Hi Everyone Last weekend, we adopted Bella, an 8 year old chocolate lab, from her previous owner who has had since she was 9 weeks old, because he has a degenerative brain condition and can no longer look after her properly. To be fair, we couldn't ask for a better pet. She is great with the kids, great on the lead, and overall an amazing dog. But - completely understandably - when we leave her in her crate when we go to bed, she frets and barks. It's not a loud proper bark, but an attention seeking "I'm still here, where are you?" type of bark, every 30 seconds or so. We have tried ignoring her, but it doesn't work. We've tried leaving the radio on to have a bit of background noise / voices, but again no joy. Last night I resorted to sleeping on the sofa in the same room as her so that she knows we are still around, and this worked. During the day, she is fine, it just seems to be at night. It obviously is a massive change for her and I know that once she gets used to us and realises that we are going to come back in the morning, it will stop, but I could do with some advice as to how to make this process go smoother / faster. Thanks in advance! Glyn
If she is 8 she probably doesn't really need to be crated at night, unless you really need her to be. We never crated our dogs once they were housebroken, and were pretty good about not destroying our stuff. Ours have always slept in the same room we are in, unless the chose to go somewhere else, which is rare.
Hi @Glyn Owen very good of you to take in the Lab. If your bedroom is large enough, you could put the crate in your bedroom, while she gets used to her new home. In a short time time, when you are sure it is safe to do so, you could follow ski patroller's suggestion. It might be useful to find out whether she slept in the same room as her former owner.it might help to explain her behaviour.
Someone recently told me I should get Finn used to sleeping downstairs. He too was a rescue at 8, now at 10+ he has severe arthritis and struggles to climb the stairs. I'm frightened he will fall coming down and break something. It was his choice but we are now struggling to keep him downstairs for his own safety. I think if you can get her used to staying downstairs, there won't be a problem later. Good luck and Thank you for taking on an oldie.☺☺
You can either sleep by the crate downstairs, or you can move the crate upstairs to your room so it's by your bed. You can dispense with the crate altogether and just rely on a stairgate on your bedroom door if you don't want her in the bedroom - or at the bottom of the stairs, if you don't want her upstairs. But she may still feel separated from you, if too far away. You need to create in her a feeling of secure attachment to you. Once you have established a stable base and secure attachment, she will retain that sense of you even when separated from you. But you can't separate her from you without distress, until you've established that. And it takes different dogs varying amounts of time to establish it.
Tilly has arthritis and is slow on the stairs but she still navigates them a number of times every day. I don't think she has ever fallen on them. They do have a carpet runner at our house, and full carpet at the cabin.
