Me and my partner adopted a 2 month old puppy. I was gone for 3 weeks so our puppy got used to following my partner around the parts of the house we allow him in. At the beginning we tried having him in a playpen but he quickly realised if he moved enough he could jump over it and escape.
So for now we are doing enforced naps (a godsend, really) and for the hours he is up he’s with us. Pretty soon he will be needing to sleep less hours of the day and we are trying to get him used to a bigger wired crate so that he can’t escape.
He LOATHES it. He stresses himself out so bad that, even given the opportunity to go potty twice before he goes in there, he gets himself worked up to the point where he soils the crate and then splashes around, bouncing off the wires. We can’t leave anything else in there besides a toy. He destroys peepads, towels, even his water bowl.
He’ll settle eventually if we are in the room but if we are still in the house in another room he loses it.
I’m doing Susan Garrett’s crate games, giving him his meals in there, I play with him there, covering the big crate but nothing seems to stick as a positive enforcement.
I should add that he gets mental and physical stimulation at least twice a day everyday.
He is settling really nicely on his small crate where we have him sleeping for every 1-1/2hs he is awake. If I leave his sleeping small crate inside the “playpen” big crate he starts chewing it out of stress.
We wanna make our boy comfortable but it feels like he can’t be trusted with anything nice in there because he will get in the habit of destroying things when left alone.
Any owners or trainers in here that have any advice?
submitted by /u/tkjm94
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