Context: My fiancé and I have adopted a 5-month-old female Dachshund from a rescue charity. All we know about her past owners is that they were breaking up and unable to continue to look after her.
We picked her up last Saturday and have been finding our feet with routines, potty training, and this week, command training. She is settling in really well.
She is comfortable resting in her crate, located in our kitchen. At night, we keep her crate door open allowing her to roam. We have had reduced periods of barking/whining at night and no accidents for 4 days now. Progress!
We have also set up a playpen in our lounge to let her be close whilst we relax on the sofa, eat meals, etc. Our end goal, once potty training is established, is to remove the playpen and give her full roam of the lounge when we are in there.
We have exposed her to being in our car with a booster seat set up and have already been on several small drives. She has been calm every journey and settles after 10 mins
Advice needed:
We have made plans to spend Christmas with my partner's family, which is about a 2-hour drive away. We have booked a dog-friendly hotel for 5 nights. This will be the first time we would be taking a pet to stay somewhere else. Is there anything we can work on with her before we embark to get her (and us) prepared for the situation?
Our current plan was to set up her crate and playpen within the hotel room in an attempt to replicate a simular environment to what we have at home.
Also:
We have noticed she is can get very barky with strangers on walks and struggles to settle. I completely understand it's early days for us all and we are working on 'Sit' and 'Quiet' commands. We are starting to worry about how she will react when we introduce her to the family. Again, is there anything we can work on beforehand?
I am working on getting some friends to come visit her during the day so witness how she is and if we can calm/settle her.
submitted by /u/yehoshua1996
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