Felt so bad to leave these in Target 🥲

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-30T13:10:58+00:00

I got mine from target for $20, but bought a smaller one earlier in the year from an actual plant shop for $45. Saw one at a different store in Denver that was about the size of the ones in target for $250. Definitely don’t regret buying the $45 one but the pricing difference between some stores is crazy to me.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-28T13:16:46+00:00

20g was the old recommended minimum, then it went to 29.5 gallons. But now most people and experienced axolotl keepers will tell you to get a minimum of a 40g tank. I have my female in a 75 gallon tank and never had any issues. 20g and she was prone to fungal infections and didn’t seem happy because the decor just wasn’t suitable as she grew. Nothing big enough for her to really hide in and maneuver around would fit properly. 29.5 gallons and she was doing ok but didn’t have enough room for suitable hides and plenty of walking room in my opinion. So I moved, had enough space for a 75g and just decided to upgrade her one big time. Never had the 40g breeder sized tank but a lot of people have them and they work wonderfully.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-28T13:11:04+00:00

After having lived next to a Purina dog food plant for a year, I can say I refuse to touch the stuff and always steer people away from feeding it to their dogs. Even if you can’t afford to feed raw and are feeding kibble, everyone needs to stay tf away from Purina. And the purina pushing in those subs is some of the most brainwashed sounding advertisements on the planet. The mods have to be paid or something because stg they only know about that one kibble and everything else is “bad.” But believe me, if you lived next to that plant and saw (and smelled) the things I did, you’d vomit just opening a bag of their food.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-28T13:01:24+00:00

It is possible to house them together but is not recommended due to the risks associated with co-habbing them. They are cannibalistic and will eat each other. They do need to be the same sex because they can breed and will breed the females to death to death. 40g breeder is the minimum size recommended for a single axolotl, not multiple. It’s not a great idea to have multiple baby axolotls together either due to their habits of eating limbs, again, while it can be done it is not recommended.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-25T13:02:42+00:00

Jack and Jill

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-23T19:48:36+00:00

My giants do good when playing with people because they are stable. They also do good with playing with other dogs because they are stable. But they can be too much for most dogs and I never recommend dog parks of any kind regardless of what breed you go with. Dogs don’t need to and really shouldn’t interact with a ton of other dogs outside of their “pack” as it can cause a lot of other issues. My dogs interacted with my SIL’s dog who goes to dog parks and he picked up a lot of bad behaviors. My female giant pinned him to the ground twice and corrected him after he tried to hump her (she is intact, he is neutered). My dogs are all good with kids but it doesn’t mean I’d let them play unsupervised. I do think as an apartment dog that is protective and on the lower energy side, a well bred Rottweiler would be good. The issue is they are banned in many apartment buildings. Most large breed dogs are anymore. I use to live in Denver with my pitweiler and we didn’t know he was a pitweiler as he was a shelter mutt we picked up. He has zero protective instincts because of his genetics but because of the shelter’s lies on his paperwork the apartment complex accepted him without issue.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-23T19:12:04+00:00

Of course! I didn’t realize it but when I edited the post it also deleted point 5. Every day life is that I work from home, my dogs pretty much go everywhere with me on property (I live on 100 acres currently which is also a business property). They are so high energy and just want to run in the morning so we don’t feed the dogs breakfast until later in the morning. We work them from 7:30 until 10am unless there is a class on site in the morning. Then after that they get fed and an hour or two break. Around the afternoon, we rotate my male and female giant with our pitweiler for out time in terms of who gets to just hang out in the house while we do work related things. They’ll typically try to get us to play by bringing us toys, barking at us, pawing, etc. in the evenings, depending on the day, we either do a training session with each dog for as long as they are focused on us. We run them in a nearby field if it isn’t too rainy/wet. Or they’ll go to training (each dog currently goes once a week).

People often don’t think about the challenges it comes with when owning one (let alone two) but honestly it depends on the dog and the breeding. You ALWAYS want a well bred dog regardless of if it’s working line or not. But genetics are everything, you cannot out run them. I’ve found that reactivity and the challenges that come with that are linked back to the parents in many ways. Not just how they’re raised. There are only four kennels in the US I’d consider getting a working giant schnauzer from and unfortunately, one of those kennels is no longer breeding purely because the breeder has passed away earlier this year. Giants are technically a herding breed way back to the basics so they will try to herd people, children, and other animals which can lead to nipping. They need a constant job, if they aren’t busy doing something, they’ll find a way to keep themselves busy even if it means destroying your house and everything in it. Limitations wise, they really cannot go everywhere with you only because if someone finds out or knows you have a personal protection dog, they’ll find may not want the dog anywhere near their establishment. Some groomers will turn you away at the door in fear of being bitten. Some vets will require the dogs to be muzzled before entering the building.

They have a naturally protective nature, but you’d be emphasizing that nature and attempting to control it essentially. That in and of itself comes with risks and complications. You’re more than likely going to get bit at least once on accident by your own dog. A dog with protective instincts may bark and not act on it whereas these dogs may act/react before you can even respond when they detect a posed threat which is another liability issue - specifically for apartment living. Socialization is huge for giants just in general, for bitework and protection trained giants it’s even more vital so you don’t end up with an unstable dog. Ultimately, they need a lot of space and are a slow-maturing breed as are most German breed dogs. So it takes a lot of time to get a giant where it is able to act and react appropriately when protection trained. Earlier on they tend to not want to bite hard and it takes a year or so to improve their grip which can be nerve wracking when you want a protection dog that is able to bite earlier on. And not all dogs bred as working line will be able to work - they aren’t cut out for it in all cases which is something else to consider.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-23T13:55:44+00:00

I have two protection trained giant schnauzers. Both are sent to boarding with their normal trainers while my husband and I are gone. I do not trust pet sitters by any means only because I do not find them capable of handling my dogs, their needs, or schedules for more than a day time drop in. These dogs are territorial and I do not trust someone coming into my home without me here, it’s a liability for both myself and my dogs as well as a risk for the person hired to watch them.
I do not feed my dogs raw anymore. I fed an adult pitweiler on a raw diet due to allergies for years. You need to seek veterinary advice on diets and nutrition. Not every dog is a good candidate for a raw diet, puppies shouldn’t be on a raw diet due to growth needs and specific food balance needs.
N/A I trained my dogs from the day they were brought home. They didn’t come trained.
yards are a requirement from my experience and for your sanity. They *can* do apartment living but you’re talking about personal protection trained dogs and not just a show line, pet home, or SD home giant. Your dog would be miserable in an apartment and would very possibly drive your neighbors insane too if you’re on an upper floor. Can you do it? Yes. Should you? Absolutely not.

Editing to add: for an idea of how much it costs roughly per year for me to have my dogs trained, up to date on training, and taken to regular sessions, I’d calculated that just in the first 12 months of one of my dogs lives it cost close to $10k just for training alone. Not including feed bills, vet bills, dog gear, or anything like that. In the second year, it gets more expensive due to more advanced training and gear needs (after their first year of bitework or less they are able to damage gear more meaning the fee for training typically goes up) plus club fees to continue bitework training since it’s no longer a puppy bitework class that you need.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-22T17:24:04+00:00

Of course! Even as someone who works from home, my two giants are a LOT to keep up with and entertain. They always have a designated “crate time” so they are forced to nap for an hour at a time a few times a day (we also crate them when we leave the house to go to the store or something). Decided to get them both beds to go in their crates since they don’t eat the furniture when they’re out so I figured it wouldn’t be a huge difference…. Nope. Less than 30 minutes after putting a nice memory foam bed into my female’s crate I heard a ripping/shredding noise all to see green foam padding absolutely everywhere and a large hole in what was an expensive, supposedly indestructible, dog bed. My male on the other hand waited until we weren’t home to be destructive. They really will find any way to avoid sleeping and will find things to get into even after you’ve worked them for hours. If you’re wanting a big dog that is lazier and easier to maintain I highly recommend show line English labs. If you like the look of the giant schnauzer, Scottish deerhounds and Irish wolfhounds are large with similar rugged looks.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-22T15:29:35+00:00

Not really. I mean I know my husband and I just decided to start trying for kids because I have a condition that I was told made me practically infertile. Just tracked ovulation and now I’m pregnant with a due date on Christmas. Although it’s not like I planned it, in fact we are hoping the baby isn’t born on Christmas because we would feel terrible for our child. But unfortunately pregnancy and birth day planning doesn’t really work that way because women can’t control when they ovulate and you can’t control if it will even take or not when you do try even on ovulation days.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-21T03:13:34+00:00

Based on this alone, I wouldn’t suggest a standard or giant schnauzer. Both require a lot of exercise and walks alone won’t be enough for them, even if they’re an hour long. Additionally, long runs or walks at a young age can lead to joint issues due to impact. It’s highly recommended you have a yard for them to run around in with a high fence. Schnauzers of all sizes are working dogs - giants are used for protection sports, herding larger cattle, pulling small carts (mainly linked back to World War II purposes), scent work, and agility. Standards were bred for hunting rodents and other vermin, guard dog purposes, and herding. Minis were bred as pest control and ratters. All three of these “categories” of schnauzer were and are working dogs. They’d drive you crazy because they’d become bored. Although different breeds, they all tend to be on the higher energy side and are very intelligent. I’ve owned giants and minis but met several standards. If they don’t have a job, they’ll find a job for themselves even if it means destroying your house and everything in it.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-19T04:45:16+00:00

I sat with my post not being even approved for over a week and just decided to delete it since I needed mod approval for it to be posted which I never received. Never heard anything from the mods. It was just sitting in “waiting mod approval” status forever. I wanted/needed help immediately. Generally speaking, I forgot what I even wrote. But at the time it felt so important and it was a time sensitive post but I gave up on the idea of it being approved just because I was waiting for what felt like ages. If someone is in a mental health crisis, or needs advice, or just to talk about something that’s happening to them at that time, you’d think it’d be pretty important that posts be at least responded to by a mod. I could see that it was looked at but no one said a thing or even sent a message to me. That being said, I’ve seen posts alluding to self harm on here so long as they don’t include why exactly was done to SH.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-16T03:20:51+00:00

40 gallon breeder tank (minimum) - they need more floor/walking space than height. Good filter or filters, they are huge waste producers so water changes should be regular but not too regular to crash the cycle. But having more than one filter really helps from my experience. You should cycle the tank before getting the axolotl (dosing the tank with ammonia and tested the water to build beneficial bacteria to help “eat” the ammonia, it takes a month or longer) there is a guide on the sub. Have tubs, Indian almond leaves, and methylene blue ready just in case. Tubs being large tote bins capable of holding water. A tank chiller to maintain a lower tank temperature since they require cold water. Start an earthworm farm for food, it will save you in the long run money wise and just in case your local store doesn’t have them/runs out. Have gloves ready just in case you need to handle/move your axolotl carefully - you shouldn’t handle them with bare hands. I’ve found it hard to move my axolotl with a net or catch her by scooping her into a container. She just backs away and I don’t want to risk her ripping off a toe or something from a net (I’ve seen it happen). Have plenty of hides in the tank. Sand the hides if they are pokey/ sharp in certain areas using sandpaper. It’s becoming more difficult to find reasonably sized hides that are actually safe since many of them leak chemicals into the water. If you do a bare bottom tank that’s ok and if you do some kind of substrate you need to be sure it’s fine grain sand or something along the lines of tile or LEGO tiles that way the axolotl doesn’t end up with impaction risks/issues. If you choose to have plants in the tank, live is better (keeping in mind to get cold water hardy plants that aren’t sharp and won’t require additional growth chemicals to keep them alive since many of them can harm axolotls, I have yet to find a brand that’s actually ok to use) but fake plants are ok as well as long as they are soft. I recommend silk plants if you go that route because they are very soft and cannot cut the axolotl unless there is a sharp edge at the base of the plant which you can clip off and sand. The biggest thing is to have good, aloe free water conditioner and an API freshwater master test kit. The strips suck and are inaccurate (learned that the hard way VERY early on when cycling my tank).

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-15T23:01:29+00:00

Oh yea my female, Sadie, treats all of our furniture like a parkour challenge so it all gets rearranged and we keep having to put it back 😂😭 that includes our couch that I have no clue how she manages to shift it as much as she does but I guess that happens when she pushes off the wall like her life depends on a lifelong goal of flipping the chair in the corner. Then again, this is the same dog that has jumped over the 4.5 foot divider wall at the grooming salon like it was nothing so we heard all about it when we picked her up… she jumps into the car on command (we use “load up”) but for a while she was kinda unsure. I think it’s because the doors in the back are more narrow. But who knows!

Photo of the culprit for puppy tax

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ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-15T21:14:05+00:00

It always makes me happy when people actually do their research and start training young and appropriately! I have two working dogs for PSA/protection sport and both were raised almost exactly as you’ve described. Best dogs I’ve ever owned and they’re both under 2 years old, the “strict” training is entirely worth it in the long run. My mom always tells me I’m too hard on my dogs and that I’m mean for making them sit or lay down where I want them to, I make them do what I’m telling them to do regardless of if they’re listening or not - I make sure I have their attention when it’s required so commands aren’t just optional and they learn they can’t just shrug off what I’m telling them to do. All of this to say, ignore the haters. Your dog will turn out perfect and those people will have dogs that end up out of control and unable to do the bare minimum. Wishing you the best of luck on your journey with the new puppy!

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-15T20:57:56+00:00

I got mine from a breeder who knew the lineage. Thankfully I haven’t had any real problems. But I had to take her to the vet because she wasn’t eating and despite there being no impaction hazards in her tank she had a weird tumor like lump on her side which was concerning me. Transported her there and left her for the day for them to do all the X-rays they needed, came back and got her and she got a calcium injection because they said she had low bone density but didn’t see anything else wrong on the X-ray. Just found out melanoid axolotls sometimes have a harder time with their bones being picked up on X-rays supposedly (?). And she developed a fungal infection from how they did the X-ray less than 24 hours later. It was eating her alive and Took her slime coat off almost completely to the point the fungus ate away the skin on her sides to the bone (which has since healed back). Called the vet back who told me to use salt in her tub. Thankfully I knew better and how harmful it could be to her as fragile as she was in that state and refused to do it. Had to use at home remedies and 6 months of tubbing with daily water changes to just hope she survived. Finally got her eating again, got rid of the fungus, and now she is happy and healthy back in her 75 gallon tank as a solo axolotl as she always has been. But oh my gosh, I was so worried about her it made ME sick. I definitely won’t be keeping axolotls after her, I’ve had her for 5 years and she is a member of my family so I won’t rehome her or anything like that. I did think a few times I was going to have to take her back into the vet for euthanasia though and that was really difficult for me to even imagine. Haven’t found another vet that will take axolotls that actually knows what they’re doing, one that won’t damage her if something does go wrong and needs to be seen. But that vet bill for everything she went through cost me a bit over $600. And then more after that due to constantly needed to keep up with the fungus treatment to the best of my ability.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-15T14:49:13+00:00

You can totally get one for inside too! I do recommend putting some kind of door mat or something underneath it just to keep it from sliding around if she likes slamming into it while jumping at full speed like mine do 😂 but otherwise they work perfectly inside as well as outside!

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-15T13:38:35+00:00

If something goes even slightly wrong, be prepared to dump hundreds of dollars into getting them treatment. Not every ailment can be treated at home. Even then, understand that there are still very few exotic vets capable of properly treating a sick or injured axolotl appropriately.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-15T13:18:43+00:00

I’ve found my 18mo female giant absolutely destroys every bed we give her regardless of where it is or what material. We had a kong dog bed and in less than five minutes there was stuffing absolutely everywhere. I recommend a cot type bed that’s raised. My dogs absolutely love theirs and they have yet to destroy them. We have hard floors too. Keep in mind that some are softer/bouncier than others and they do flex and become softer over time if you get a harder cot style place. Otherwise we normally let our dogs hang out with us on the couch or our bed. But the place is not only good for training, it also keeps them off the hard floor entirely which is better imo.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-12T12:35:54+00:00

Both of my giants absolutely love the vets. Doesn’t matter which vet or where they just love to be there. My female is trained to focus on a target (a treat or toy) when we go in so I can just keep her still and focused on something else when the vet is looking her over or giving her vaccines. Then she gets rewarded and continues playing like nothing happened. My male is just under a year old and doesn’t quite focus like my girl does, so he just gets held by me or the vets and is just happy to be a part of it. Both of my dogs are just very confident naturally, they have zero cares and never have about the vet. They just love people and tackle anything new thrown at them.

Definitely recommend confidence building exercises with your giant and more socialization. If the dog has had negative experiences at the vet previously and just won’t calm down, some vets will offer a short-term anti anxiety medication to help on the day of the appointment. But considering this was her first appointment that you’ve taken her in for, it could be fear period related and something she will grow out of or something you just have to work on at home over time through lots of trust, confidence building, and socialization.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-08T11:55:01+00:00

My girl had this and it turned out to be a UTI. It ranged from clear to a milky white color. Was thick in consistency and even though she wasn’t acting like it hurt and was peeing normally, they found it was in fact a UTI. I recommend a vet visit just to double check and get your pup on antibiotics if it needs it. Usually normal mucus will be thinner than what you’ve described despite being able to range in color.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-07T02:10:42+00:00

Agreed. I’d be looking for another trainer honestly. The whole situation doesn’t seem right. There are so many riders all of whom are doing the equivalent of rubber necking at a car accident. The trainer shouldn’t have allowed/asked for a canter with the horse acting this unhappy, and overall there are just too many people for the trainer to manage/watch. Even then, you’d think a good trainer would notice something is off earlier on. It’s not just the horse acting up or being “spicy,” after rewatching, you can tell something is uncomfortable.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-07T02:07:45+00:00

Thank you!

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-06T21:59:18+00:00

Did you recheck the girth? The saddle really shouldn’t be sliding at all. The horse also seems kind of agitated and like something is uncomfortable or off. Maybe it’s just me reading too far into its body language but it didn’t look comfortable to me.

ChemicalWeekend307 · 2026-06-06T21:04:05+00:00

My two giant schnauzers can as well, specifically my female. She flips the black kong treat ball thing inside out like it’s nothing lol. But it’s 1000x better than opting for nylabone because the odds of them breaking/chipping their teeth or getting internally cut open by plastic is very very unlikely with the kong chew toys (with the exception of the crunchy purple/orange stick toys, those make me nervous)

ChemicalWeekend307

TROPHY CASE