Hello! This post is very long because I wanted to share any information possibly necessary to help you guys help me out. I summarized it at the end. Thanks in advance!!
We brought home our mostly angelic Maple about 3 weeks ago. She is a 12 week old Havanese. Training is going mostly really great! We are having lots of success — minimal potty accidents, learning basic obedience, our bond is getting stronger every day — but we are having a weird crate issue! From day one, she has slept AMAZINGLY in her crate, covered with a blanket and listening to white noise. She takes about 4 2-hour naps per day with mostly no issues, except that she cannot settle in her crate on her own.
We have been doing tether training from the second week that we brought her home, which is going great. Depending on how energetic she is, she will settle and fall asleep in between 5 and 20 minutes of tethering. Once she falls asleep, we move her into her crate and she goes right to sleep without fail. HOWEVER, if we try to crate her without doing the tethering routine, she will scream and cry literally endlessly. (I don't remember this being a problem the first few days she was home with us, but she was obviously very overwhelmed and tired then from the new environment.)
(For example, I have an essay I need to work on today so my partner hung out with her and took her on a nice walk, then brought her home and crated her before they left for work. She *seemed* to settle for a minute, and then started screaming. I am really trying not to let her associate screaming with freedom but I also don't want her to associate the crate with screaming, so after about 15 minutes, I waited for a lull in the crying, took her to potty, and put her back in the crate, and she started screaming again. I took her potty another 15 minutes later during a quiet moment, and she started screaming again. I waited another 10 minutes, took her out of the crate, tethered her, and she was asleep within 5 minutes, so she was obviously exhausted!!! I put her back in the crate, and now she's sleeping soundly.)
We are continuously working on positively conditioning the crate. We feed her lots of good things in there, we work on laying down calmly to be let out, etc, and it seems to be working! She generally likes her crate and will pop in and out of it on her own throughout the day! I'm not sure how to fix this particular issue.
TLDR; My puppy sleeps great in the crate, but only if we tether her first and let her get really sleepy before we put her in. Otherwise, she will scream and whine endlessly. Seeking tips on how to help her with this! Happy to answer any questions!
submitted by /u/sharkpencil
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