Category: Top Dog

Just looking for some advice or tips on helping my 6 month old Springer Spaniel with her sudden increase in separation problems.

She's crate trained, happily takes herself to her crate for a nap after walks etc. She was sleeping through the night perfectly for months until the last couple weeks where she's been waking me up frequently but doesn't even need the toilet.

And the past couple days she just won't settle at all. We're still working on settling outside of the crate so she still has her naps in there, and is happy being in there for an hour or 2 while I go out.

At the moment she just keeps pulling the blanket off the front of the crate, and whining constantly, even if I'm just a metre away. She then just sits silently staring at me in her crate and just won't sleep.

I know she's getting older so needs less sleep but at the moment she's sleeping 10pm-7am overnight (waking up 3+ times) and not napping in the day which I know isn't enough sleep (and probably what is causing her destructive and bitey behaviour)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated and is getting very exhausting!

we have a 15 week cocker who we have had for nearly 5 weeks. we haven’t made much progress with daytime crate training. he has meals in there and will potter in and out but will protest if we close the door on him.

at night we started with crate in our room, then outside room, then end of landing etc, he is now downstairs in the kitchen. this was ok for a few nights and he just woke up 2 times for toilet trips (he wakes us by barking but we previously didn’t mind as he clearly needed the toilet)

but the last 4 nights he has got into a habit of:

10-10.30 put him to bed, he goes quite willingly and settles quickly

11.30 wake up barking, take him out but no toilet needed

12.30/1.30 ish wake up barking, generally does go for a wee on this trip

3.30 wake up barking, usually does go for a wee or poo

4.30 wake up barking, doesnt need toilet, won’t settle easily, lots of whining and barking, very hyperactive

5.30 same as 4.30 so we generally stay up with him at this point

because we have neighbours and because he does sometimes need the toilet we do go downstairs to him when we hear the barking. We don’t open the crate until there is a moment of calm sitting and silence

are we reinforcing the barking when he doesnt need the toilet by going down to him everytime? The problem is if we don’t go down i worry it will descend into panic barking and not stop, then we will wake our neighbours

Hello!

Looking for some advice if possible.

We have a 4 1/2 month old mini dachshund. We have tried a lot to socialise him and he really loves other dogs and humans. What he is less good at currently is being calm around dogs that don’t want to interact with him, he tries to play and ignores their signals that they’re not interested in him. We are starting work on this ASAP.

My family member has a dog that was not socialised as a pup and hates other dogs. She is not aggressive towards them, she is straight up scared. They are coming to ours over Christmas and I am trying to figure out how best to have them interact with each other.

They have met once and it was a bit of a nightmare, their dog jumped onto the sofa and refused to interact at all with our pup, whilst our pup just sat and tried to jump up, cry, bark etc because the dog would not engage with him. When their dog was off the sofa, he would run up and try play and the dog would angry bark at him and run away, rinse and repeat for ages meant there were no calm moments during the interaction.

Grateful for any advice on how to approach this. I realise it’s not just a problem with our pup but if anyone has had a similar scenario would love to hear your advice, right now all I can think of is keeping them separate all day which will be a challenge in itself!