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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

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.

Our newest addition is a shameless cutpurse and demolitionist. She's approximately 9 months old per the vet's best guess. 50% Golden retriever, 25% boxer, 25% American Staffordshire Terrier per the DNA test. She's smart, has pretty darn good recall that's getting better with training, is progressing nicely on Leave It, she chases a ball but doesn't return it so that's another thing we're working on, and has a generally happy-go-lucky attitude. Separation anxiety and sticky paws are her main issues. We did a 25-minute 1½ mile walk this morning so while we weren't running, we were definitely at a brisk pace and there was no sniffing or playing, despite oodles of stimuli everywhere (even a sandhill crane who was hanging out on the side of the road mocking us). Then she ate her breakfast from her Kong Wobbler (mental exercise). Then she played with my super hyper dog for 20 minutes (good old fashioned rough housing), and finally she had a rawhide in her crate to work on desensitizing her separation anxiety. This chick should be ready for a few minutes of chilling out. Not so much. I turned my back on her for Maybe three minutes and she was nose deep into the peanut butter I left open in the kitchen (my fault - totally forgot it was there), happily gorging herself. That'll be fun later . . .. This girl goes from fine to menace as soon as I'm out of view. Sometimes it's as little as ten seconds before she's on my desk - which has no food items - searching for something to get into. As I'm figuring out what she's apt to snatch I put it away. I can't leave her outside with psycho boy because she digs or tears up whatever she can find (we've lost irrigation, has manure fertilizer spread all over the pool area, screens punched out so she could get to the pool, to name a few). My boy is also given to getting too rough so I have to supervise their play until he learns where the limit is. It's flippin' hot in Florida and although we have an acre with plenty of shade it's not good to let them out together because they don't know when to stop. My boy stays outside - he hates being inside - but he also doesn't tear stuff up, dig holes, etc . . . so he Can stay outside. I have to get a handle on this. I work out of the home and I have to be able to work, or go to the restroom, without her going destroying what she deems worth her time to destruct. Normally she follows me to the bathroom and it's a 60 / 40 chance she's going to get into trouble there. The toilet is separated from the rest of the bathroom and it Should be good desensitization for me to have that door closed for 20 seconds, but it proves to be too much sometimes. We're managing what we can, but this girl has impressive reach for being only mid thigh high so we're adjusting as we discover what else she's able to reach. I see all these people brag that their dog wouldn't Dare take something that wasn't meant for them, and I have to wonder how on Earth they accomplished that. When asked, they only respond, "it's called training." Gee, thanks, that's helpful. Currently she's chilling under my desk, but as soon as I get up to get something off the printer she's going to be wanting to be entertained. I've got lavender pumping through a diffuser and relaxing piano music playing, which I think helps. Aside from hardcore exercise, which I'm not able to participate in (arthritic back) I feel I've tried the majority of suggestions so I felt it's time to ask an expert.

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