My 7 month old Labrador puppy is brilliant on a night. Pop him straight in his crate and he settles straight away. However over the last few weeks he has been a total nightmare and I have no idea why. If my partner is at home and we put him to bed in his crate at night he settles straight away and won't don't hear a thing from him until the morning. If however my partner is working nights and I try to put him to bed he barks, whines and cries for sometimes hours on end! It takes ages to settle him - his current record is 3 hours! I really need him to stop doing this as I have to be up most mornings at 6am and my neighbour has small children so don't want them woken up by him carrying on. He does eventually settle but can takes some time. I don't let him out of his crate when he is barking, just try to calm him down. I just end up sat on the floor near his crate and gradually move away over time. We did have an incident about two weeks ago when he woke up in the middle of the night barking as someone was outside the house on the street talking and they must have woke him up. My partner wasn't home at the time so not sure if it is perhaps a protection thing? If anyone has any ideas as to what to do then that would be amazing! Thanks!
I'm not qualified to answer you but I can speak from my own experience. He cries.. you respond... he wins. If you even look at him he will continue the behaviour. He's getting attention which is what it sounds like he wants. Would your partner ignore him when you are out at work so he knows it's futile to try ? Or is this just something he does only to you.
