Hi everyone! I posted optimistically about my little pup in a thread earlier this week but I'm starting to lose hope. Stanley is 12 weeks now and we've had him 3 weeks today. I don't know whether this would make any difference but he's really small for a lab puppy. He weighed 2kg when we got him and he weighs about 5 now. Anyway the main problem is that he cries ALOT. Whenever he's got someone with him, he's fine but when he's left alone he starts crying and barking. So he's not overly attached to one person. He likes his crate and is happy to go in there for a nap through the day and then you can leave him without any crying. But as soon as he wakes up and realises he's on his own he starts to cry. This is becoming a nightmare as he needs to be left for us to go to work a couple of days a week. My in-laws are happy to pop in and let him out so he wouldn't be left on his own too long, couple of hours at the most but he just cries the entire time. Also - we've come back and he's done accidents in his cage, even though he's just been to the toilet before we've gone out. And he doesn't usually do this. Even if you just go upstairs to get something he starts crying. I've tried the click for quiet thing and sometimes he falls asleep others he just cries. Sometimes you get 5 minutes of quiet others you don't get 5 seconds. There seems to be no consistency with it. We haven't ever pandered to it, we've never made a fuss of it and have always ignored him as much as possible. But it's quite worrying with the neighbours next door. Through the night he goes to bed ok. Struggling to keep his eyes open by 10pm and takes himself off to bed. But he's always awake really early - usually around 4/5am he cries to go to the toilet. Then once he's up he will not go back to sleep. We've tried putting him back in his crate but he just cries on for the next hour until we eventually give up - again because of the neighbours. We also tried setting an alarm for 3am, took him out & he did his business - no speaking or fussing him, then put him back to bed but that was it. He was up and barked for the next 2 hours which meant we got even less sleep. Then when he gets up (we've been up less than an hour now) he decides he's tired and takes himself back off to bed. Sorry for the really long post but I'm really starting to lose hope that this will get any better, and worried that we're getting it really wrong as I don't want him to develop separation anxiety. And sometimes I really wonder how much I can cope - I expected some crying but not this much! Any help would be greatly appreciated ☺️
Also - I should add that we have kongs. We have different sizes filled with different things. In the room with him and the kong, he loves them. As soon as you leave the room the kong is dropped and the crying starts. Once you're back in the room, the kong is picked up again.
I think 2 hours is too long for a 12 week old puppy. I would re-arrange your doggy day care. I only leave mine for up to an hour at that age. He shouts as soon as you leave him because he gets bored and stressed once his kongs have run out. I leave mine for a few minutes at first, when they are tired and ready for a snooze, then build the time up slowly over the weeks. By the time they are 5 months old I leave them for up to two hours but that's the maximum even for Tatze - who is 3 years old. Also - are you sure he was 8 weeks old when you got him? If he was much younger then that could be the reason he was such a crier. They need their mum/litter until 7 weeks at the very least. Sorry to sound rather harsh, things must be very difficult for you all x ...
Thanks. At the minute he's not being left very long at all, that's just what we need to build up to. He's got a million toys, the kong is always full when we leave and full when we come back, then he digs into it. I'm hoping there'll be some improvement. He's lovely apart from this and I hate the thought of him being upset. Although whenever I come back he never seems particularly upset. Usually just sat wagging his tail either in his cage or at his baby gate. I'm pretty sure he's that old. We first went to visit him when he was 3 weeks and he defs wasn't a new born pup then - had his eyes open & was walking around. Then we got him 6 weeks later. He's definitely the smallest Labrador I've ever seen and he was one of the bigger of the litter. Glad the early waking is normal ☺️ Hopefully we'll get him to about 7 eventually! X
Hello, wanted to bump up this thread as this is *exactly* what we're going through with our 11.5 week old, with all of the same concerns. I don't need to leave him as I work from home, but I am worried about separation anxiety developing. I'm not sure what is or isn't reasonable at this age. We've done everything the same as in Jen's post re: Kongs, click for quiet, with all the same result.
Ohhhh even reading this post back I get the feeling of despair I had writing it. I completely feel for you because that was without a doubt the hardest part of Stanley's puppyhood (so far anyway). I think it was an early morning where he'd had me up half the night then I had to go and pretend to be a solicitor.. so so bad. What I will say to you is that Stanley did stop crying.. eventually. Now he's one of the least 'barky' dogs I know. He'll sit in the garden with Molly barking at one side, Ollie barking at the other and you never hear a peep from him. And there's no separation issues - he can be left for a couple of hours without a peep. (we've even filmed him to make sure). We got a dog trainer out, who got us to do click for quiet - to be honest, looking back now I don't think we ever crate trained him properly. But we started click for quiet and built him up, very very slowly. It took about a week of ALOT of work to get him to sit quietly for about 10/15 minutes, then he hit his stride and was always fine after that. As soon as he sees a kong now he goes flying into his cage to sit patiently. The other thing I'll say is consider the value of the treats you're giving him. This was what our dog trainer said to us - "If someone asked you to do something you didn't want to do for 1p you'd say no way - if they gave you £20 you'd do it though". The kongs got much more interesting - peanutbutter/banana/ham&cheese/sausages/chicken etc and Stanley couldn't resist. I wouldn't say he's an addict but he definitely likes them - he's not overly interested if they're frozen either, he'll wait for them to melt, but he is a very lazy puppy. Also your training treats - we use chicken/cheese/sausages/ham and he'll work much harder than with kibble. If I'm just doing some daft training I still use kibble or biscuits - but at classes or when I really want him to pick something up (recall) the good stuff comes out. With the early waking one day I woke up at 7.15 and I hadn't heard a peep from the dog since he went to bed. I shot out of bed & down the stairs thinking he'd died in the night or something and he looked at me with one eye open as if to be like "what do you want, mam?". Since that day he's slept through without a peep and I usually wake him up between 7.30 and 8am. That time coincided with the time he stopped crying through the day though - so maybe it was all connected to needing to be properly crate trained. Sorry for the really long post - but I hope I've given you some hope that if you persevere and stick to it, they do get better and you will get your sleep and be able to go to the toilet in peace again!
This is all really great advice and encouraging as we're in the same boat you were. I def need to up my treat game, he usually gets kibble, peanut butter, or wet dog food. We have high value training treats which he loves, but they seem to be too rich for him or something (the Wagg ones), as he's been sick some of the times I've used them :/ Maybe because he's still quite young. I was more consistent with rewarding his quiet moments today so hopefully if I do my bit and keep that up he will improve.
This is perfect; I'm so glad you bumped this @SilverFalcon. This is the hardest thing for me with Bessie, too. It works to have her in bed w/me at night but trying to do some crate training during the day is futile. She did just happily work on a Kong in her open, fabric crate (which she spent the first three days desperately trying to eat) for about fifteen minutes, but then came out to me and is now asleep on my feet. Which is nice; they're often cold, ha. I work from home but there are times when I can't give her full supervision so need her to be crated. Showers, friends over and want to socialize (after she's had some time to do so also, of course), etc. I have been doing click for quiet, but think I need to up the Kong stuffing and rewards for click for quiet. I haven't done click for quiet with that level of focused intensity, slowly building up. Sometimes I have to put her in there even if she's going to howl the whole time, and I don't have time to deal with clicking for quiet. How long would you say you did it per day, and how often?
Wagg doesn't score very highly on the dog food review site. It reviews the food however not the Wagg treats. I would assume though, that the quality is similar. One comment by the reviewer is the high wheat content. http://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/
@Beanwood My personal experience is bad too :/ Wish I'd looked up proper reviews and not just trusted the Amazon ones.
I did it a lot. Really focused on it. When it was 3 seconds/4 seconds I'd leave him in between each go and do between 10-20 goes depending on how well he was taking to it. Then I'd let him out and have a play and a cuddle and a fuss. When it got more to 4/5 minutes I'd just do it once then let him out. We ended up doing it easily 20/30 times a day because the times were so short it really didn't take long. I also used to pop him in his crate when I was around - his crate is in the kitchen so when I was cooking tea, or washing up. So he didn't associate it with being left alone. Sometimes I'd even just sit next to him with a cuppa while he was in his crate, just feeding him treats and chatting to him to keep him settled and calm. The other thing was we never went in if he was crying, always waited for a pause. Even if it was just a few seconds. And even now we never go in and go straight to let him out, we always do something first like pop the kettle on or open the blinds. It's awful when they're howling, you do start to be driven a little mad. He'd be downstairs crying and I'd be upstairs crying. It was really time consuming but once you start to see the results I was really pleased. I imagine some dogs do settle after just learning no one comes when they cry - mine was definitely not one of them.
Thanks @JenBainbridge ! So helpful. I have been popping her in there while I'm around, and I'm usually about eight feet from her while she's in the crate for naps. I haven't very systematically built up time where she's in there but I'm not in the room, and I can see I need to do that. I think this will have to be our main training focus for this week (I said that last week, it's just too easy to let her sleep on my feet on the sofa while I work - but I need to be able to leave her in the crate at times so I have to break this now). And wouldn't you know - she was sleeping on my legs, I had to get up and feed my son, and rather than having her get underfoot and start trying to mug chicken off him, I put her in the crate with a Kong filled with canned salmon and rice dog food - and bam, she settled completely quietly! YAY! One other change I made is to buy an Adaptil diffuser that puts off "calming pheromones." Supposed to be similar to what their moms give off. I just set it up behind the crate so the crate should be calming pheromone central. Not sure if that or the stinky salmon filled Kong or simply time and persistence, or some combination of all, is responsible...
