Hi, i am hoping for any advice on the following as think we may have the beginnings of a less than favourable behaviour and i am keen to nip it in the bud as early as possible. We have a 10 week old black labrador who we have had for just under 2 weeks now. He is lovely, has a good temperament and has visibly grown in confidence in the short time from leaving his litter mates and becoming part of our family. When we first got him we decided to start as we meant to continue and have him sleep in his crate in the kitchen, as expected he wailed most of the night and we resisted going to him for the first few hours, before relenting and bring his crate upstairs beside our bed for the rest of the first night (i stress we did not go to him mid howl, we waited for quiet before entering the room) Each night since he has been made to sleep in his crate in the kitchen and the only time we go down is to give him a toilet break during the night. i also started 'click for quiet' training with him during the day and re-enforcing good experiences in the crate. This seemed to be making a difference, and the next few nights we had almost no noise. However over the last few days i have noticed that every time he is left alone, be it in his crate, or in the kitchen, where we have baby gates on the entrance, we have considerable howling. As soon as he hears any noise he stops, so by the time i am near him he is quiet and sitting nicely (its like he has predicted the quick for quiet approach and knows that i will only come when he is quiet, but its the periods in between that are the issue. I will obviously continue to persevere with click for quiet and progress the durations i ask for quiet, but in a couple of weeks both myself and my husband will be back at work and on 3 days a week he will instead have either half day care and or a couple of visits from doggy day care while we are out. I am worried that if we cant get him used to spending time alone quietly he will become very distressed on these occasions where we are not around, not to mention perhaps annoy my neighbours. His crate is in the kitchen where we spend a reasonable amount of time, but we and he spend more time in the livingroom at present (they are separated by a small hallway) he seems to really object to being confined to the kitchen, i am not sure if the fact he spends more time in the livingroom is also a factor here. I appreciate he is only 10 weeks and its likely he will grow out of it, but i just want to ensure we are doing everything we can to avoid a problem behaviour forming while he is young. Any suggestions or thoughts would be appreciated Thanks in advance Tracy
Hi Tracy I think there has been a recent turnaround in the view to leave dogs alone at night when they're crying. Certainly for my first dog (he's 5 now) that was the mainstream approach but more recently I'm seeing a lot more advice from behaviourists and trainers to be with your dog until they have the confidence to settle on their own. For some that's having the dog upstairs by the bed, for me this meant sleeping on the sofa close to my most recent puppy(now approaching 2) until he was quiet at night. He wasn't very quiet at all as a young dog but I think I still only slept downstairs for a couple of weeks. Don't worry at all that you haven't done this at this point I only mention it as you may reconsider what you choose to do if he's noisy at night in the future. In the day time Obi was a nightmare. He would shout a LOT if he was left alone while I took Riley out or even if I went upstairs and left them together. He was crated and while he was happy to go into the crate once I left he would start shouting. I just endlessly put him in and out of his crate. Left the room for a second then came back in gradually increasing the time. It was worth the effort as he can be left now both with Riley and completely on his own for several hours. I would also add that over the summer he voted both vocally and physically that he did NOT want to be crated any more. We had a lot of disruption in the house and now he's stopped chewing I took the path of least resistance and put the crate away. I will retrain his crate once life has settled as it's handy for holidays but I'm not beating myself up over it at the moment. Those are just my thoughts. Best of luck, I'm sure you will get through this and it'll all just be a distant memory
My 2 adult dogs sleep in crates in my bedroom. The presence of me and each other seems to give them comfort, and they are completely quiet all night long. I'm expecting a lab mix puppy to join my family soon, and she too will sleep in a crate in the bedroom. FWIW, when my children were babies, (I'm a senior now) for a pretty good while they slept in the room with me in a bassinet, it was many months before they slept by themselves in the nursery.
Thank you for sharing your experience, its reassuring to hear that other people have had this with their pups and it hasn't become a major issue as they have grown up. We are doing alot of click for quiet now and leaving and re-entering the room regularly (when he is quiet) so hopefully things improve and he finds it less distressing soon
Thank you Lucille, we actually had a really good night last night, he slept without any crying for a good 7 hours in his crate. It was the first night that i havnt got up in the night to let him out, as i felt his bladder could now cope with a full nights sleep. He woke us at around 7am but was dry so that felt like good progress, just need to solve the howling during the day now!
Hi Tracy. You're a few weeks ahead of Ted and me, and I wonder how you're getting on with your dog now? Ted is ten weeks old today and I'd be interested to hear your recent experience. thanks
