Hi everyone! Would love to know what some of your experiences are raising lab puppies and how you got round separation anxiety. I think to some extent it is a time thing, but I want to check we're not doing too much too soon. So at the moment, our little Luna who is 10 weeks, is wonderful at night, hops into her crate, we close the door, quiet as a mouse, goes out (mostly) at 3am, jumps back into bed, no crying when we leave. During the day we do need to work and we both work from home. But we didn't want her to get used to us being around all the time, so we have a playpen around her crate with ample playspace and leave her crate door open. We get some energy out in the morning (can't go for walks just yet!), then put her in the pen at 9am with a chew toy and head upstairs. What happens then is usually about 1-2 minutes of loud crying/whining, and then she just heads straight into her crate and lies down. We're not sure if she's sleeping or just waiting. Every hour one of us comes down, takes her outside, tries to do a bit of training and not leave as soon as the pen door is shut (as we realised she'd associated this with us leaving). She gets an hour of solid attention/play at lunchtime, then back in for the afternoon until 6pm (she gets a kong mid-morning and a snuffle mat mid-afternoon to break the day up) We still get loud cries for about 1-2mins every time we leave for the hour period (unless she's been given a food puzzle). So it's not long, and she does calm down, but I'm worried that we're leaving her too long for too soon. She barely touches her toys when alone but we don't want her to rely on food puzzles every time we leave. Worth saying as a rule we never open the door when she's whining. Are we doing this right? Or do we need to do some more separation training? Tips and advice would be much appreciated! xxx
