Our 20 week old puppy is a nightmare in the evening; he simply won't settle, he wants attention and whines constantly if ignored. Sometimes we resort to shutting him in his crate and he tends to settle but we don't like separating him from us. During the day he is much more relaxed and no real trouble and he settles overnight in the crate. He is a bright little chap and other aspects of his training are going well. He is the 5th Labrador we have had but the 1st to be so much trouble in the evening. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can make our evenings relaxing again?
I remember this was the worst part of puppy owning, just as I wanted to settle in the evening he was up and playing. He grew out of it at about six months. I cannot remember what I did, just that I used to tear my hair out! Mine never whined for attention, so maybe you will have to ignore the whining otherwise if you give into it it will get worse. How about a nice Kong in the evenings to settle him? A walk, game training and a Kong should settle him. I believe you can also train a settle cue, perhaps some of the others have done that and will enlighten you.
Ah !you are not alone.....I remember it well and not with affection ....the 'witching hour ' although it goes on for longer than an hour ...we didn't have whining but we had massive hoolies round the house ( we are open plan downstairs) smash and grab of things he would never dream of taking during the day and sitting by the door to go out continually ,making us think he could possibly want the loo when the reality was he wanted to go out and hunt for stones and dig up the irrigation system! Cardboard containers with little bits of tasty food hidden in,frozen kongs to chew on and soft toys that we used to sit on the floor with him helped us to survive it.They grow out of it and you do get settled evenings eventually but it's a bit tedious at the time.Where is your crate in relation to where you spend you evenings...if I did it again ( I'm sure I will one day!) I'd have brought the crate into our lounge and then if I thought the crate would give us a breather he would have still been close to us. Deep breaths,this time will pass... Angela x
Thanks for your replies; nice to know we are not alone. Dyson is quiet when he has a frozen Kong but starts up again when it is finished. We have tried a 'settle' technique but he goes crazy when restrained and we feel it made him worse. His crate is too big to move in to the lounge but we have moved ourselves in to the kitchen to be near him and he does usually settle then. I guess we will just have to be patient and wait for him to grow out of it and (fingers crossed) he was more settled last night than he has ever been, so, here's hoping! Mary
