I got a 5-6 month old puppy almost 3 months ago. He had never been outside the home and yard he was in before I got him, and he has been very difficult to train. I live in a busy and dense city. He hates walks, he's scared of everything and everyone, and is not food motivated at all. It's actually very difficult to get him to eat the amount of food he's supposed to eat. He does get ong very well with my cat though which is nice.
I wfh, and he constantly needs attention, even with our cat playing with him. He goes on walks every 2 hours for about 10-20 minutes for potty training, I do training sessions with him after walks to help build his confidence (I heard it's like CBT training), but he needs to either be in my lap and licking me constantly, or needs to be in the same room with me while playing with our cat. I'm around constant noise.
On top of that, when I try to get space from him he just whines every 2 minutes. I've gotten collectively 4 hours of sleep the last 8 days (one night I got decent sleep) and I'm actually having a meltdown from sleep deprivation. I put him to bed in his pen in a room far from my bedroom at around 12 am when I go to bed, and he wakes up at 5 am barking (and I have to get him to stop because neighbors) to use the bathroom. I give him just a little water when I put him to bed to try to help, but he just has such bad seperation anxiety.
I've tried not getting excited when seeing him, practicing being away from him, and it's like he's getting worse. I can't work with him around and I can't sleep. I can't afford dog boarding either. I feel like a bad dog owner not being able to handle this. What do I do?
submitted by /u/Sarahlorien
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