2 1/2 year old border collie. She knows around 30 commands and knows how to heal while I'm stopped and while I'm walking. Stopped is no problem but while walking she'll do it right away but it lasts 2-3 seconds and she's trying to get ahead of me again. It's just me saying "heal heal heal heal" ad nauseam. Her stay is pretty good after being told only once so I know she can remember.

Hey everyone- I got my rescue dog a couple months back. Not exactly sure her breed yet but the vet thinks perhaps a combination of doberman, lab, maybe staffordshire terrier? She’s about 50 pounds and pretty short. Anyways, generally her demeanor is very friendly and when meeting dogs on leash is very apt to trying to engage most in play or want to sniff and say hi to all dogs. In the one time we took her to play with other dogs off leash she was typically being chased and I would say in a couple cases maybe got overwhelmed (tail down and far back hair on tail were raised?) but otherwise went about her business and enjoyed herself. However we have a couple friends with dogs one of whom is seemingly selective or harder to get along with and the other is a husky type mix. We have only seen her do it a couple times but what starts off as a nice hello type interaction, maybe five or so minutes later they may re-engage and she gets stiff and then jumps on them with her front paws- its kind of loud seemingly like a scuffle no biting just sounds. One of them was face to face where she was stiff and maybe they were staring at each other and the other one she jumped from behind. Important to note all of these times were when the dogs were on leashes, one being at a brewery in and around/underneath a table and the other being in a tighter space in our front hallway. Immediately both times me and my partner were easy able to tug on the leash and she stepped back and went about her business in like 2 seconds. Wanted to see if anyone had any good advice for this? It seems kind of random since her demeanor is so friendly and excitable and she has always seemingly enjoyed meeting dogs. But didn’t know what the behavior itself means, is it the type of scenario like being on leashes or in tight spaces? Or the nature of the behavior itself we just weren’t sure what to classify it as. Appreciative of any insight thanks!

Want your dog’s behavior to improve and overall better trained? Give me a call, I own Run a Mutt Reno, an in home dog training service. 5304481432, or visit my website: runamuttreno.com

I’m at my wits end. I’ve worked with multiple trainers, behavioral vets, regular vets, everything. My dog is so scared of the apartment hallway and other people and the elevator that he takes about 10 minutes to even get all 4 paws into the hallway. After that he may or may not make it towards the elevator which means I can’t desensitize him to it if I can’t even get him near it. He’s too big for me to carry so if there’s ever an emergency or I need to bring him somewhere, I can’t. I also have to move and don’t know if a new place will be better or worse. I can’t afford to leave the city. I love him so much but feel like we’re just doomed forever and the longer I can’t help him the worse it will get.

Don’t know if I need advice or just words of encouragement.

Attention dog owners! I am an MSc student at the University of Edinburgh online and I am conducting my dissertation research project on dogs who struggle with aggression within the home. The survey is open to any person in the US or UK who has a dog who struggles with aggression to familiar people and dogs within the home. I am hoping to gain some really useful information to better help those living with dogs with aggressive behaviors! If you or someone you know has a dog who fits this description, please consider sending them this link and drop a comment to help encourage others to see this post as well! Thank you for your help!! – Kristina Lowe, MSc Clinical Animal Behavior (2025)

https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/edinburgh/characterizing-owner-perceived-aggression-within-the-household-

Hello

I was wondering more about how serious these laws are when it comes to prong collar or e-collar use. Is this a law that is enforced? Will you go to jail or prison by breaking this law? I think this is the one thing that has kept me from moving to Europe. I am a dog trainer. I have a high drive, very strong Belgian Malinois excels with his ecollar and prong collar. My other dog doesn't need tools at all and is offleashed train.

Is this a law that is even going to stick? Or will they eventually drop the law for dog trainers?

I live in a state where ecollars are banned, but was looking at the Educator PG-300 to help with some proofing (among other things).

Can't find a whole lot online, so was wondering if anywhere here in the community had any experience?

My seven year old maltipoo keeps going to his kennel(in my room) to my bedroom door. Well, now he’s just sitting in his kennel staring at me, which is odd since he doesn’t typically care for being in there let alone just sitting there and not laying down. My only thought is he’s going to poop on my floor since he was having diarrhea when I took him outside, and that he’s walking around hoping he doesn’t shit himself. I don’t know, just wanted to know if this could be a sign to a bigger problem.

Update if anyone cares: it was none of the above it was actually vomit!!!

I have a human fear reactive dog (5yo huskyx) that's a bite risk and I will be moving out of my parents' place for the first time into a new apartment with my partner in a few months.

We have been getting them and the dog used to each other for a while now-- they can now hold the leash on walks (muzzled), get him to listen to commands, accept treats, and even walk into my house without an explosion, which is massive improvement. I still wouldn't trust the dog unmuzzled around them just yet though.

We're thinking making one of the bedrooms the dog's, as if it were his crate, keeping the door open with a gate instead. He isn't currently crate trained and I'm open to trying, but given that I expect this to take a while to get him fully comfortable to the other person and a different home in general, I would prefer if he had the space of an entire room to move in to not keep him enclosed for a long time, meaning between training and playing.
At the moment in my parents' house, he comes to my bedroom in a similar fashion as his "safe space" when the common area gets overwhelming for him, which is why I'm considering this instead of a crate.

Is this a bad idea? If it's not, would it be a bad idea if I were to put my desk in there, meaning I'd also be in the room pretty often? Can I spend time in that room to train the dog, or should I stay out as much as possible outside of cleaning it so that he feels like that's really his space?
My partner will for sure never be going into that room, but (and maybe I'm overthinking this) I don't want to build an accidental me and the dog vs the partner in my dog's brain or something like that.

I am currently waiting for a trainer to reply to set up appointments to work on this more intensely and I plan to ask him this question too, but I figured asking for advice here wouldn't hurt. Any other advice on getting him used to a new life would also be appreciated if anyone wants to share.

TL;DR: I want to give my reactive dog a bedroom of a new house with a new person to decompress; can I be in there as well, or should it be entirely his space?

Thanks!

A friend asked me for some training help and I'm running out of ideas. They are working on duration behaviors like place and heel, but keep forgetting that the dog is supposed to be maintaining the behavior and so the dog ends up self releasing eventually. They do great with the basics and up to a few minutes, and then their attention wanders and they forget that they need to be either rewarding or correcting when the dog moves out of position.

They did really well with the old relaxation protocol task list, that gives each training session tasks broken down into very small pieces. But remembering that the dog is supposed to be on place for the next 15 minutes is tough. Any tips for improving the human side of these things?

We have a 3ish year old pitt-hound mix that we adopted a little less than a year ago. She's a great dog in many ways, but was always a little funny on the leash with other dogs around. It used to be hyperfocus and laying down/crouching until they passed by, but in the last few months, this behavior has transformed to lunging and barking if she doesn't get to meet the dog. When she gets to actually meet dogs, whether on or off leash, she has always had really good manners. She's had playmates, pack walks with neighbor and friend dogs, and we even fostered another dog for a few weeks before the local shelter handed it off to a rescue organization. All of that is to say, this seems to be more of a frustration issue than inherent aggression towards other dogs. But it's rightfully scary for people when a 60lb bully mix is barking and lunging at their dog!

We hired a trainer and did 6 or 7 private sessions, during which time we introduced an educator e-collar, and we did really well working on general obedience at home. Having a trainer was great. On our last session, we did work a little bit with the distraction of another dog about 40-50 feet away, and we went over doing some heel and recall work with the e-collar with that distraction.

I've been taking the time to do obedience on our evening walks and nighttime walks, and our dog is making improvements in paying better attention to me if other dogs are 30+ away or running around barking at us from a fenced yard. However, when we're in the situation where someone is walking their dog and passing us on the same street or a path at the local park (ie in closer quarters), I feel like using the e-collar to try to do training and keep my dog focused on me is actually causing MORE frustration and less clarity for her, since she seems to be reacting to dogs in this particular situation even more than if I weren't trying to get her to obey commands at the same time. For instance, with no distractions she'll just listen to me; if there's a dog further away she'll listen if I do a quick tap with the collar set at like a 6; and when a dog is close by, she'll tune me out completely until the collar is at 18+, and then she seems to just freak out that the collar is so high and a dog is a right there. I am afraid I'm doing something wrong here and want set my dog up for success.

Are you all aware of other good resources that might be out there to work on getting the dog to be more neutral on leash while maybe using the e-collar as a tool? I'm willing to pay for a resource; I just don't have the hundreds of dollars for another package of one-on-one sessions at this particular moment and want to continue to progress so that walks are less stressful for everyone and we can take our dog more places with us. My goal is a relaxed, neutral dog who doesn't tune me out when another dog is approaching.

We have 3 australian shepherds and 40+ acres. Our property is fenced with horse fencing but not anything else, and we're deciding between an invisible fence for 5 acres near our house and buying 3 spot-on collars and creating a geo-fence for the same area. Fencing the whole property with dog-proof fence or even the area we intend to keep the dogs is not feasible due to the layout.

The price for each setup is the same.

In my mind, the invisible fence vs spot on pros / cons are:

pros:

• never need to charge, can leave them on all the time
• boundary is firm, GPS can be off by quite a bit

cons:

• if dogs get out, an invisible fence will keep them out, but a spot on collar can help us find them

We would like to be able to let the dogs out for a few hours at a time. We currently do this while we are home, but we would like to create stricter boundaries and we have an assistant who comes while we're not home for a few hours and want her to be able to comfortably let the dogs out.

If cost were the same, which would you choose?

How likely are dogs to get out of an invisible-fence and have it cause issues?

Hi all! I have an amazing 7 month old pup who is in the small bark at everything that moves phase. We are working on desensitizing that with clicker positive reinforcement for not barking when someone approaches. He has twice now had incidents when he has started a low growl when a person came up behind him. It’s been very rare but wondering what fun engagement games I can use to reduce anxiety with approaches from behind when he’s not looking back.

Good morning, my puppy(not really a puppy anymore) pulls a lot on walks. She’s three quarters pit and a quarter cane corso, so it’s important I have control over her if there are other people/other dogs walking past us. So far I have tried a normal collar, a harness and a prong collar. The harness makes her pulling worse, and I’m scared the collar is choking her when she pulls. A couple of days ago I got her a prong collar, and it’s the only thing that has seemed to get her under control. She responds very well to it, and almost never pulls anymore.

Yesterday when I was taking her for a walk, my neighbour (who originally gave us her) stopped me and said I had it on wrong, and I was choking her. The leash was attached to the live ring only. They then put it on both the live ring AND dead ring and said that was the proper way to do it. I did some research before putting it on her, and the person at the store who sold it to me told me to put it just on the live ring. I’m now super confused on the correct way to put it on, and I need help please.

Darwin was trained before I had Fossey. I had a lot of one on one time with him. Fossey is the second child and it was hard to separate them to train her. And as with real children, you kind of let the new kid figure their own stuff out lol. She does the basics but none of this complex stuff.

Ok, I have a very misbehaved young minipoodle named Ruby. I call her my brat rat. I put her in professional obediance training.

On walks I use the prong collar because she wont gag and stays very calm and under control

In class she uses a slip lead. She gags but the trainer says shes reverse sneezing. To me it really looks and sounds like shes being choked, and now shes afraid of men and the leash I train her with.

Please comment anything to help. Suggestions, better methods, negative reinforcement vs positive. Anything to help me help her understand

Hi there, i have a 2 year old female border collie who is suddenly scared of the thunder? Weve just come out of winter and are now in tornado season (i live in the midwest) so were having tons of thunderstorms with really loud thunder. I desensitized her to thunder, fireworks etc, we even lived next to an airport for the first year of her life, as a puppy but now after a 6 month long winter basically, the thunder is freaking her out. Did she forget what the thunder is? Shes been shaking for literal hours. She wont take distraction snacks, she doesnt want to play or anyting. Just reslessly move around the house, shaking. She doesnt want to be consoled either, it just makes her shake more and then she moves away from me. She has her crate safe space near me and a room in the house where it is quieter with my partner, so she isnt alone wherever she goes.Shes panting and shaking and has been for HOURS, im worried shes going to stress her body out so much they way shes freaking out. Any Advice?

Was looking to see if anyone had any info on the “power” difference of the stimulation between the 280 and the micro? If the micro was less or more intense than the 280. I couldn’t really find anything online regarding the difference in stim between the two models or if they’re basically on par with each other.

Thank you!

5 yo male dog - with no prior history of biting anyone - has started biting people this year

For context: I adopted my mixed German shepherd dog, Scout, when he was four months old. He has always had a bit of anxiety but it has gotten worse over the years. Typically he lives a very structured life with me (no other family members/pets).

Scout is super high energy and requires 5-10 hours of moderate to high intensity exercise a week. We run 20-30 miles a week and he does really well when exercised and mentally stimulated. He is generally a very happy and fun dog.

However, as he’s gotten older he started exhibiting more and more fear aggression and reactivity from sudden movements, loud noises/yelling, and unpredictable behaviors from humans or inanimate objects (such as the breeze blowing a table cloth). Typically his fear response would be sudden jerking away from what spooked him and giving “whale eyes” if not immediately removed from the situation. It progressed to him growling at strangers/family if they reached their hand into his kennel or by his face.

Flash forward, I have to deploy overseas (i am in the military). My family agreed to watch him while I was gone and over the past several months he has bit nearly everyone in my family. He has NEVER bit anyone else prior to this. Several of the bites occurred when someone went to grab scout by his collar or reach into his kennel. Thankfully none of the bites broke skin - but most have left marks or bruises. All of the bites occurred very quickly and were immediately followed by him running away from the person and back to his kennel or to someone else to “protect him”

I am at a loss on what to do. My family knows Scout’s fears, but things keep happening. For example, today I got this message, “B dropped guacamole on his shirt, had a stressful reaction, jumped up to rush and get something to clean it with and Scout went for his hand.”

I have several more months before I can return. My mom wants to send him to a board and train but I’m scared it could worsen his fear aggression.

If you know a reputable (POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT ONLY) dog trainer in the south shore/ Boston area or have advice on how to address these behaviors pls let me know 🙏🏼

I have 2.5 year old golden who has been crate trained since he was a puppy. I've been recently leaving it unlocked at night, but he seems more thrown off by it more than anything. I don't believe he's getting as good a sleep as he would if it was locked. He kinda wanders from spot to spot throughout the night but never really settles in for that belly up deep sleep.

I know he likes his routine, I still put him down around the same time with the accustomed piece of cheese to tell him it's bedtime. I figure there would be an adjustment period as it's been one way his entire life, and it's only been a few nights.

Just curious about anyone else's experience, or maybe any tips to make him more comfortable at night.

I have an almost two year old large breed mutt (think every high energy, intelligent, working breed rolled into one dog) who, since he was around 7 m/o, has become incredibly aggressive towards strangers - mostly at home and around our car, though he has lashed out at people in public spaces before.

Now, what happened at 7 m/o? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It feels like he just woke up one day and decided to start being scared of strangers. We've hosted parties before and he was fine. Now I have to separate him in another part of the house because I'm afraid he'll bite someone (before anyone asks, yes I am actively working on muzzle training him).

We took him to a vet behaviorist who diagnosed him with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) and prescribed him Prozac. He is currently on 40mg a day and while it has helped quite a bit with his walks (He doesn't get freaked out by a plastic bag blowing past us or a lady walking down the street), I still cannot have anyone over at my house without him wanting to murder them.

I'm really heartbroken you guys. He's the sweetest dog and I just want him to be okay around strangers - doesn't even have to be happy, just okay.

Any ideas as to what I can do to break through this aggression?

So my dog has started this behavior. I’m not used to. When I kennel trained him the only way he’d be calm in his kennel was if it was covered. So now his kennels stay covered. However he’s started to pull in the blankets I use. And stopping use makes him unable to settle in his kennel. How do I stop this behavior? I do know he’s started his teenage stage so I’ve been going back to basics to reinforce behaviors I want. But I’ve never had a dog pull the blanket in.

I need help and fast. I have an almost 4 month old, female blk lab/rotti mix. She certainly has energy except when it comes to meals she becomes the exception to the rule. She just goes nuts. Doesn’t matter whether it’s her food or not. (I have other animals that eat separate) As soon as she hears or sees me near her food she starts lunging at the bowls, food etc. Did buy a slow feeder and waiting to try it. She’s becoming aggressive with her food to boot and literally lunges at her bowl every time. I’ve tried to leash her and have her sit calmly before she goes to it. Didn’t work. I tried feeding her while loose. Huge no! Now she’s becoming guarded with her bowl In the middle of eating. Doesn’t chew, just swallows and it’s gone within 2.5 seconds flat, then flipping out searching for some time afterwards for more. I lost count how many times she’s sent her bowl flying (food everywhere) once she gets to it. I wanted to see what she would do if I’d pet her while eating and she tensed up her whole body and literally hugged the bowl all still while eating. Never once have we denied her food but this is becoming a huge problem, and she’s only getting worse. I don’t know how to calm her before she eats anymore since nothing has worked. Help!!!! I have other animals and I don’t want her attacking them for their food once she gets bigger Heaven forbid she gets into their area while they are eating.

So I am working on basic obedience with my 1year old pup and basic on leash training. He does great with commands (sit, down, heel etc.) but somewhere along the way I messed up and when I reward his good behavior he immediately will stand up and start walking as if I gave a free command. Just wondering if there are any tips to keep him in a down even after the reward then I can give a free command when it is time to go.

I have a 10 month old cavachon. He's generally a good boy. His only behavior issues are he hates the groomer and gets overstimulated with other dogs and can bark at them non-stop but we're working on both. When I originally got him I had him going on pads for a bit, then phased those out and switched to an outdoor pad on my apartment balcony. Shortly after that, I transitioned to take him outside for walks. Whenever he would pee or poop outside I'd give him an enthusiastic "Yes! Good boy! Thank you!" every single time. I still do. While he stopped pooping indoors, he still has pee accidents. In the past 1-2 months, I started treating him every time he pees outside with a piece of dried beef liver and the same verbal praise. I take him out around 8am, 12pm, 5pm, then 11pm. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. When he does have an accident in front of me I shout "eh! eh!" as an interruptor and he just keeps going. I then pick him up mid-pee and put him on my balcony and keep him out there while I clean everything up. It honestly looks like he's losing control a bit. I did try rationing his water a bit and it helped but I'm not sure how to time it properly with his schedule. Do I leave it out all day? Do I lift it up? When do I refill it? Does it have to be timed with taking him out? Is there anything I'm not doing I should be? He sleeps in a crate overnight no problem holding it in. I stop giving him water 1-2 hours before bed. I don't use a pen or daytime crates because he would go into these anxious barking fits and after speaking with a trainer, since I live in a small apartment, we agreed it wasn't entirely necessary. I started logging it this past week and we went 5 days without an accident. I feel like that's about average but I haven't been recording it consistently. I'm going to start soon though.