Most Popular Q&As

First let me tell you what an inspiration your website has been to me, a new breeder of Australian Labradoodles. I am trying to decide if xraying my bitch at 45 days is safe. If not is there another way to tell if the puppies are there and everything is ok for delivery. Thank you and thank you for your years of experience you share with your site. Cathi

My fiance and I have a dog that is wearing on our patience as he is incredibly destructive and does not deal well with being kenneled. He has actually broken out of two steel kennels. The ones with the thin bars of metal. Now we keep him and our other dog in a room in the basement, and as you can see from the attached photo, he is slowly destroying it, day by day. That is an older picture and since then the damage he has done has tripled. I've heard so many things about muzzles and my main...

Ed, Our great puppy, Xanda vom Leerburg (born January 16, 2000; call name "Rebound"), is progressing beautifully. She is almost five months old and has settled in as a full-fledged member of the family (which includes my wife, three children, our male yellow lab and me). I would like your thoughts on a particularly disturbing and dangerous habit that she has exhibited. During our walks in the neighborhood, she literally lunges at moving cars. In response, I shorten way up on...

We have a police dog in our small town. My question is: Every time the police car drives around the corner of the intersection or is waiting for the red light to change the police dog is barking furiously at cars or people around him. Also we walk our two little dogs. One day the police car was parked across the street from where we were walking and the police dog started barking aggressively. Is this proper behavior in any of the cases? Just curious, Kathy

Hello, I have a question about my German Shepherd. He is limping and can't put much weight on his left front foot. This happened before about 2 months ago and we took him to the vet. The vet said he had growing pains which caused his joints to hurt. He gave me some antibiotics just in case, so it won?t get infected, and some pain reliever. A week later it was gone. Now he his limping again, there doesn't seem anything to be physically wrong with his leg that I can see. I squeezed his paws...

I have a 5 yr old Old English Sheepdog. We purchased this pup from a private breeder who I now feel, gave little regard to temperament. From the very beginning, he has been a "nervous" dog. When Barnaby was 6 months old I took him to a local basic obedience class. During a session of 'meet your neighbor,' where the dogs were allowed to sniff each other, he lunged and pinned the other dog to the floor. I soon realized that all dogs were considered the "enemy" to him and avoided cont...

Hi, My name is Lena. I have been reading your site about dog aggression. I have a 1 year old large munsterlander, who shows way too many signs of aggression. When he was six months, he nipped our friends young son. He was alright, but it greatly concerned us. Ever since then, we have been trying to destroy those signs of aggression, but it has been difficult. He is a baby to everyone in our family. He has never shown aggression to any of us. We can steal his food, mess around with ...

Dear Mr.Frawley, I'm very sorry to disturb you because I know you are a busy man. I have your basic obedience DVD but now I have other problems with my dog. First of all I would like to thank you for the great job you are doing helping us with our problem and also for your time in reading this. My dog doesn't like to be in his cage, we have to pull him in the cage but I don't like doing this because it looks like cruelty to animals. What can I do about this? We let the dog out at n...

I need help teaching my wirehair pointer not to eat "food" encountered on his runs. He runs free on the ocean beaches. He is a beautiful dog with excellent manners thanks to your help and suggestions. The beach abounds with crustaceans, dungeness crab parts, partially eaten razor clams. He slyly mouths something, I yell "no" and he walks up to me chewing on the item and I extract the remains from his mouth. His vet thinks a recent bout of diarrhea was due to his appetizer consump...

Hi Ed, My name is Brian, and I have a situation that I would like to have some feedback with a professional dog trainer. I will try to explain this the best I can, and keep it as short as possible. I have a 15 week old DDR GSD. He has many good qualities. calm, good nerve, not fearful of anything or anyone, but his prey drive seems to be lacking somewhat, for example, today I was working on bite training, he done good for a couple minutes...some nice bites...then lost his interest. He woul...

Hi Cindy, I have three dogs and my nine month old French Bulldog is marking on all the dog beds. She’s doing great with potty training and their beds is the only place she pees so I know she’s trying to be Alpha. She does other things to prove she’s Alpha like cutting the other dogs off at the water bowl and snapping at them when they walk by. She also doesn’t understand polite play, she ignores the other dogs cues when they don’t want to play anymore. I intervene when I see it hap...

I just watched the spay and neuter video with Karen Becker. It answers some questions and raises more. After losing my rescue GSD, adopted at 7 months, spayed, to severe knee problems at age three, my new companion Rott/Shep cross spayed (another rescue) female is on DES for incontinence at age 2. But my son's Yorkie/Bishon rescue male (neutered by 3 months) and my previous Border Collie female (spayed at 6 months by me) both suffer(ed) from serious allergies--complete with hair loss an...

I will keep this short and sweet as I am sure you are like me and do not have time for many words. I have a varied background in training from police K9 hanlder to sport to SAR, etc. I am however still learning a lot as a breeder. I am a past customer of yours several times and consider you a very experienced breeder. There are few in this nation with the GSD world that have bred as many litters as you have. So I am coming to you for some advice. Situation: I have an IPO1 and breed surveye...

Hi Cindy, I have a 14 month intact female Rottweiler. She was crate trained, and was relatively neutral in terms of her love of the crate. Suddenly in the last 2 weeks she is obsessed with the crate. There is no food or treat in the crate, and with the bedding removed her behavior is identical. She will spend more than half of the day inside the crate with the door open. She often runs back into it when she is out, with intensity. When she is taken outside her energy is great. Her appetit...

Hi Cindy, I watched the video with you and Rush and really liked the idea of exercising him with the bike. I have a GSD that weighs 98 pounds, is very fit and has high prey drive. In your experience, do you think this will be a major concern if I were to try this form of exercise? Have any of your dogs lunged and pulled the bike over when they saw a rabbit, fox, deer, etc.? My dog has done intermediate level obedience, knows "attention heeling" and is generally good on leash but the ani...

Hi Cindy, I want to thank you, Ed and Michael for all the valuable services you provide to dog owners everywhere. I used the information and advice you have on your website plus the discussion boards to obedience train my dog. Nothing special, just a well behaved dog at home and in the park. Today something very sad and terrible happened. I did something very stupid that both me and my dog will regret for the rest of our days together. I want to share it with you and ask a question. I am h...

I need help. I recently lost my German Shepherd to cancer, she was only 5 years old. We also have a 3 year old Malamute that is very depressed because of it. Everyone we know told us to get another dog for our Malamute so we did, but she has become very aggressive towards the puppy and I am afraid she is going to hurt her. How can I help my older dog get over the loss of her best friend and accept the new puppy.

I just read your piece on the Internet about showing the dog lovers out there all the various methods of training their dogs to refuse food. I am a person who lives next door to a couple of first class ass-holes who have a large dog that barks and barks and barks and barks. It barks at everything and it barks at nothing. It barks all day long and all night long, and these two idiots tell me that there is nothing they can do about it. I can't afford hiring lawyers and suing p...

I am writing from the north woods of Minnesota where there are less than 5000 residents in a county that is more than 90% public lands. There is not a lot of activity here for Search & Rescue, but when there is, it is naturally traumatic. We have found that when dogs could be of use that it is many hours before a trained and certified professional can arrive. The closest certified unit is 5 hours away. So for over a year now I have been training my Chesapeake for SAR work. We started with air...

I got Patton from a breeder when she was 11 weeks old and she was delightful - friendly to all. She went to stores with me and played at the dog park. She would go to manhattan and stay with my daughter and son in law and I would visit and she was the same - went into restaurants, stores, etc. When she turned 8 months old and was spayed, the world changed. She became very aggressive to all strangers - and she despises children. (She is fine with dogs off the leash still.) We have a very g...