Hello,
My 3 month old labrador has been crate trained ever since we brought him home. He has already mastered sleeping through the night and settles without barking however, when we put him in his crate to go out he barks on and off. Our neighbour complained that he had barked for the whole time we were out (3 hours). We always make sure he is exercised, fed and watered and let out to do his business before he goes into his crate, but he just seems to struggle when he is left alone. My puppy class trainer has said he seems too young for seperation anxiety and to place him in his crate with his kong toy, we tried this and he stayed occupied for about 5 mins then he noticed we had gone out and his barking started.
We have started leaving the room/house for small amount of time with the view to upping the time and we watch him on the camera we bought since our neighbour complained and he will do a mixture of crying and barking but will also settle but then start up again.
Does anyone else have the same problem or any advice? I have asked my neighbour to be patient with us and that we are working on the issue as I believe he will grow out of it or get used to it but it's just a slow process as he is still so young.
Also he never gets attention when he barks in his crate and we are in the room so he already knows he will not be let out of the crate due to barking, he has to stop barking before we let him out which he is fine with.
Thank you x
Barking in crate
Moderators: emmabeth, BoardHost
Re: Barking in crate
I find that odd - my dog didn't like being left from when we got him at 7 weeks, and that's understandable given that he'd always been with his littermates up till then. I've never heard of a lower age limit for SA.Rachael90 wrote:My puppy class trainer has said he seems too young for seperation anxiety
Have a read through this article & thread, and come back if you have any questions: https://positively.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=20143
Hope that helps!
Jasper, lurcher, born December 2009
Re: Barking in crate
The problem is.. he isn't actually crate trained.
Crate trained means that your dog loves going in his crate, automatically settles in there, sleeps, is genuinely relaxed, understands that its time to chill out and wait, and does not bark, whine, cry, or attempt to get out, effectively a properly crate trained dog chooses to go in the crate and not come out until you tell them to come out.
What you have is a dog who just about tolerates being crated but yells in the hope someone will come back, or becuase he hears something or beacuse his bored or lonely - and this is because the method you used to 'crate train' has actually been really 'build up his tolerance to being shut in a crate even though he doesnt really want to be'.
That all might sound like im being super picky but it actually makes a HUGE difference when you train a dog to WANT to be in that crate, as opposed to 'ill just about cope with it but i want to be OUT of the crate'.
He may well also have some degree of separation anxiety - I am with Judy there, there is no 'too young' for sep. anx. and in fact sep. anx. is NORMAL for young dogs, because they genuinely are not built to tolerate enforced separation... they can be alone and function independently when they CHOOSE to do so...
So back to the crate - sit by your crate with the door open and a pot of treats. Chuck in a treat, dog goes in to get it - in your case he probably goes in, gets it comes out then eats it - thats fine, put another treat in there.
When hes NOT in the crate during this session, thats fine, he doesn't get any treats though. Those only happen IN the crate.
At this stage you do not shut the door (in fact shutting the door wont be happening until he can spend half an hour in there with you flitting from room to room, so forget your crate has a door for now! You wont be using it!).. you are just teaching your dog that CHOOSING to be in the crate is rewarding - choosing NOT to be in teh crate is NOT rewarding.
Once you have htat, you build it up to CHOOSING to STAY in the crate -again, no closing the door, this is his choice, not you enforcing it - so he goes in for the treat an dnow you pop another in there - if you are doing this right and he has some smarts he will be pausing in the crate once he ate the treat to see if another will happen - IT WILL - give him another treat. As long as he stands in that crate looking hopeful, you feed treats through the bars.
Build that up gradually, dont try for a minute until he can do five, ten, fifteen seconds.. or thirty seconds, or 5 seconds again.. mix it up so hes not pre-empting you.
Then you build in him going in there with you sat further away,or you stood up, or sat in a chair further away... and repeat the same thing with the duration of him staying in the crate...
And so on,until he will go in there because ou asked, have a treat, stay in there whilst you move around the room or the house.. and come out when you call him out.
And you do not shut him in there against his will again...
And THAT is where the problem arises in fixing a separation anxiety problem, because you are wanting to crate him whilst you go out, before you reach that stage. I would urge you very strongly to hire a dog sitter/dog walker/dog daycare for him to go to, rather than be crated. See if he can come to work, see if you can take some time off.. do whatever is necessary that he is NOT left alone crated.. whilst you crate train him properly.
IF you can do that, you can probably fix this fairly quickly before it gets any worse. If you can't.. best case scenario, you leave him loose whilst you crate train and just put up with whatever damage is done.. worst case, he gets worse, hurts himself in there, your neighbours complain... it WILL take longer if you have to leave him alone whilst you are still training him to cope with being alone, because leaving him alone is going to be undoing the work you are doing in training him to handle being left alone.
I really hate sep. anx. problems because of all the dog behaviour issues in the world, sep. anx. tends to require enormous rearrangement of your life, and sometimes huge expense, to solve, but ignoring it definitely will not help.
It really CAN be fixed, and the training required itself is not hard.. its the management so you can do it without making it worse that is!
Crate trained means that your dog loves going in his crate, automatically settles in there, sleeps, is genuinely relaxed, understands that its time to chill out and wait, and does not bark, whine, cry, or attempt to get out, effectively a properly crate trained dog chooses to go in the crate and not come out until you tell them to come out.
What you have is a dog who just about tolerates being crated but yells in the hope someone will come back, or becuase he hears something or beacuse his bored or lonely - and this is because the method you used to 'crate train' has actually been really 'build up his tolerance to being shut in a crate even though he doesnt really want to be'.
That all might sound like im being super picky but it actually makes a HUGE difference when you train a dog to WANT to be in that crate, as opposed to 'ill just about cope with it but i want to be OUT of the crate'.
He may well also have some degree of separation anxiety - I am with Judy there, there is no 'too young' for sep. anx. and in fact sep. anx. is NORMAL for young dogs, because they genuinely are not built to tolerate enforced separation... they can be alone and function independently when they CHOOSE to do so...
So back to the crate - sit by your crate with the door open and a pot of treats. Chuck in a treat, dog goes in to get it - in your case he probably goes in, gets it comes out then eats it - thats fine, put another treat in there.
When hes NOT in the crate during this session, thats fine, he doesn't get any treats though. Those only happen IN the crate.
At this stage you do not shut the door (in fact shutting the door wont be happening until he can spend half an hour in there with you flitting from room to room, so forget your crate has a door for now! You wont be using it!).. you are just teaching your dog that CHOOSING to be in the crate is rewarding - choosing NOT to be in teh crate is NOT rewarding.
Once you have htat, you build it up to CHOOSING to STAY in the crate -again, no closing the door, this is his choice, not you enforcing it - so he goes in for the treat an dnow you pop another in there - if you are doing this right and he has some smarts he will be pausing in the crate once he ate the treat to see if another will happen - IT WILL - give him another treat. As long as he stands in that crate looking hopeful, you feed treats through the bars.
Build that up gradually, dont try for a minute until he can do five, ten, fifteen seconds.. or thirty seconds, or 5 seconds again.. mix it up so hes not pre-empting you.
Then you build in him going in there with you sat further away,or you stood up, or sat in a chair further away... and repeat the same thing with the duration of him staying in the crate...
And so on,until he will go in there because ou asked, have a treat, stay in there whilst you move around the room or the house.. and come out when you call him out.
And you do not shut him in there against his will again...
And THAT is where the problem arises in fixing a separation anxiety problem, because you are wanting to crate him whilst you go out, before you reach that stage. I would urge you very strongly to hire a dog sitter/dog walker/dog daycare for him to go to, rather than be crated. See if he can come to work, see if you can take some time off.. do whatever is necessary that he is NOT left alone crated.. whilst you crate train him properly.
IF you can do that, you can probably fix this fairly quickly before it gets any worse. If you can't.. best case scenario, you leave him loose whilst you crate train and just put up with whatever damage is done.. worst case, he gets worse, hurts himself in there, your neighbours complain... it WILL take longer if you have to leave him alone whilst you are still training him to cope with being alone, because leaving him alone is going to be undoing the work you are doing in training him to handle being left alone.
I really hate sep. anx. problems because of all the dog behaviour issues in the world, sep. anx. tends to require enormous rearrangement of your life, and sometimes huge expense, to solve, but ignoring it definitely will not help.
It really CAN be fixed, and the training required itself is not hard.. its the management so you can do it without making it worse that is!
West Midlands based 1-2-1 Training & Behaviour Canine Consultant