Blog

we would love any and all advice because we’re at our wits end and would just love to sleep. 😭

we’ve had our mini golden doodle since she was 8 weeks and she’s 15 weeks now. she does perfectly fine in her crate during the day but at night time it’s a different story. here’s a list of things we’ve already tried or currently do.

• potty right before bed (we used to take away water but then tried to let her keep water and even put her bowl in her crate and that seemed to help for a little bit but now we’re back to square 1)

• comfort blankets in crate with her and a fan in her crate so she doesn’t overheat

• if she does bark we take her potty but with no enthusiasm or attention; just a very quick potty break and back to the crate

• we play dog anxiety music on the tv right next to her crate in the living room to help her settle

• we cover the crate all around to create the “den like” atmosphere, and we feed her in her crate for dinner.

we definitely wear her out before bed and settle about half hour before. we’ve tried letting her bark it out, we’ve gotten up once she starts and done potty. we just don’t know what else to do at this point, we live in an apartment so it’s hard letting her bark forever even when we’re supposed to just be ignoring it.

we can’t fit her crate in our bedroom or else we would put it in there but our apartment isn’t huge so she easily accessible and knows where we are.

please if anyone has any advice as to what could possibly help her we would love it. we just don’t know what else we could possibly do.

Hello!

I am writing this feeling like a failure and not knowing what to do next. I have a 16 weeks old German Sheperd puppy and the last week have been trying to teach him to go outside, as he was using pee pads. Before, he never never had accidents in his crate, but in the last week he ha's been having accidents daily. Not sure why, I try to praise him whenever he goes in the street, as he's currently under medication and the vet advised me to not to take him to parks or close to the grass. I am getting more and more concerned as this is becoming a habit for him. Our routine goes like this: at 04:00 am out, breakfast around 7-8 , as soon as he finishes walk and go out again until 10ish. After that, nap time, again out around 12. Have lunch and wait a little (10 min max) and go out again, to walk. Then, come back to nap time, until 3ish where I took him out, then come back, then out again, dinner, then out again around 8, and final session is around 10-11pm. I try to take him out as much as possible, and give him 10-25 minutes to go. Sometimes, he doesn't even cry just go in the crate, or just pees in the door frame before we leave. I have read that using pee pads is bad in the long-run so not sure what else to do. I will appreciate any help as I am close to meltdown. Thanks and love for all!

Picking up my 8 week old puppy next weekend. What puppy food do you suggest that’s most natural?

Hi all; just having a bit of a vent. My puppy (6 months on Monday) Murphy had his first day of obedience class today, having previously graduated from puppy school a couple of months ago.

He's generally very well-behaved and is improving his ability to not excitedly react to other dogs within a certain distance (a few metres now). We walk twice a day and while he pulls now and again he's often content to have a loose leash most of the time. I've been looking forward to group obedience to improve further on his good progress.

Instead he was overwhelmed and reactive the entire class, rarely paying attention to me at all and getting quite upset. Not his fault at all, he's just a kid and it's a new environment with other dogs, but it was a rough time for his class and I left feeling like we'd actually regressed rather than improved at all. I've got ADHD myself so I was struggling to focus on both him, my own body language, and also the trainer instructing the class all at once, which only confused Murphy more and made him retreat from me a lot as I fumbled my way through the exercises and forgot everything immediately after it was explained. I was being shadowed by another trainer who basically had to stick by me the whole time and constantly correct what I was doing and I felt so embarrassed, lol; by the end I was holding back tears and felt like I was completely failing my little boy. They told us at the start not to compare our dogs to other dogs but I was the only one that was having such blatant issues and difficulties and I didn't retain any of the information because I was blue-screening pretty bad.

At first I wanted to just get a refund on the course and try to continue training him on my own since he's a lot more well-behaved when we're at home and on our daily walks, but I've had a bit of time as the morning's gone along for my emotional state to calm down a bit and I'm going to keep going to the class next week. Overall though I just feel defeated and almost a bit ashamed; until now I've been really confident in his training and now I'm just questioning everything I've done and wondering if I've actually been enforcing bad habits.

The training itself was also very treat-heavy so he ate a lot while we were there; once we got home he vomited it all back up again. Poor little buddy's sleeping in his pen now, I'm just trying to give him space for a little while.

Has anyone had similar experiences of obedience classes being a much more stressful experience than regular training?

Those who got your puppy around 8-12 week mark, when did you bring them to the vet? My breeder brought him at 7 weeks and I pick him up at 8. I have a vet appointment scheduled two weeks later. Should we go earlier?

Stats:

14 week old puppy

Crate trained – loves to go in at bed time and generally positive with some tantrums here and there, located so he can here me and kind of see me (if really looking)

Sxhedule – Generally follow a 1 hour out and 3-4 hours in

So, my puppy will sleep through the night with literally no problems. A blessing, I know. I mean, I hear him wake up and chew on a teething toy occasionally, but he will happily be in there all night and is reluctant to come out in the am.

The problem, he really struggles to sleep during the day. As a puppy, he needs more sleep than just at night. As me tioned, I usually do 1 hour out of the crate with puzzle feeders, training, playing, and potty breaks.

I KNOW he is tired mentally and physically and usually not over tired, but he still takes so long to settle into napping. Being awake for 1 hour to do things to tire him means he is up for at least 1.5 hours, because he needs that much time to settle.

I feel like I am caged to where I am when he falls asleep, so I don't wake him once he finally does sleep, so he can get enough rest.

Sometimes he will only sleep 14 hours. I am worried about my baby growing uo nice and strong.