Most Popular Q&As

Hello, I am trying to determine wether I should breed a healthy German Shepherd female we own. We have bred German Shepherds for 20 years but only have a litter every few years. We have an excellent female we have raised since a puppy from excellent German working lineage. Time has gotten away from us and by the time she will be whelping her puppies she will be 7+ years old. She is third generation from our breeding program and if not breed we will loose that lineage. She has never before...

Hello, I found your website while searching for a holistic vet. I adopted a Chihuahua Yorkie mix, but he is a biter. We started crate training him, but inconsistently. He had trouble getting house broken, and we discovered he had a bladder stone. Next came surgery, then the diagnosis of liver shunt. We searched for nutrition answers and found your site. We spoil the dog now, because we expect him to have a short life span, but he does have aggressive tendencies. My concern- after reading t...

Dear Ed and Cindy, I have a problem occurring between my 8 MO. GSD, and my 1 YO. Siberian Husky. This problem only occurs when I'm at the off leash dog park with them. The problem is when my husky starts getting ahead of my GSD, my GSD will chase her down and sack her. By the time my GSD catches up to the husky, they are traveling pretty fast. This is not a mutual, back and forth game that they play. It seems as if my GSD is preying, or maybe she just wants to be in control. Either way, I...

My 8 month old male Standard Poodle has recently challenged me by biting twice. We adopted him from a family that neglected him during the first 16 weeks of his life leaving him unsocialized and with some behavior issues. When we brought him home at 4 months, he had severe seperation anxiety if left alone and will bark excessively non stop and still does. We try to take him on walks and to dog parks as much as possible, he gets along with other dogs great but he is still very shy towards stra...

I have a puppy that is 15 weeks old. I got him a month ago, and was able to housebreak him in about 3 weeks...at least I think so because he now sits by the outside door when he needs to go potty. I can even leave him outside of his crate during the night. He sleeps in the bathroom, and has never pottied there. He waits until the morning when I go outside with him. When my wife and I leave the house to do typical errands, we put him in his crate because we still don't trust him to be u...

Hello Mr. Frawley, You & your website has been of tremendous value to me and the razing of our raw-fed boxers. We thank you very much for the wealth of information that you so openly share with the public!> I have run into a situation that makes me question that I am diffently doing something wrong?.the last 2 litter we have had we have had to bottle feed due to the mothers having NO milk come down!!! 1 litter was born in fall 2010 and the other was born summer 2011, born to diffe...

I want to breed my female. Is it okay to feed a raw diet to pregnant dogs?

Hello! First off, I know you are a very busy person so I will try my best to make my question short! Sorry in advance if I ramble on? My husband and I own an east german shepherd (20 months old) with very high drive. She comes from working DDR lines and we are working toward the CD title, then hopefully onto schutzhund. We use a trainer who was a former K9 trainer & handler and is familiar with the breed. We are making good progress with the training and have been told by nu...

We are at the end of our rope, I am hoping you can help with your extensive knowledge of German Shepherds. We had a beautiful GSD 3 years ago and was not able to keep her because of a move and we were heartbroken. (We had her for a year). Well, about 4 weeks ago we decided to go and get another one and I will admit to you right off the bat we did everything wrong. We found someone in the paper and went and fell in love with the last puppy of a litter of 14. I think our minds were made up ...

So glad I found Leerburg.com! I thought I knew how to raise a pup, had done so successfully but with (in hindsight) luckily pretty soft dogs. Husband decided "it was time" to get a pound puppy, so an 8 week old lab/hound/shep/pit mix came home with us from the downtown Detroit Humane Society last March. Of course I knew I would raise it but boy did I get more than I bargained for. I have 4 kids and a husband in denial. No one in his family "trains" their dogs but they always have huge lab...

I take my 8-month dog to a professional trainer. He is very rough on her, (flanking her), to get her to show aggression. Is this OK for the dog?

Will it be a problem using a friend of mine as my dogs helper for bite training, concerning being around my dog when we are not working? Thanks, Sean

I have recently began feeding raw. The forum on leerburg helped me get past a lot of my worries and helped me get started. I still wonder if I'm giving enough variety and if I'm balanced over time enough. I wanted to to this myself without the aid of a store bought food, but feel it would be best right now to do just that until I know more. I don't want to fail at this by giving store bought food, but I also don't want to malnourish my dog. Would you still consider Honest Kitchen to be good e...

Hi Ed, I adopted a 2 year old australian shepherd about 8 weeks ago. He is a 40 pound red merle named Casey. Casey belonged to an 18 year old girl until she had a baby and could no longer take care of Casey...I was told. >From there he went to a foster family and then to an aussie rescue foster family. It was from the aussie rescue family that I adopted him from. I also have a 2 year old german shepherd. I had a 12 year old shepherd that I had to have put to sleep. The hip displays...

Hi Cindy, can you tell me a time frame on how long it takes a puppy to be house trained? I have followed the recommendations of crate training. Our GSD puppy is 19 weeks old. He is not free fed. He is crate trained and is not allowed out of the crate without our watchful eye. I take him, via leash, to a designated area to potty and use the word 'go potty.' He will potty and then we are done. He is not allowed in the house until he has 'emptied' himself. Unfortunately, while he is in the h...

We have an 11 week old puppy. He appears to be very dominant. We think we are having problems establishing our pack structure with him- we have watched all your videos but can't seem to find a solution. We are crate training him and he seems to have picked up on housebreaking pretty quickly. The problem is that he has a mind of his own. One of the problems is when he is biting something. We will tell him to stop- and he will stop. But then he will wait a few seconds and try t...

Mr. Frawley, I have read a lot of the articles on your website, but I have a question that I have not seen answered. I have a 14 week old GSD who has been a terrible biter. He appears to have a high drive and the biting has been horrible, but by keeping his leash in him and being able to pull him away from me and then redirect him to a toy, I have seen a reduction in his biting. However, he has his "moments" when he wants to chew on my shoes as I am trying to walk. My question is how do I ...

I adopted a 5 y/o male Rottweiler 3 months ago who occasionally nips other dogs, children, and even me. He is a neutral dog - submissive to me (pack leader) but neither submissive or overly dominant towards other dogs/people. The family I got him from had a 2-3 y/o little girl and he is obsessed with small children when I take him to the park, especially little girls. He gets excited and stays close and keeps a close watch on them. He did a very gentle nip to a little boy who was running and ...

Hi, I have an 8 year old neutered male doberman who I have had since a puppy. He has been a wonderful loving animal towards humans and most dogs. Several years ago he started dog aggressive behavior at the beach. He would start out with play and then become aggressive...grabbing the other dog by the neck and growling but never breaking skin. I stopped taking him to the beach 2 years ago but still socialize him with friends' dogs...which has been fine. I have dogs over to my home and vic...

Hi Cindy. I have a four year old GSD that has been on a prong collar for the past three years. It's a large link version and I feel it is properly sized for his neck. He's in the prong whenever we leave the house regardless of activity: training, walking, or for a run. I started using the collar early on since the dog is very, very hard. The problem I have is the collar has created a permanent fur divot in the right side of his neck. In the areas where the slip chain feeds through the c...