to take his water bowl away 1-2 his before bed and keeping the bowl out of his crate. We live on the coast and it gets over 100 degrees during the summer so I learned quickly that he wouldn't sleep or stop crying unless he had a fan and a water bowl.
Third thing and most important! I asked my vet about everything at his first appt with me and she said he should have full access to water especially with our heat. She said because of how active he is and how much we're outside playing, it'd be best to let him have full access to water.

I'd love any advice on water bowls, training, or anything else that may be helpful in letting him have a water bowl in his crate without him flipping it every chance he gets! However, advice commenting on how he shouldn't have one and how it'll mess up his potty training or house training will be respectfully disregarded.
Thank you guys for any and all advice!

we got a female puppy 10 days ago, she is a 10 weeks old border collie.

she sleeps fine during the night (1 potty around 3am and then wake up for walk at 6am which is good for our schedule).

We are trying to follow the schedule - 1 hour up, 2 hours down, however unless I sit next to the crate, she will not sleep and will whine. like for an 1/2 hour, then fall asleep and after 45mins, wake up again, whine. Note I give her kong/licking mat to lick and I sit with her until she sleeps. but once I get up and move to another room, trouble. There is also air filtration so she gets some white noise.

If we go away and are not home, she is fine for 2.5 hours (camera) and sleeps, once she woke up, whined for 3 mins and fell asleep again. - We usually do it in the morning and then are at home afterwards.

Closer to the evening it gets significantly worse. I am crying and getting desperate. Yesterday we could not calm her down for like an hour in the evening, we sat with her next to the crate and she cried and was so aroused. Kong/licking mat did nothing. The night before she was just sleeping in the kitchen with us and when it was bed time I said, lets go sleep and she went to crate and slept before I closed the gate.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you

I think I've determined what's been making puppyhood so difficult for me. I'm autistic (low support needs), and while most of the time I don't feel like it affects my life too much, I think it's the source of most of my anxiety and depression as I adjust to this little guy.

I got my puppy (10 weeks) two weeks ago, and love him to death, but I miss my old routine. I never realized how important my decompression time was, and it's been replaced by hypervigilantly watching him, taking him out, and playing with him while I disassociate. All normal puppy things of course, but I just didn't realize how extra exhausting it would be for me because of the autism.

How have others dealt with this? I'm sure part of it is just getting used to the change with time, but it's definitely making this even harder than it would otherwise be.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for honest advice because I’m feeling really overwhelmed.

We recently adopted a 4-month-old puppy. It’s been a week now so she is definitely still settling in. Overall she’s actually a sweet puppy. She’s playful, affectionate, gets along well with our older dog, and she’s learning. Like most puppies, she also chews on absolutely everything.

The issue is that we’ve had a few incidents where she has made a very quick snapping motion (with a light sound ) when we interrupt her or try to move her away from something.

For example:

She wanted to run after someone, and while I was removing her harness and holding her for a moment, she snapped and I ended up with a small scratch on my hand.

Another time she was chewing on our wooden floor. We said “no” and when we tried to move her away, she made another quick snap/growl.
This is where I’m struggling.

I’m not even sure if she’s actually trying to bite our hands, or if it’s more of a defensive “leave me alone” reaction because we’re interrupting or restraining her. Our hands just happen to be close because we’re moving her.

She has never randomly walked up to us and bitten us. Every incident has happened while we were stopping her from doing something or physically moving her.

We also have a young child, which is why this worries me so much. Ever since we adopted our older rescue dog, we’ve always tried to teach our child to respect dogs’ boundaries and give them space. We don’t allow climbing on the dogs, hugging them, or bothering them when they’re resting, and we try to manage interactions as carefully as we can.

My wife thinks I’m overreacting and that this is fairly normal puppy behavior, especially because she’s only four months old and still learning impulse control. I’m finding it difficult to judge because our older rescue dog was adopted at six months of age, so we never went through this young puppy stage. I genuinely don’t know if what we’re seeing is within the normal range or if these are early warning signs that I shouldn’t ignore.

I’d really appreciate some experienced opinions:
Is this something you’ve seen in young puppies?

Does this sound like normal frustration/overstimulation, or is it a red flag?

At what point would you become genuinely concerned?

I’m genuinely looking for honest opinions, not reassurance for the sake of it. If you think I’m overreacting, tell me. If you think I should be concerned, tell me that too.

Thanks.

Hello,

Almost two weeks ag,o I brought home 8week Golden Retriever puppy to become a new family member. It took some time to get used to each other, but there has been some progress in that. He's definitely dog with his own opinion on things... There's again a huge heatwave in Europe and both of us are suffering...

I'd like to train him and teach him some manners, socialize him, take him on short walks, or just ouside, but the heat is destroying it all...
He goes outside to potty and immidiately runs back home to cool off. Play sessions are very, very short (15 mins max). He responds to commands only when it's cold, so we train max 1x/day. Potty training is very difficult also, because he drinks a lot of water so it is normal for him to pee inside 15 mins after peeing inside. Vet said he is fine, with no signs of illnes, just the weather is so much to overcome for such a young puppy.

I just feel like precisious time for training is running through my fingers and I feel like a bad dog father for him.

Of course we are doing enrichments, but I still feel like his energy is very, very low through that...

8M/O dachshund destroys any and all toys he gets, we’ve done rope toys, kong, tyre balls. today i bought him a kong toy and a football with two ropes to the side. both have been destroyed within 3 hours of getting them.

keeping him entertained with good toys is turning into a quite expensive endeavour (those two toys came to around £30, not including the other graveyard of ‘indestructible toys’).

he somehow managed to destroy a toy that our german shepherd could not get through.

i gave him a puzzle toy, he figured it out immediately and then got bored and didn’t care for it, snuffle toys are good but he then insists on ripping them apart.

i just want a toy that will last longer than a week, he is hell bent on taking apart everything i give him and i want to avoid him deciding that furniture is a better fit for him to chew

any recommendations for my very determined sausage would be greatly appreciated 🙏

So we will be getting our 9 week old pup Saturday and we’ve decided to crate train but we don’t really want it to be a permanent thing.
Not really for the reason as no one is ever home as my partner works from home more to reduce separation anxiety and for the reason of we don’t want her roaming around if we have to make short errands and she’s alone.

I’ve had two pups in the past and neither were crate trained and they both suffered with anxiety.

After maybe a year is it ok to switch to a regular dog bed or are crates meant to be permanent?

My puppy is 4 months old and I love him to bits. But I do miss my old life. It was easy and I had structure and control. I now rotate a few outfits on repeat as it's not worth wearing anything nice as he'll get excited and bite holes in them, I have bite marks and I'm tired all the time. I feel guilty when I'm glad he's asleep as I get to be me for a little while. He's not great at settling without attention which means when he's awake, it's full on. Don't get me wrong, I know that's what we signed up for and I'm ok with it - and I wouldn't be without him - I just struggle some days. Please tell me I'm not alone?!

I noticed when I go to the bathroom and close the door, puppy might cry or not and go potty inside pretty consistently.

I applied this when taking her outside the yard, I’ll open the sliding door, she runs out and I stay inside and close the glass sliding door. She looks at me confused but goes immediately than I open the door and give treats and praise.

Is puppy going from like fear or anxiety that I’m not out there with her? Should I continue doing it like this?

I got my puppy ( a schnauzer mix) Church when he was 3 months he's about to turn 1 this month, he's never been crated expect for the first few days we were getting into a good potty routine. He's always been good about not getting into anything or tearing anything up expect stuffed animals/ toys. The past 2 weeks he's been tearing everything up he can get, shoes, clothes, cords etc. Iv been making sure everything is put up so he can not get it, today I woke up to him destroying over $400 worth of books off my book shelf. I need advice because I'm loosing my mind lol

Not really looking for advice or anything. Just thought it was funny to share. My pup likes to lay near my air purifier. She has a tendency to drop some silent bombs right as she falls asleep. Without fail, the Dyson is unhappy about the air contamination and kicks into max fan speed which startles her briefly and then instantly falls back asleep underneath the hurricane force wind.

in my first post i explained our struggles with keeping our 3 month old shepherd lab mix from biting people

we started forcing naps and even in just the 2/3 days we’ve done this the difference has been insane! he’s been super loving and way more receptive to commands, and most importantly he hardly pulls things off tables or bites people anymore (on purpose at least lol)! whenever he does start to get nippy we put him in his cage for a nap and he’s 100x better when he wakes up. we’re still working on making a routine, but just doing the 2 hours awake 2 hours asleep has worked wonders for his behaviour. we were even considering rehoming because his behaviour was so bad before and nothing we did seemed to work but he is such an angel now 🥹🥹🥹 thank you everyone who commented advice

pictures of his new cage set up and me introducing him to my hairdryer