Hi all.
Our chihuahua puppy is just over four months old now. We’ve had him for over 7 weeks.
He’s a great little pup and overall settling in well. He seems to have ‘grown up’ a lot post vs pre Christmas.
Now we’re back to our work routine, I want to aim towards letting him just exist in our home. By that I mean teach him how to be happy pottering around a puppy safe area whilst we work.
Our office is attached to our living room via a small internal hallway. My plan is to let pup free roam in the puppy proofed living room and hallway/office whilst we work and go about our day. My goal is to be able to go to the gym, which takes me door to door 2 hours, whilst my partner works undisturbed. Sounds simple right?…
We trialed this yesterday and it was not… somehow pup ended up doing everything he shouldn’t. Things like escaping out of baby gates, chewing things he shouldn’t, just overall being unsettled. And I thought we had puppy proofed this place well!
He has his crate, chews, water, toys, beds, he’s welcome to sleep on our laps. I don’t mind what he does as long as he’s not being trouble! I’m not sure if this behaviour is attention seeking as after two hours of my partner being constantly interrupted, he sat him on his lap and he fell asleep content.
I need some semblance of a life back now! I’m not expecting him to suddenly be a grown up dog, but I need to work towards a couple of hours a day of independent time. If you sat in the living room with him all day (my whole existence currently…) he will happily nap on/next to you and play, but once we’re like ‘hey we’ve got to go an do this now’ he’s acting up.
We’ve done this to ourselves I know… but when he was smaller he basically lived an existence of pen/crate and being physically with us. How do we teach him to settle and have some independence?
My plan for today is to puppy proof even more and sit in the office this afternoon with low expectations that I will be constantly getting up every 30 seconds.
Any tips are much appreciated!
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