I know this question comes up a lot but usually to do with being in a crate. I'm going away in three weeks time for three weeks and my lovely neighbour is going to look after Libby in her own home except when she's at work (Monday to Friday). When we first planned this her office was dog friendly but her boss (not a dog lover) has clamped down on it since one of the dogs scratched a door. Sonya works from 9:30 to 2:30 with a bit of driving each side of that. Libby will be put in her room in my house during that time and some days my daughter will pop in at midday to let her out. Will the other days matter? The room is about 12' x 6'. Libby will be 9 months old. I'm going to wean her off lunch during the next few weeks.
Is Libby left for any number of hours at present? I slowly built Harley up over a period of a month, and even then only leave her for 4 hours at a time. The days I work 5-6 hours, I have a dog walker who comes in at lunchtime and takes her out for 1-1.5 hours. It really depends on how you think Libby will cope with the changes?
She goes 3-4 hours sometimes and is just fine. Most of the time I'm here but even then I sometimes put her in her room as if I was out for an hour or two and there's never any fuss. I searched this and most chats are about small puppies and crates so I'm interested to know if older, uncrated puppies cope well for longer?
When mine were about 7 months, I'd pop out for a couple of hours on a weekend to go skiing with them out of their crate. I'd leave about 10am and be back for 1pm. That was generally fine, although Willow did chew at the wall by the door a couple of times, which showed she wasn't entirely happy. I found that leaving them in another room was very different to me being out of the house, so it's worth building that up separately.
I would build up the time she is left over the next few weeks to get her used to it, with you not being in the house. Harley was decrated at around 5/6 months and was in the kitchen which is around 18x6ft and she was fine.
