Hi All! I have a nearly 11-week old lab puppy named Murphy. My husband and I adore him and are excited to see him grow! I work from home most of the time so I am with the puppy a lot (which has helped with potty training tremendously because I can let him out!) He will sleep quietly in his crate at night and he will sleep in it while we are away from the house (I have a dog camera watching him so I can confirm this). However, when I'm home and I put him in his crate or even leave him in the kitchen while I'm still home he screams and barks non-stop. I am generally with him but there are times I'd like to shower or make a work phone call, or just work quietly for an hour and know that he is safe in his crate or the kitchen and not wrecking havoc on my house! Any tips to help with this issue as I'm starting to get at my wits end here? Thanks!
Hi and welcome. I had similar with my puppy; she was fine if I went out, but not if I stayed in the house. She would bark from frustration. You have to simply build up the time and distance you're away from him. So, at first, you might simply put him in the crate and walk two steps away. Return and let him out with no fuss. Build up to walking out the door and immediately back in. Then stay out for 1s, 5s etc. Don't always make it longer, mix it up. When you have some duration of you being out of sight but quiet, you can start introducing more noise. So, go to the kitchen and put a mug on the surface, in the sink etc. So he starts learning to hear you doing "stuff" while you're away from him. When you first introduce the noises, make the time really short again. Whenever we make one thing more difficult (out of the three Ds: duration, distraction and distance), we make the other two much easier and then build up again. I would use stuffed kongs as a good way of keeping him occupied when you're starting out with this training. Make going in the crate really exciting (food treats are great for this) but coming out is a non-event. I always train them that they can only come out when they are sat calmly. Do this by waiting for a sit (don't give a cue) and, as soon as the bum goes down, reach for the gate. Your pup will probably pop up, and you immediately withdraw your hand. He will learn that staying sat down means your hand goes to the gate, and moving makes it go away. You can extend this to slowly opening the gate, closing it if he pops up as before. It's a bit repetitive at first, but I find that they get the hang of it very quickly and it lowers the arousal of leaving the crate.
