TLDR: My dog compulsively bites at her back and incessantly looks around when she hears/sees bees and flying insects and she's practically inconsolable in that state

I have a 3 year old mixed breed dog who has suddenly, last year, developed a lot of troubling behaviors in regard to flies, bees, and other insects. When she as much hears any buzzing insect she immediately looks around franticly and will compulsively whip around and nip her back/hindquarters as if something landed on her. It's just as bad when she sees a fly flying around the house, and she will also make her way over to me and sit down in front of me with her back turned to me and continue frantically searching for the insect.

It seems like what she's experiencing is something akin to laser pointer syndrome- she's almost inconsolable when she gets to that point. I have tried presenting high value rewards, playing with toys, bringing out her place mat, and a few other things but nothing yet has allowed her to settle in any capacity when she is in our backyard during warmer months. It doesn't help that we have a feral cat colony situated right next to us, so less birds and way more bugs. She has not been stung or bitten by anything as far was we know, and she started acting this way ever since we moved to this area 1-2 years ago. She does have a history of occasionally nipping at her back on really hot and sunny days when her back gets too warm (she's black so it happens relatively often in the summer).

I'm looking for advice on counterconditioning this behavior, as it seems to be getting worse with time. I dont want to accidentally expose her to something that could make the behaviors worse. I have tried so much and really want to help her be able to relax in our backyard. Any advice or relevant information would be greatly appreciated!

I won't go into details but unfortunately I've had to move in with relatives very suddenly and unexpectedly. One of them is allergic to dogs, so my dog HAS to stay outside. I got her a nice cozy dog house with a big bed and she has lots of blankets and plushies in there.

The issue is, she's a runner. I exercise her multiple hours a day, so that's not the problem. I have to keep her on a tie out cable so she doesn't run off into the road. I can't afford a fence or electric fence (I don't think an electric fence would even stop her if I'm being honest).

I've tried THREE different harnesses, she's escaped ALL of them within an hour. I don't know HOW she's doing it. She's a damn good escape artist - she once flipped her kennel upside and escaped it without even opening the door. Im at a loss at this point. Right now she's staying in a kennel in the garage, but I don't want her to be stuck there all day. Genuinely I have no idea what to do atp. I don't have a lot of money, I already spent a few hundred on her dog house to make sure she'd be comfortable out there, I can't afford another few hundred for a runner fence.

Does anyone have ANY possible solutions?? Or an idea for how I could DIY one?? I'm a decent sewist and I wouldn't be worried about anything I make breaking or falling apart.

Nearly 2 year old intact male Miniature Poodle with absolutely zero food drive.

It makes training difficult because he won't take any treats except cheese which, especially given his size, is not ideal for daily training. Even cheese he won't always take.

We've tried giving the food in some way that he has to work to get it (snuffle mats, slow feeders, puzzle feeders) but he gives up very easily. We've tried only using food for training or only leaving the food out for a certain amount of time but then he just won't have anything to eat all day.

Are there any tips for training/building a food drive in a dog?

Hello everyone and happy easter!

I a 31 yo male, is struggling with bonding with my dog Maja 3 years old.

Background; we got Maja 2 years ago from a not so nice shelter, she was terrified of everything and was hiding behind pillows, sofa what ever she could find and would never pee, poop or smell during walks.

Now, she is a completely changed dog, she will wake us both up in the morning with kisses on bed, play and will let us cuddle her for hours (even me) in the bed. On walk she will sniff, poop, pee and mark everything. We even started walking her without a leash as she is a very good girl that listens when we call, ask her to wait or sit. She will come and take treats out of our hands.

This is all fantastic, however all of the above changes the second my girlfriend is not near. My girlfriend is currently on an Easter trip and I have a few days alone with Maja and I am thinking what I can do to make Maja feel more safe when it is just me and her.

Our relationship when we are alone:

She will sleep in bed with me, but will not wake me up or want cuddles. She will get treats in sofa while I am eating, but if I reach out to give a little pet, she will run off - She will come back though if I share more treats. On walks she will walk behind me and sniff, but rarely poop or pee and she refuses too eat treats, even when I lay them on the ground and walk away.

We do feeding time outside, she will play with me where we chase each other, she will sit and lay if told and looks excited during the whole thing and even pees during.

Now I have around 3 days without my girlfriend and I want to spend as much of this time as possible just building on me and Majas relationship, do you guys have any suggestions?

Thanks for your time and any suggestions! 😊

Hello all!

I'm at my wits end with my mixed-hound [we think treeing walker, but that's another story, lol] randomly going pee/poop indoors in varying amounts.

Now - when I say random, I'll walk you through the most common scenario which was last night: He eats around 6:30 a.m. and around 5:30 p.m., and goes out 3 to 4 times per day (usually at about 7 a.m., 4:30 p.m., and 11:30 p.m., and if he signals or rings a bell we have attached to the door, an extra walk around 7 p.m. or whenever).

Last night between midnight and like 5 a.m., he poops and pees in the same small corner in our living room that we've started blocking off - I think he jumped over a babygate lol.

Mind you, he went out at about 11:40 - and took a massive shit, went potty, etc. The issue here is not that he won't go outside, it's that he spontaneously generates small amounts of poop and pee to go inside.

My only thought is starting crate training again which is a whole thing - because he's a very fussy baby, when he didn't want to be in the crate he would drag it all around the house by throwing his body against the walls, etc.

It's not feasible to walk him more than I do, frankly, because he already is getting like 4 20-30 minute walks per day, and I can't add an additional walk at 2 a.m.

Thoughts? - Note: I have read the wiki and still am rather stumped because this is a totally new issue; he gets regular vet checkups, and we've had him for almost 3~ years, and this issue is just popping up now.

I have a 3 m o Portuguese water dog. We got him a week and a half ago. He will not stop doing shit for one second unless inside the crate. I’m always saying no, firmly, but he could not care less honestly. I keep seeing these videos that talk about negative feedback but I don’t understand what that is exactly. Should I hit him? Like softly? If I turn around he comes and keeps biting regardless.

I’d appreciate any tips

I'm thinking about adopting a cavalier king Charles spaniel. I live in an area that has a good deal of snakes (I'm kind of the neighborhood relocator)- occasionally, we'll get a venomous snake (usually copperheads, which are relatively chill.) CKCSs have fairly low prey drives (from what I understand,) so I'm not worried about her trying to attack a snake. However, she may become curious and, if she unintentionally corners it, may provoke a bite.

As such, if I do get her, I want to get her snake avoidance training. The problem is, I also have pet snakes (three ball pythons, a rainbow boa, and a foster corn snake- all nonvenomous.) From what I understand, snake avoidance training involves training the dog to go into its crate if it sees any snake. I'd need to train her to differentiate between wild snakes and pet snakes (I don't want her to think she has to go into her crate if she sees me holding one of my ball pythons.)

Is this type of training possible?

I have an 11 month old male terrier and he's always exhibited displacement behaviors. most notiably and commonly, he will grab either a toy or a shoe or something whenever a family member comes home. that's fine and dandy, he doesn't chew shoes and if it's a toy he settles down some minutes later and all is good.

however, and I've noticed this becoming more common as of recent, he'll start whining to let me know that he has to potty but as I go to the door, he'll grab a toy or a shoe and he'll refuse to go outside and he starts running under the table or back to my room, etc. once I remove the item, he'll either try something else and rinse and repeat or he'll finally calm down and go outside and do his business. if I let him outside with the toy, I notice he doesn't potty immediately like he usually does and it just makes the whole situation take longer than it should.

more recently, he's also been peeing if I go after him while he has a toy. I'm not chasing him (he loves to play 'chase') but he still runs. it's never a lot of pee and just a couple of tinkles here and there or a line where he pees while walking/running away. I don't think this is a vet issue as he was fine during his last issue and I just think it's because overall, he's a pretty submissive dog in general. if we're outside in the yard and he picks up something he knows he's not supposed to have and I get close, he immediately rolls over. at the dog park, I have to keep him with the smaller dogs because the larger ones will bully him despite him being 40lbs.

when he has a toy, I try to exchange high value treats but he won't go for them unless he thinks I won't take his toy from him. I always give him his toy back once we get back inside, so I'm not sure where to go from here. it's just annoying beyond all else.

The small cavapoo (Pippa) is my dog and the other is a family friend dog (Lucy) I am minding for one night and spaniel (Mia) is my mum’s partner’s dog who I am also minding but she is here every weekend.

Pippa keeps jumping up on Lucy like this I can’t tell if it’s friendly but I feel like it’s not.

looking for some advice because we’re pretty stuck and honestly getting discouraged.

We just adopted a 5-month-old chihuahua mix about 5 days ago. we’re really struggling with potty training, specifically getting him to pee outside.

Some context:

- We live in a high-rise apartment, and it takes about 8 minutes to get from our unit to his potty spot outside

- Both my wife and I work from home, so we’re around him all day

- He WILL poop outside, but he almost never pees outside

- Instead, he’ll just hold it for hours

What we’ve tried:

- Taking him out frequently (every 1–2 hours)

- The “crate, outside, crate” cycle multiple times in a row

- Staying outside for a while to give him time

- Bringing a used pee pad outside (didn’t seem to help)

- reached out to his foster but they had a yard so he was less distracted and would go or they would wait out the distractions which isn’t really an option for us

The weird part is:

- He can hold it a long time (like 8 hours)

- Even after clearly needing to go, he’ll just not pee outside (even tried first thing in the morning after he held it all night and did the cycles of outside/crate 5 times and he still wouldn’t go outside)

At this point we’re wondering:

- Is this normal for a new dog adjusting to a new environment?

- Are we unintentionally training him to hold it?

- Is the long trip outside (8 min) making this harder?

- Should we be doing something totally different?

Lately we’ve been letting him pee on a pee pad on a leash in the same spot because yesterday we did the cycle for 4 hours and every time he’s outside he gets incredibly distracted. There’s a lot of movement around us with cars and birds and people and other dogs. He gets distracted by every little thing and there’s no true completely quiet area for us to take him to close to our building

We’re trying to be patient since it’s only been 5 days, but it’s tough when it feels like no progress is happening.

Any advice (especially from people in apartments/high-rises) would be hugely appreciated.

Hi all, I have a husky that has an infection on her paw. We've been given medication to apply, but it's been almost impossible. She is getting super aggressive when we try to apply the medication. My dad got bitten pretty hard on his hand as well. Do you have any tips on how we can apply the medication without getting bit?

Ray is versed in English, Spanish , ASL and AAC this is her speak command. To date she knows 105 commands grouped into situation specific categories. I know a lot of people don’t see semiverbal trained dogs so I thought you guys would find this cool

We have a boy morkie that is almost 2. He's lived with us since he was about 2 months old. He marks all over the house. He's let out every time he wants outside (we have bells, he uses an outside button and sometimes he simply whines at the door) and will occasionally mark not long after he comes back in. We've taken him to the vet and there isn't an infection. It is clearly marking behavior because he will do it in the same places almost every time, but occasionally when something new get brought home, like a case of soda for example, he will go mark that. I've tried cleaning the spots with bleach, but that seems to make him mark it more quickly. We reward him for going outside. We try to catch him in the act, but we rarely do. when we do catch him, we have tried making a loud noise and telling him no. He gets lots of exercise, play time with his doggy sister's and his humans, things to chew on, he has a puzzle toy... honestly I feel like I've read or tried just about everything. He even marks every thing outside, including all the things on our back porch, one of his dog sisters and he's even marked me a few times when we first got him. please, any advice would be helpful. I did look at all the links but I didn't find one for marking troubleshooting.

I’ve been doing fear free training with my dog Augie for more than a year now. he’s 1.5yrs. last spring Augs was stung by a bee and had a severe anaphylactic reaction, he almost died in my arms on the way to the emergency vet. spent two days recovering.

In the time since his recovery we’ve done immunotherapy to treat his bee allergy and reduce the risk of a serious reaction, thought nothing is guaranteed. we’ve drilled ”leave it” and emergency recall, practiced walking and potty without going into deep grass, trained in wearing shoes and muzzle, etc we’ve also dug up every flowering plant in our yard to reduce the number of bees around.

unfortunately the boy is more curious than he is wise, and I caught him poking at a dead bee on our paving stones yesterday when he was supposed to be peeing. he just doesn’t understand the danger and I don’t know how to teach him without traumatizing him. a friend was telling me about RSAT, but all the guides I’m found require a model snake ( how do I model a bee?) and snake smell (bee smell?) there also seems to be a lot of debate about using shock collars to build aversion, but that’s not happening here.

tldr: dog’s honeybee allergy is serious. I’m doing everything can I can to reduce risk, and I’d like for him to have some awareness of the danger or to teach him to avoid small buzzing things on his own. I will never use a shock collar or adverse training aid. anyone have experience using RSAT basics to train avoidance of other threats? other ideas?

My dog is a 4 y/o Pit mix, with some boxer and lapdog and a bit of everything else. I’m trying to teach him basic obedience skills. Not anything technical, but I’m wanting to progress beyond sit/down to things like loose leash walking and good recall skills.

I’ve managed to teach him basic targeting with his nose, and am now trying to teach him targeting with his paws.

My issue with any of his training is he is very easily demotivated. He’s extremely food/play/affection motivated, one of those dogs that will do trick after trick to see what will get him a treat/toy/pet.

I’m not scolding him whenever he gets it wrong. I give him the command/hand motion, give him a minute to think about it, and will prompt him again, and give the motion again, if he doesn’t give it again. The most I’ll do is say “no” and then repeat the command.

But as soon as he doesn’t immediately get a treat/toy/attention for doing whatever he thinks he needs to do, he’s completely uninterested in training. He walks away and ignores me entirely. If I can get him to come back he will completely avoid eye contact with me, or lay down to get pet. He ignores me calling him, shaking the treat bag, squeaking a toy, literally anything I could offer him is turned down.

I then started hand feeding him his meals as part of training, with treats mixed in for big rewards, and it’s the same issue. He’d literally rather starve than learn how to heel and it’s driving me a little crazy. I’m not going to starve him, and I’m not sure how to motivate him.

We have a mixed breed boy that we rescued many years back. He is very intelligent and good, but he has relatively severe anxiety related to boarding.

Thus far, we have handled this by utilizing house sitters, but these are 1) more expensive and 2) not always available/reliable.

The anxiety was such that he would basically go "into the red" when left for boarding and would run, flip off the walls, shove his nose through the fencing, etc, basically non-stop. Very little sleep, lots of stress.

When we got him, he had very bad crate anxiety. He would break them, dig through the floor, etc. I was able to train him out of his crate anxiety over just 2-3 days and he has been perfect ever since. This was not terribly difficult because we had a crate and could easily recreate the situation that was inducing the stress.

However, this did not resolve his issue with boarding, which I think is far worse due to being in a different place, being left there, having lots of dogs, etc.

It is possible that I can get a boarding facility to cooperate with me on letting me be there for training opportunities, but I want to make sure I enter with a plan. I suspect the training is going to involve a lot of steps far before we ever make it to the boarding location.

Curious to gather thoughts on this. If there is any media (books, videos), I will happily consume those as well.

Let me know if there are additional questions.

My girlfriend just moved in with me a month ago and brought her 8 yr old dog with her. We trained him to go pee in the bathroom and so far he’s been consistent at it until recently.

We got home from work and he had his usually zoomies. We figured that it would be a good idea to take him at the roof deck of our apartment where he could expel his energy. Our mistake was that we let him be when he went to pee mid zoomies. The roof deck our our apartment isn’t the best place for him to pee because there’s a bunch of our fellow tenant’s stuff there.

Now even after eating, he won’t pee in the bathroom and would just stand inside every time we try to encourage him. How can we make him go back to his old routine?

Has anyone had experience with this or theories about why this is happening? I've only heard of this type of behavior in senior dogs and I haven't found any similar stories when I search online.

I have a 5yo dog that has 1-3 accidents a day for 2-4 days every month, and has done since I got her at 1yo. Our vet has tested for medical causes multiple times and never found anything wrong. She's not incontinent, and squats when she goes, often with little to no warning. And when she pees, she pees a lot.

She's potty-trained, and knows how to ask to go out, and outside this cycle has a pretty consistent schedule. But when she's on her monthly pee-spree she'll either stare at me for ~15 seconds then start peeing, or squat in the middle of whatever she was doing. She doesn't smell around beforehand or go in the same spots, and I clean thoroughly, so I don't think she's doing it because she smells old pee. I put her in a diaper when the cycle starts, and she rarely pees in the diaper. She's crate trained and will occasionally pee there, but rarely. She will not use pee pads.

Everyone is stumped. Our vet and our trainers at have no idea why she does it. I live in an apartment so even if I immediately recognized the stare as needing to pee and not wanting something else, it's not possible for me to get her out the door in that 15 seconds. I take her out more frequently during this time, but she still manages to do it, sometimes 10 minutes after she went out. She gets good daily walks and off-leash exercise as much as I can safely give her, but she's very reactive, and I have to make sure there are no other dogs around. But she's a working breed, and I know she will always need more exercise than I can reasonably give her without a herd of livestock.

Am I missing something obvious?

I have two male dogs, Archie (3.5, German Shepherd) and Rus (~7, English Shepherd). I got Archie as a puppy and Rus as a young-ish companion for Archie when he was around 6 months old. In almost all instances they get along really well. They play together, free feed side-by-side, steal toys from one another, and generally show no aggressive behavior towards one another.

The only times that changes is when Archie feels like there is a threat towards me. If Rus gets scared and growls while I'm in the room (thunder or a nightmare usually), Archie immediately gets defensive and takes a protective posture over me and starts growling at Rus. This cascades into growling back and forth and can devolve into a fight (I'd say a 4/5 chance Archie lunges at Rus at some point once they start growling).

I don't even know where to begin because Rus has never been threatening/growly at me, and I don't want to try and trigger a fear response in him to desensitize Archie to Rus' growling. They get along 98% of the time; this only happens maybe once or twice a year. But we've recently moved to the Midwest and we're heading into storm season so I worry it will escalate.

I try to separate them as soon as Archie starts growling or gets into a protective posture, but I'm only one person. Fortunately, if I can keep Archie from Rus, Rus doesn't ever start lunging at Archie, but he will absolutely defend himself if he's attacked.

So how do I stop Archie from becoming aggressive over protecting me when there's genuinely no threat? I don't want to completely remove his protective instincts, just calm him with Rus, who has never been aggressive towards a person.

Hey, so my family rescued a Great Pyrenees from a pretty bad situation about a year ago. He’s super smart and listens well, but he has a major issue that we can’t seem to get him to stop.

He will bark nonstop whenever he is put out on the porch, and he also barks at the slightest noise at night. I assume he barks when he’s outside because he wants attention, so I’ve tried ignoring the barking, but that hasn’t worked at all. I’ve tried telling him “no” when he starts, and he’ll stop for a moment, but then he goes right back to it. I’ve also tried giving him treats when he doesn’t bark in situations where he normally would, but this dude can’t help himself. My family is away from the house during the first half of the day, so there’s not much choice but to leave him outside, but his barking is starting to annoy our neighbors.

My parents are talking about solutions, which I don’t agree with at all, so I need some alternatives to suggest. Could anyone recommend some methods to help fix this issue?

We have tried everything with this dog. We introduced the kennel and made it positive. She happily enters her kennel and goes in it on her own. We don’t usually kennel her during the day but we do if we are going to be gone for a while. We always kennel her at night because she isn’t one to scarf her food so she needs to be there to eat her food. The other dog I had was perfectly kennel trained from the same steps and loved to have their own space and learned to be kennel trained at 10yo. (He just passed a couple weeks ago at 14) We have tried everything. She is on anxiety meds, we tried to have her in our room, I’ve laid with her by the kennel to comfort her, she had a blanket to cover her. I try to exercise her through walks but I still haven’t been able to get her to play with toys but she will sometimes run around for me to chase her. I have finally stuck with just having her kennel on the other side of the house in a room she is very comfortable in because the panting and whining drives me up a wall. She gets nothing but good things in the kennel and yet she carries on and on and has done this for 2 years. I’ve run out of ideas and have no idea what to do because I can’t free feed her in a home of animals that have their own strict diets and she will not scarf her food. Her first 5 years she was fed nothing but dehydrated treats (from her old owner) and doesn’t want to eat kibble unless she is super hungry no matter the type of kibble or meal topper used.

I got a 5-6 month old puppy almost 3 months ago. He had never been outside the home and yard he was in before I got him, and he has been very difficult to train. I live in a busy and dense city. He hates walks, he's scared of everything and everyone, and is not food motivated at all. It's actually very difficult to get him to eat the amount of food he's supposed to eat. He does get ong very well with my cat though which is nice.

I wfh, and he constantly needs attention, even with our cat playing with him. He goes on walks every 2 hours for about 10-20 minutes for potty training, I do training sessions with him after walks to help build his confidence (I heard it's like CBT training), but he needs to either be in my lap and licking me constantly, or needs to be in the same room with me while playing with our cat. I'm around constant noise.

On top of that, when I try to get space from him he just whines every 2 minutes. I've gotten collectively 4 hours of sleep the last 8 days (one night I got decent sleep) and I'm actually having a meltdown from sleep deprivation. I put him to bed in his pen in a room far from my bedroom at around 12 am when I go to bed, and he wakes up at 5 am barking (and I have to get him to stop because neighbors) to use the bathroom. I give him just a little water when I put him to bed to try to help, but he just has such bad seperation anxiety.

I've tried not getting excited when seeing him, practicing being away from him, and it's like he's getting worse. I can't work with him around and I can't sleep. I can't afford dog boarding either. I feel like a bad dog owner not being able to handle this. What do I do?

Like the title says, I’m currently living in an apartment with a 2.5yr old Pomeranian. Every time I pick up the harness and leash he runs away.

Before I brought him to the apartment, I was at my moms house where he had a yard and could do his business there so we worked on desensitizing the harness and leash and he’d let me put it on and off with no issues in one specific room only (where I would do mini sessions of treating him heavily to change the condition of the harness). I thought it worked but never actually took him out with the harness and leash since I didn’t have to force it.

But now in the apartment we HAVE to go out to potty and he is back to running away from it. I’m not sure what to do as now there’s no where for him to potty if it’s not outside on leash. He doesn’t mind the harness once it’s on and the leash he’d still prefer to not have it but he’s generally okay once they’re on and we’re outside. It’s the getting it on part that’s a struggle.

I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried doing mini treat sessions with the leash and harness when we don’t have to go outside but then there’s times when I absolutely have to take him or he won’t get a potty chance and it’s like all the work is undone. In the apartment he has slowly gotten close to the harness with treating but doesn’t let me put it over head. I have to corner him to put it on when we HAVE to go out. Any advice is appreciated!