Hi All, My partner and I brought our 8wk working lab (Peggy) home in early April, so she's now just over 5mo old. She's our first dog together and my first dog ever. I work from home and my partner works shifts, but usually has at least 3 days off each week. In many ways Peggy is doing great - generally sleeps through the night, crate trained, toilet trained, biting less, very affectionate and even happy in our bike trailer. 90% of the time we're around she's a joy. Right now we're having trouble leaving her alone. Up to her being 4mo old this was going really well and I was able to leave her in the crate after a walk, food, water and toilet for up to an hour. I'd set my laptop to record the audio while I was out to understand if she barked or for how long, and she'd usually sleep right through until I woke her up when I came in. Her crate is in the living room, and she's also very happy after her morning walk and breakfast for me to go upstairs and work for a few hours while she sleeps downstairs. Naturally, I thought we'd cracked it and could keep building up her time alone. Unfortunately, one day at around 4mo I left her alone in the daytime for 30mins in her crate, and came home to find she'd been barking non-stop the entire time I was out. I felt awful and thought she must have needed something, and she did have a drink when I let her out of the crate. I tried to pass it off as a one-off incident of me dropping the ball, but she now does this every time I leave the house with her in the crate, even when she's been to the toilet, eaten, had plenty of water, exercise etc. She's happy to be left for around 10/15mins if she's eating a meal outside the crate (snuffle mat or kong wobbler), and still sleeps in the crate for several hours after her morning walk when I go upstairs to work (which confuses me), but if she hears the front door open and close that's it, non-stop barking essentially the whole time I'm out. My question is, could she be traumatised by that one event and have developed separation anxiety from that? It was such a sudden change but I don't want to persevere as is with the hope she grows back out of it. She might be happier out of the crate if we went out (she's started sleeping on the sofa more in the last few weeks), but I'm worried she'd still bark or be destructive in other ways. She also happily hangs out alone in the garden for 20/30mins, and I can move around the house without her reacting at all. I imagine we need to go right back to square one and build up from scratch, but if anyone has advice or experience to offer I'd appreciate it. I lover her, but also really miss lots of the things I used to be able to do before she arrived, and some of those would be entirely possible if she was happy to be left even for 2 hours. Thanks in advance for any help you can give!
Our 4 week is create trained from day 1 and can stay for for short times in there. We started training him from day 1 with very short stays every day, and just built up from there. Was she really barking the entire time, or just when you arrived back. But she'll get used to being in there. As soon as she learns she always comes out shortly.
