Amanda

so we adopted this pug. she's a great dog. we were told she was housetrained and while it's true she's only had one accident, i'm not entirely sure what's going on with her. i will take her outside every few hours and all she does is sit on the ground beside me. i've tried "go potty!" "go pee!" and any other variant and all she does is look at me funny. i've tried leaving her outside by herself and watching her through a window (don't worry the yard is fenced) but she seems to just wander around then come back up to the door. she hasn't been peeing in the house so i'm not entirely sure what's going on. even after 12 hours at night she does this. i'm not sure how to get her to understand that going outside is ok and that this is what i expect her to do. i praise her liberally everytime she DOES go outside, including treats when we come back inside, but i have to admit it does get kind of annoying standing around for 20 minutes outside while she putters around. sometimes she doesn't even poop, just pees and then wants back in. this led to the accident in the house this morning. is there anything i can do to get her to do her business in a timely manner?

also, she seems to be pretty afraid of my husband and acted this way the moment i brought her home. she refuses to go outside if he's the one putting her out. i have to do it every time or she just runs and hides behind me. he's done nothing to her and is able to give her treats and such but barely gets to pet her. what else can we do there?

So I foster kittens. And I have run into a problem I have never had before. I received 3 kittens from a litter. I didn't get the entire litter as I didn't have room, what with 2 of my own cats, plus 2 from different litters that are on their way to regaining their health and OI it's a lot. Anyway, there are 2 girls and a boy. They're a decent size, I'd guess 10 to 11 weeks old. Perfectly healthy and the lady brought them to me in the same carrier yesterday afternoon.

By about 10pm last night they were hissing at everything in sight, cats, people, even each other. I figured maybe I threw them into the general population too soon, so I decided to relocate them to my room. When I went to pick them all up, the older female and the male started fighting IN MY ARMS! I had to hold them both at arms length away from each other and have my husband carry the runty girl upstairs behind me. They growled at each other the whole time regardless of the distance.

They've been in my room the entire day and still no progress has been made. They still hiss, spit and growl anytime they come near each other by accident.

I've tried petting everyone together to show them that good things happen when they're together but inevitably someone will hiss and that sets everyone else off. I'm confused because they're all littermates and they certainly were find together in the carrier when they came here. Normally when I get litters I put them in my room and they keep together sleeping in little kitten piles, eating, playing and cuddling. The lady who brought them to me says that the 2 she took from the same litter are acting the exact same way. She said it was simply because they were spoiled and had probably been with their mother too long. I'm sure time will help but I guess I'm looking for someone else who may have had this problem.

ok i bought this intellimouse but the software disk i got does not work with vista. can i just go to the microsoft webpage and download the latest stuff or do i need to buy a whole new mouse?

we bought a house for $60k. we did some work on it and when we refinanced it was appraised at $72k but we only refinanced for $65k. we're looking to sell the house and move within the next year and still have a little bit of work to do but we've already put a lot in.

now our neighbors have decided to sell their house, and it's a little nicer than ours. the problem is they're selling it for $62k. they're an elderly couple who have been there for a long time and i have a feeling they're selling it for way below market value just to sell it. doesn't that drop the value of every house in the neighborhood? and what do we do now that a nicer house is on the market for less than our current mortgage?

there's no way we can put the money in to make our house nicer, we just can't afford it and we really don't want to be forced to stay here for 5 or 10 more years just to pay it down to be able to sell it for what we need to pay off the mortgage. they are listing it through a realty. i'm really very upset over this as we had plans to start listing the house in the fall so we can move to NC where my husband can get a way better job. there's absolutely no way we can afford both house payments, so moving and buying a house or renting while selling this one is not an option.

We lost our boxer last week and yesterday we adopted a great dane from a humane society. He's 2 years old, and very friendly. He knows a few tricks and is completely house trained so he must have been someone's pet. However, they obviously didn't work on leash training (which i have fixed the pulling issues with a halti, they're amazing!) And he has a few issues with understanding that no really does mean NO, not keep going and maybe i'll say yes. He isn't neutered yet, we're getting that done next week, being as it's really difficult to shove a 130 lb dog off you when they're intent on some lovin'. I know they are the type of dog that requires training from day 1, so how do i go about it when he's way stronger than i am and pretty thick headed? Also, will neutering calm down a lot of behaviors?

We have a minivan we bought from a dealer, but we need to downgrade to a smaller vehicle. Unfortunately we apparently bought it for more than it's worth, so how can we trade it in or sell it so that we are free and clear to get another car?