I've just adopted a sweet little 2.5 year old Tibetan Spaniel from an animal shelter (literally just like a week ago). I pretty much have him house trained (just one accident and it was my fault for being too slow to take him out), and we have a good schedule for taking him out for potty breaks and long walks so he doesn't go inside. Once in the morning, once afternoon, and once in the evening before bed. He's pretty tired out after all of these, and by night he is so tired he doesn't even want to play with this toys. He goes into his crate just fine now that I've started to cover it with a blanket and feed him his meals in there. He even voluntarily goes in there throughout the day when he wants to take a nap! But in the mornings he'll start whining and then barking a few more minutes after that if we don't let him out right away. He's in there about 7 hours overnight. Is that too long??? Is that why he's whining so much? We have one person in the house who wakes up 2 hours before the dog (they work really early) and leaves at the same time the dog starts freaking out in the crate. Could that be connected with why the dog starts to get upset??
This is my first dog and all the training is going well except for this part. I've read in a lot of places that you shouldn't let the dog out until they're calm again to keep from reinforcing this behaviour but I'm afraid my dog will hurt himself in there.
What should I do? Is there any way to fix this? It's leaving me super exhausted throughout the day!
dogs are much easier.