Crate Training Feels Impossible

I’ve read every crate training problem post on this page at this point, but we have been doing every single thing it says to do on every post, video, forum, chat GPT we can find and none of it is working. I refuse to give up on the crate because I know how important it is when they’re older for boarding and travel purposes.

Our puppy is 10 weeks old. She is husky, so we know she’s vocal about her frustrations. I do not have an issue ignoring her. I work in landscaping so it’s my off season, so I have spent all day every day for the last 2 weeks with her. We have not left her alone yet. We tried a wire crate, but because she bites at it so bad, we bought a standard plastic crate for safety reasons. This is an issue with day-time crate training not just night.

Training has been coming fairly easy to her. Potty training is going well, she know sit, lay down, kennel, come, and no. The issue is staying in the crate. When we realized she is a full-blown crate panicker, we started taking things super slow. We leave the door open and she’ll go in and out on her own, we have her eating all her meals in there, we’ve slowly closed the door for a few seconds giving treats and then building time up with the door closed. We have the crate in a room we move through so she’s not alone. And those are just a few of the things we’ve been doing every day for weeks. When I say there is not a single piece of advice we haven’t tried in the past 2 weeks, I mean it. It doesn’t matter. If we close the door for more than a few seconds and aren’t sitting there with the bag of treats consistently feeding her or if she doesn’t have a frozen Kong or carrot, we are in full-blown panic. I had to build a plexiglass door because she got her jaw stuck in the front door. She claws at it, bites at it, pants, and screams unrelenting for over an hour. It also absolutely makes no difference to her if I’m next to the crate, laying on top of the crate, or in a completely different room. We recently just tried to let her scream it out because this gentle-parenting is not working. She will take breaks for a few seconds where I give her treats and praise, but then it’s right back to the panic. It usually gets to the point where she won’t even eat the treats anymore. She will finally pass out after about an hour from pure exhaustion, but then it’s back to panic once she’s up. Covering the crate also makes no difference.

She can not be left alone in the house during the day because there is no way to confidently puppy proof our older mountain home. We have a play pen that we use for night time, but it has mesh sides, so I’m worried that if we leave her unattended for too long, she’ll rip it and escape.

I’m at the point of just letting her scream during the day and leaving her anyways. I can’t constantly take her with me every time when I need to go to the office or a meeting and rely on my best friend/coworker to watch her. I’m home 90% of the time but I am still meeting with clients about once a week and have an office meeting I need to be at every Tuesday. I know that’s not what you “should” do, but I know she’s safe in there and I won’t have to constantly worry about walking back into a destroyed home and an injured baby.

Thoughts?