Hi, pup is doing good 5months old now settled well in corner of bedroom near my bed from 10:30pm till a tad early for my liking 5:30am as i dont go up till later but cant have it all :) anyway we have decided We no longer want the crate in our room one he wakes if i move or want the loo in the night,2 hubby comes in from work at 5:30am and he wants up when he hears him get into bed so im thinking on trying to get him back down the stairs. Dilemma here is if i put him in the kitchen noone can enter there after he is in bed amd if i choose loving room we stay up late on a weekend. I did try him down here one night last week but i literallt just went straight to bed and he went nuts as expected so should i sleep on the sofa and have him in the living room or put crate innthe kitchen? Either way he is still going to hear hubby enter the house at 5:30am but if down here i can stand my ground and not give into him where as if hes up i have to let him out and come down cause hubby needs to sleep permanent nights you see and my adult kids are sleeping also have work early? Any ideas would be appreciated he is so lovely with all else just his sleeping he is a male f2 cavachon 5-51/2months old

Thankyou

Does he have to go to bed before the family ? I would put him to bed when who ever goes to bed last
if it's later than 10.30 he might learn to to stay asleep until past 5.30  .as for the best place  the   u know your house and household

We have done that too he still wakes at the exact same time :)

We have done that too he still wakes at the exact same time :)
Just wanted peoples thoughts on how to get him to sleep down stairs again without creating after being in our room till now.

Could you put him on the bed with you when he wakes up? He may then settle and go back to sleep - my girl, who’s a similar age to yours gets up at about 6 and if we’re sleeping in then I open her crate and let her come up on the bed with us and the potential other dogs that have migrated in the night! She will settle straight away and go back to sleep if everyone continues to sleep…we will of course eventually go back to our early mornings but for the time being we want her getting used to lying in and cuddles with us always encourage that - although some may be against it, it works for us…after all the sole purpose of getting a super king size bed was so that the dogs can join us, ironically leaving me and the partner less room in the bed not more the dogs still want to be wedged right up next to us !!

I would love to try that problem is our bed is very high wood floor too so if he which he loves to do jumps off he would seriously hurt himself, that worries me hence why i haven't allowed him to get on the bed that and the fact if he was by hubbys feet he could also potentially get booted off accidentally of course.

What are your’e thoughts on a larger crate? I have a feeling he just wants out to stretch as he falls straight back to sleep on the living room floor but by then I'm wide awake lol might be worth a try he is toilet trained so i might try it its more space for him to wriggle about as he is a fidget

Do you have him sleeping in the crate during the day ? If so I would keep moving the crate to different locations to sleep through the day. It sounds like he has a bit of FOMO. Moving the crate around will get him used to settling in different locations which will help with the move out of the bedroom, you could also move it about in the bedroom. It will gently interrupt the routine hes got into. Ive done this with my boy to work on his separation issues. Its worked wonders he now sees his crate as the safe place no matter where it is and settles.

He sleeps in a bed in his pen downstairs he used to have the crate there but he really didnt take to it daytime at all but i will give it a go moving around as you suggest thanks

Why not have his sleep in his pen at night if he has the space in that.

Maybe I'm a tough dog owner but I dictate where my digs sleep, if they kick up any fuss then I ignore unless I know its needing the loo. They sleep where I tell them to. I don't and won't pander to their needs. If it means a few noisy nights then so be it, they need to get used to what I want not what they want.

Thankyou for the advice i wish i was a tough as you hes very attached and the cavalier side screams are horrendous! He keeps the whole house and neighbours awake so its difficult for me when people have work etc. the pen stays down as its to big and if im not around he even attempts to try to climb it and will get hurt so im losing the will i dont work anymore so im home all the time but if i do have to go out i have to get someone to stay with him or all hell breaks loose and he gets really very stressed.

I think you need to work with a behaviourist on his separation anxiety, by never leaving him you are setting him up to fail. Get yhe behaviourist in to draw up a plan which is tailored to your dog and set up. Your dog needs to learn he can cope without someone being in the home. This is no way to live for either of you.
You need to get it that you can go to the shops for a few hours at least with him being left alone. What happens if he ever needs to stay at the vets or end up in kennels or a home boarder(they too will need to leave the dogs here and there to go about their business). Same with dog sitters.

So best thing I can suggest is working ASAP on his separation anxiety which is what he has.

Have you trained him to go to bed in his crate?

I am always amazed that some people think just putting a dog in a crate teaching it that it is rewarding to the dog

I love the Kikopup videos on crate training simple, but so effective

Of course! i have trained him he is fed in there treated in there everything good happens in the crate! He is the most needy breed ive owned lol lovely but needy i had bichons before had seperation anxiety but could be left for a few hours or while i was upstairs etc i shut the doors now when i leave the room as so he cant follow me as he is my shadow and i want him to have his own independence. I come on here as some of the advice really helps.

Just to clarify hes perfect in the crate if in same room but if i leave all hell breaks loose we have left him for a good half hour the screaming continues i dont get a chance to enter when its quiet which is the issue maybe im to soft! But he screams like a banshee and doesnt seem to give in plus i dont want him to start hating the crate where i left him in it to scream?

SA can take a long time to crack which is why you need professional help, so you are building time up, so 30 seconds, 1 minute etc. He sounds like he has an extreme case, was he ever left alone as a baby puppy, so you going out for an hour here and there or has someone always been with him as usually SA kicks in because he's never learnt to be left alone.

Unfortunatley with covid issues etc someone has been working from home most of the time and when they are not someone else was home so hes never learnt to be left alone so i am really needing to get him used to it before he gets much older. So mostly my fault not his bless him

Sadly without realising it is us as owners which create/allow this to happen and its been very common in puppies born during the pandemic. You do need professional advice to deal with it correctly but don't be in any rush as doing it right is not a quick fix

River was similar as a puppy, when he first came home I had to literally sit right next to the crate with my body touching it or he’d cry like he was actually dying. He was used to a crate from his breeder’s, but he’d never been alone without another dog to snuggle with if he wanted to, and he was convinced if I went away for even a second he was in mortal danger.

It makes sense if you think about it, if you look at wild dogs they wouldn’t leave the family group until sexual maturity or even later, definitely not at 8 or 12 weeks. A puppy that young left alone would quickly be eaten by a predator and the instinct to cry and get mum to come back is very strong. They genuinely fear for their lives.

Unfortunately that instinct isn’t very convenient for a puppy in a human household so we have to teach them that it’s fine if we leave, that they’re safe, that we’ll come back. I also recommend getting professional help from a force-free trainer, not someone who will say to just let them cry it out. That leads to an insecure dog that doesn’t trust you’ll respond to their needs and keep them safe.

River is okay to be left now, in fact even though me and my partner are both at home all day I make sure he has at least an hour in his crate/pen by himself with no humans in the room every single day. I want him to be used to being confined and left, because if he has to be hospitalised or boarded some time he won’t have constant company. It will be much less stressful for him if he can relax by himself.

And speaking of relaxing, you might want to look on YouTube for Kikopup’s Capturing Calmness. This really helps a dog to learn that they can actively choose to relax themselves and control their arousal level. It’s been incredibly useful for my always-alert-scared-of-missing-something active little papillon, he still isn’t very good at it but he’s so much better than he was! Licking and chewing and sniffing activities help to calm them too.

> 30 seconds

He might need even shorter if he’s really bad, depends how long before he reacts. Some dogs can’t cope with even 5 seconds so you’d have to go for even shorter intervals that they CAN cope with and gradually build it up.

With Riv as a newly-arrived pup it took me a while to even get as far as the door without him losing it, never mind leaving and shutting it on him. He didn’t have separation anxiety but he’d clearly never been alone and he just panicked. He’s good for about 4 hours now if necessary, and he could go longer if that wasn’t about the limit for his tiny bladder!

Another good training video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVIpYWnsM8A

Building on Silverleaf79’s suggestion that he may need a “security companion”, could you get a large (sibling-size) soft toy for him, put your own scent on it (maybe cuddle it for an hour or so) and let him have it in the crate with him.

When my cocker was a young pup he had this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pet-Love-Fruit-Softee-Benny-Banana/dp/B001QSBSQ0/ and three others from the range*, (they’re machine washable, so he was never bereft when one was in the wash). They became objects to snuggle up to, to wrangle with, to pounce on.

Eventually (several months) they were ripped up, but by that time he was old enough and confident enough to know that he was safe alone.

* “Other large soft toys are available.!”

Hi i did purchase the heartbeat dog teddy but that doesnt work lol he will happily go in the crate and settle when here its when i go out of sight ive been gradually extending length and treating but boy oh boy can he scream at times

> <br />He might need even shorter if he’s really bad, depends how long before he reacts. Some dogs can’t cope with even 5 seconds so you’d have to go for even shorter intervals that they CAN cope with and gradually build it up

Agree.. if he can't manage 30 seconds then it is a really serious matter which needs addressing asap

> in fact even though me and my partner are both at home all day I make sure he has at least an hour in his crate/pen by himself with no humans in the room every single day. I want him to be used to being confined and left, because if he has to be hospitalised or boarded some time he won’t have constant company. It will be much less stressful for him if he can relax by himself.

Such a good idea, shall start to do this.

If you're on facebook, try this group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118337983401724

It's an SA support group specifically for puppies, run by an SA specialist trainer.  She's really good.

I was just thinking about crate stuff this morning, and realised something about River.

I set up a little pen for him in the living room when he had his knee surgery in June, because I didn’t want him to have to step over the little bit of wire under the door of the crate, plus I thought he’d appreciate move room to move around and shift position more easily with two sore knees. I put the crate back later on but attached the pen to it because he prefers the extra space.

Since he’s had the pen “extension” he’s almost exclusively chosen to sleep and rest in the pen area and treated the crate like it pretty much doesn’t exist - he’ll go in if I cue him, but not of his own accord.

The last few weeks though, I’ve been cueing him to “crate” quite frequently and rewarding him, then releasing into the pen with his “free” cue. Sometimes I use the release as a reward, sometimes I ask him to crate while I open up the pen and then release into the house. He very quickly twigged that going in the crate is a way to get rewards out of me and started offering it if he knew I had food, or if he wanted to come out - it’s like he’s giving me a cue that he wants something!

The interesting thing is that doing this kind of work with him has transferred value to the crate. He’s starting to choose to rest in there even when there are no obvious rewards available for him to earn - I’ve come back into the room after he’s had alone time and he’s been happily settled in there, he clearly wasn’t doing it to ask for anything because there was no one there to ask! So now I occasionally reward him for being in there whether I’ve asked or not, and that positive association is getting stronger and stronger. I’m going to build it up even more by playing more crate/free games, building up a cue from a distance, building duration, etc.