We have a 4.5 month miniature dachshund, and he’s such a sweetheart. We love him dearly! I just think we have made some mistakes with his early development and I feel so guilty about setting him up for failure when it comes to separation, especially since he’s a breed that can be prone to separation anxiety it seems.
My husband and I work from home (but I’m very recently unemployed so I have even more time at home than I used to). We’ve been crate training him and he almost always sleeps throughout the night with no fuss, but it’s obvious that his crate isn’t his favourite place (which would be on our laps at all times or melded into our skin). For the first month and a half to two months with us, he was peeing every half an hour which was difficult to manage. For a bit he’d even pee in his crate if he woke up and we didn’t get him right away, so we got into the habit of listening for his whine and then taking him out of his crate so he wouldn’t pee… there are obvious issues with this, as now he expects to be taken out of the crate, even though he can now hold his pee for longer.
His naps in the crate are usually only 45 minutes to an hour, and sometimes an hour and a half. This obviously isn’t enough time for us as a couple to leave the house together for any length of time, and we feel that we’ve messed up by not giving him more enforced alone time. This is also noticeable when he’s out of the crate (whether in his play pen or wandering on our upper floor with supervision), and if we leave his sight, he usually cries if he can’t see us. I’ve been trying to leave the room or through the front door for 30 seconds or a minute then coming back to slowly start training that alone time, but since it’s not very good yet and he can’t be trusted around the house with his biting and chewing everything, we were hoping we could start waving him in the crate for slightly longer periods of time.
Since we’ve messed up by taking him out when he whines for fear that he’d have an accident in the crate, what’s the best way to start training him to stay in there even after he wakes up? I know he can hold it for a bit longer, but he also has a tiny bladder and still has accidents if he’s awake and he wait too long, like an hour and a half or so. Potty training has been tough because he doesn’t care about treats. He also gets lonely and bored and just cries if we don’t come and get him from the crate. I assume we should just ignore him in there until a set time, but maybe it would be better to slowly work up to that? Leave him after he wakes up for 5 minutes, then get him, and slowly start increasing the time? I’m honestly not sure.
Sorry for the ramble, I’m sure there’s a few things in here that we may be doing wrong, but I adore this little guy so much and want him to start feeling more confident being alone. It’s hard when we’re both at home all the time, and he’s also so damn cute and cuddly that I just want to spend all of my time around him. If you have some advice please let me know, and please no judgement… this is the first puppy I’ve raised and I really want to do right by him.
Thank you!
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