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Showing posts with the label dog anxiety

12 Useful Tips for New Dog Owners to Avoid Common Raising Mistakes

12 Useful Tips for New Dog Owners to Avoid Common Raising Mistakes The first three hours are a blur. I remember the box was open and Biscuit stood in the doorway of our apartment and did not come in. I had read that dogs need a few days to decompress. That sounded reasonable at 2pm on a Saturday with a dog I'd never met. So I sat on the floor in the hallway and waited. He waited. We were both fairly certain we had misunderstood something about this. Three hours later he was on the couch, head on my foot, asleep. Nobody had told me what those three hours were actually for. That's the thing nobody tells you. Raising a dog well isn't a set of rules you memorize. It's about a hundred small decisions, most of which you make once, in the first weeks, and then live with for a decade. Get a few of them right and the next ten years get easier in ways you can't measure. Here are the twelve I'd give a friend on day one. Start With a Vet Visit Before You Start With a Traine...

You're Probably Walking Your Dog Wrong. Here's What Most Owners Miss.

You're Probably Walking Your Dog Wrong. Here's What Most Owners Miss. It looks simple — leash, dog, sidewalk. But there's a lot more going on during that daily walk than most of us realize, and a few common habits that quietly do more harm than good. Dog Care  ·  7 min read    ·    May 2026 · Dog Care · Evidence-based tips Every morning, millions of dog owners clip on a leash and head outside — convinced they're doing everything right. And on the surface, they are. The dog gets exercise. Fresh air. A change of scenery. But a daily walk is one of the most misunderstood parts of dog ownership. The mistakes most people make aren't obvious — they're the habits we've never been told to question. And some of them are actively working against your dog's wellbeing, without you knowing. Let's fix that. The mistakes — and what to do instead Mistake 1 You're walking for distance, not for the dog Most owners decide the walk is over based on time or steps — 2...

Why do dogs like to chew on bones and slippers?

  Why Does My Dog Look Me Dead in the Eyes While Destroying My Favourite Slipper? It started with a flip-flop. Not just any flip-flop. My favourite one. The left one specifically, from a pair I'd had for three summers, broken in to exactly the right degree of comfortable. Gone in forty minutes while I was on a Zoom call. I came downstairs to find Biscuit sitting in the middle of the living room, surrounded by foam debris, looking extremely pleased with himself. I wasn't even angry. I was just... confused. He has toys. Good toys. A rope, a squeaky hedgehog, two different rubber balls. They were right there, untouched, three feet away from the crime scene. Why the flip-flop? I've been thinking about this question for longer than I'd like to admit. And the answer, as usual with dogs, turns out to be way more layered than "he's just being naughty." Here's the first thing that reframed everything for me. Chewing, for a dog, isn't destructive be...