Crate Training

Today’s post is much more difficult to write courtesy of Harvey.

No, he isn’t being bad, he’s actually being a little love-bug. In fact, the reason this is so hard to write is because he snuggled up next to me on the couch and despite the fact that I was already typing, proceeded to fall asleep on my wrist. So every tap of the keys moves his little head, but he is sleeping soundly through all the movement.

He's such a sweet boy!

Josh and I got super lucky with this little guy. We have only had him for a little over 3 days and he’s been such a joy.

It has been so fun watching him discover new things about his new home, and also learn how to manage his own body. For example, our apartment has hard floors and because he is so soft, when he sits down he spends most of the time trying to keep from sliding backwards.

I have also been loving his constant desire to be in our company and get cuddled. No matter what we are doing, he finds a way to wriggle his body close to ours. Whether its nap time on the couch or following us from room to room as we go about our day, he loves to be where we are.

Unfortunately, his constant need to be with us has also been the source of some training difficulty. Because he is still so young and teething, we have decided to crate train him. That way anytime we have to leave we know he isn’t getting into trouble.

As you can imagine, he isn’t fond of that.

Starting Monday, we worked on getting him acclimated. He would go in and check it out, grab whatever toy we put in there, and then quickly leave. If we locked the door, he would start to whine and then let out this horrendous round of barking. It was terrible. And according to everything you read, you aren’t supposed to let them out when they whine or bark because that teaches them to keep doing it until you cave.

So I hit the internet. I watched videos, read training blogs, and basically scoured for any information that would be the “magic bullet” to stop the barking.

Monday’s training didn’t go well, even though we only tried a few times and not for very long stints. (We live in an apartment and I am so anti being a bad neighbor with the obnoxious dog). But yesterday we had to figure something out because we are a part of a Tuesday night volleyball league.

I spent all day worrying about how we would break his barking habit and wondering how we would ever be able to leave the apartment together again. I tried multiple methods, interrupting the barking with a loud noise and giving a command, ignoring the dog while he barked, only giving attention when he was quiet, etc. Nothing was working. We tried 5 different times while Josh was at work yesterday and each time, I ended up feeling even more defeated.

Once Josh got home, we made another attempt. This time we would let him cry it out. We fed him dinner in his crate (like the trainers say to do) and left the room. Together we listened from our bedroom for 15 minutes until he finally stopped barking and crying. It was torture for me. But I couldn’t have been happier that he finally stopped. We let him out and rewarded him for being quiet.

Then came the real test, leaving for volleyball. Because I have this burning desire to not come home to hateful letters from neighbors, we decided that we would leave one phone on the counter and bring the other with us so we could make sure he wouldn’t drive our neighbors crazy for the hour we were gone. That way worst case scenario if he wouldn’t stop someone could come home and handle it.

As luck would have it, our little plan didn’t exactly work out. We listened to him bark for our entire drive and then somehow the phones got disconnected. All I could imagine was neighbors banging on our door (even though I ran into most of them during the day and told them we would be crate training and to bear with us and everyone was totally fine with it, in fact they said they hadn’t been hearing any barking. They were definitely lying to be polite).

Thankfully, when we arrived home an hour later it was silent in our apartment. Harvey had fallen asleep and didn’t even start his barking rampage again when he heard us come home. I was so happy! I know that the one time isn’t going to be the cure-all. And that he will probably have to bark it out several more times until he learns that we will come back, but it’s comforting to know he doesn’t carry on for the entire time we leave.

So hopefully, our training experience in the crate department is encouraging. I know it was helpful to hear from other people who said they had the same or similar crate experiences.  Now, hopefully our first visit to the vet goes well today… wish us luck!