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Hello! My 18 month old Belgian Mal has been extremely reactive since day one over anyone in the swimming pool. She barks aggressively the minute we get in and will do laps around the pool. If we come close to the edge she bites. (Not the playful type..) It doesn’t matter if we are calmly laying on a raft or playing around/ the behavior does not waiver. It’s not realistic for her to be kept inside the whole time we are in the pool because summertime is short so we absolutely take advantage while we can. I reallllly need help- I’d love her to swim with us or at least let us swim while she plays in the yard etc. We have never forced/thrown her into the pool EVER. However, I have done everything but that to coax her in. (I’d never throw her in, to be clear!) I’ve gone stair by stair with her with treats/praise for every step- but as soon as her feet are submerged on the third step she turns into a kuala, holding onto my shoulders for dear life. It’s as if she wants to go in but is scared to death- and my back has been shredded up plenty with the amount of tries! I take her to an agility center and have one on one time with her in a small pool with a ramp for dogs to learn to swim/get over the fear of it.. but it’s more of the same thing. I have gotten her to swim to me but I absolutely cannot get her to not hang on me with those claws. We live in the northeast on the lake where we have brutal winters and only 3 good months of swimming weather, so her exposure to the pool has been limited since she was born October 2021.. straight into the winter. We have three young kids and love having friends over.. but I can’t risk any of them getting bit. My oldest son was bit once while he held onto the ledge and I can’t let anything like that happen again. I assume she fears for our lives because she herself isn’t comfortable with the water. Please please please! Any suggestions or different approaches to this issue? Any follow up info on the matter needed? thank you!!!

Hi all! I have a seven year old Australian cattle dog mix who I rescued when she was a little over a year old. She was found by animal control tied up in a back yard. Over the last couple years she has been getting progressively more anxious and aggressive when we go on walks and when we meet new people or dogs. She’ll bark hysterically at dogs on a walk, and snaps if anyone tries to pet her. When strangers come in the house she takes a while to warm up and will bark at them and bite if they come too close. She also is possessive of me when it comes to my husband showing affection. Not sure if all of these are related, just at a loss for how to help her feel more comfortable and correct these behaviors.

Hi, We have two dogs; one we got at 6 weeks and one we got as a rescue when she was 4 months. The biggest problem we seem to have is that the rescue always finds something to destroy in the apartment no matter what we do. We got a camera to see exactly when it starts and it's at the 3-4 hour mark (when her puzzle treat ball is empty) We've tried everything we can think of: crate training (she howls after the first 30 minutes without stopping), leaving puzzles and other interactive toys, walks in the morning. We ended up resorting to putting a piece of cardboard out so she goes after that instead of the furniture or any of our valuables (it's encouraging the bad behaviour I know!) Is there any advice?

Hi Adrienne, My 4 month old beagle seems to be getting a bit aggressive. We are afraid if it's something we've done that is causing this or if he's getting anxious. The following were problems/signs that we encountered: 1) Biting us sometimes if we touch his face/ears/back 2) Biting us if we put a on leash him. 3) Excessive barking, growling and howling and pulling when put on a leash. 4) Random biting. 5) Excessively scratching on the door and screaming. 6) Disobedience 7) Peeing on and biting furniture. 😎8 ) Eats all the time. If there's no food around, he finds ways to climb up surfaces and swallow inedible items like wooden frames and plastic flowers. A little background about how we care for him and his schedule: Morning: 7:30am-a short run and some basic training 8:00: Breakfast and a walk until 9am 10:00-12:00: sleep 12:00-2:00- brain training and obedience training and he roams about. 2:00- lunch (mostly home cooked food) Sleeps until 4:30 Roams about in the house for a while (mostly till 6:30) Sleeps for a while 8:00pm dinner Plays until 9 Bed time He is not crate trained. He is stubborn but extremely smart. He has mastered several tricks within a day's time. One mistake we are aware of is that we gave him way too much freedom right from when he was little and still continue to do so because if we don't, he throws tantrums. (Barks, growls, etc) Could you also advice me about how many hours of sleep he essentially requires? We're very worried. Thanks Adrienne.span widget

Hi, We have two labradoodles both 1year old. Prego, the bigger doddle barks and bite Nala when she doesn’t want to play with him while they are by themselves or home alone. At the dog park Prego will do the same but when Nala plays along other dogs that is not him. We don’t know what to do... we have him sit and stay until he calm down while at the park. But when we leave home we cannot control his excessive barking at Nala. Prego, our caramel labradoodle will also jump and bark with high pitch when he sees other dogs when we taking on a walk. Please help!

Hello Adrienne and everyone, We (family of 4, 2 daughters ages 10 and 6) brought a German Shepherd female puppy two weeks ago, she is now in her 9th week. She is bonding rather well i would say, she seems to seek me most, cuddling up and gently nibbling on my hand. She has no health issues although she still cannot go on walks until she gets her last vaccine in about 3 weeks time. I have a already thought her to sit and lie down. I am reinforcing these every day, for eg. sitting before feeding her, lie down before i open door to enter the room, etc. I'm aware at this age they have teething problems but I am running out of toys and ideas on how to go about it. She is starting to nip and bite at my daughters heels, and our shoes when we walk. Some questions I have are: 1. Redirecting her to teething toys is no longer alluring for her, and neither rotating them (taking some away for a few days and then give them back). She keeps biting at our heels and hands, although sometimes she reduces the pressure and looks at me as if saying 'is this ok?'. Should I keep buying new toys at this stage to keep her interest in new things to bite? Am i expecting to much in expecting her to quit biting after a week she has been with us? 2. What are some realistic timelines by when she is expected to stop biting, provided that we keep our redirection attempts? 3. Separation anxiety: sometimes i take her in the basement office with me when i work. I keep her in the room next to mine which is separated by a glass door so she can see me, but she still takes some time to settle down despite having a lot of toys and couch. Should i try easing her in for a longer time before i walk out, or should i ignore her? 4. Sometimes she has bursts of energy and when this happens i take her out in the yard to steam off with her toys. How do i calm her down afterwards? is 15 minutes of this enough? 5. Housebreaking seems to work sometimes, we can recognise when she needs to go because she starts sniffing around and we take her out, but there are times where she would leak inside. Again, if we keep consistency from our end, when is it realistic for her to stop leaking inside? 7. We are using a crate only for the night. She whimpers a bit but then she settles after i go next to her and sort of reassure her. Is this ok? Can we avoid crate training during the rest of the day? Thanks in advance for your help. Chris

We adopted a four month old female Aussie pup and she is fearful of “life” if we take her away from our home. (Except other dogs...she seems ok with them!) Just getting her to get in (and them subsequently OUT) of the car is a chore. And she just hides and shuts down (compete with drooling sometimes) when we make her go anywhere. We took her to a puppy class at PetSmart and couldn’t get her to even take steak for treats. (She will NEVER eat a treat when we aren’t at home.) She will walk on the road near our house, but if we take her anywhere else, she shuts down and refuses to walk (after we have to drag her out of the car of course). It’s exhausting for us, and I’m sure it’s worse for her. Can we change this? I don’t know what happened to her before four months of age, but am assuming she had no socialization. Are we too late for her to be a confident and happy dog when not in the house? (She knows basic commands, and is bright, as long as we are home.). Help??? (She is six months old now. We’ve been trying to fix this for two months.)

For those who like to play, or want to try playing, music for Fido, here's a Spotify list just for canines. It's keeping my blood pressure down, too - not even 1:00 pm and it's already been an annoying day! It even has Pachelbel's Cannon in D, which happens to be what I trained Monkey to answer to - a brief sharp whistle is not even good enough for a cat, no, no, they require a refined tune. :rolleyes: https://open.spotify.com/user/celmatic/playlist/7lgRIc1XkopZtiuWaySm3d?si=GR0SK-71QpmEFN_loSFYvw Spotify is free, like Pandora (there's probably a list there, too, but I prefer Spotify, usually). The link will go to the Spotify website. If both of those are a no-go, then YouTube has quite a few options, too. Poke around and see what soothes your pooch. :) Back to the grind - I just needed a break from the nonsense of today.

Hi, I have a 3 and a half month old male border collie pup. He lives with a 10 month old female chihuahua puppy (scary combination given he is so boisterous and she's so small but that's another issue). The problem I'm having is when I put him outside for any reason like being too rough with the chi, just for him to have outside time or to feed him (as soon as he's finished) he will bark constantly to come back in. He just doesn't seem happy at all to have any time by himself. I've tried to ignore him for a while and then catch him when he's not barking to let him in but there seems to be no improvement. There is always someone at home and he does spend a good bit of time inside. Thanks for any advise in advance, mum and I are going a little crazy