Hi all! We've had our 9 week old chocolate lab home for a week now and I am just looking for reassurance and advice. This is my first dog as an "adult" and didn't really experience some of these behaviours with my childhood dogs. 1. Attention barking: - he will bark at myself, my boyfriend, other dogs when he wants to play, get on the couch etc. With people it can be 5-10 big barks but when we ignore him he seems to back off. We are being very careful to try and not reinforce any barking. When playing with other dogs, or exciting toys he just barks the entire time. It's not aggressive but just seems excited? Has anyone else experienced this? Should we just continue to ignore any barks for attention? I have never seen or had a dog that is this barky at such a young age and its concerning. 2. Crate whining: - we haven't tried having him sleep in his crate at night. He is still happily sleeping in a laundry basket beside the bed. The times we have tried leaving him in there he whines and cries and will bark. But he can take daytime naps in his crate (door open) in another room without a problem if he is sleepy enough and will settle quickly. Anytime he is in his crate we will not let him out until silence. Should we still be slowly introducing him? How much time is okay in the crate during the day? We would love to start having him sleep in there full time, and would love to go "cold turkey" but we have a downstairs neighbour who most certainly wouldn't enjoy hours of crying if thats what he chose to do. He is a very sweet and cuddly dog when he wants to be and we love him to bits. We just want to make sure his barking in particular isn't going to carry on much longer. Thanks for any tips
Hi Kat, welcome the forum and congratulations on your new puppy While you're waiting for some more replies, you might enjoy these articles on our main site: Labrador Barking Help And Information Crate Training Your Labrador Puppy Luckily such young puppies are very easily persuaded to change their behaviour, so I'm sure you'll crack it
I have a 8 week old lab and she barks at toys, couch her food bowl, even after she eats this is my first time with a large dog I guess it normal for them to bark at random things. One thing I have noticed though is that when I teach her bite inabition and say ouch she wants to lunge at my face. Have you experienced that also?
