Hi everyone.
My beautiful pup Elton is a 12 week old mini Groodle. We got him at 9 weeks old. He’s a cheeky bugger and loves his humans very much.
A major problem with little Elton is that he has severe separation anxiety. We have started putting him outside (closed off area with toys, kennel, bed, fake grass pad, food/water, sandpit) for short periods during the day to get used to us not being around and he is fine. Loves to snooze in the sun! However at night time that’s when it is quite bad.
He sleeps in in the laundry. His crate door is always open, has some toys and his fake grass pad. We have tried everything to get him comfortable with his surroundings - he has a dum night light, soft classical music playing, a blanket from his mum/litter, a blanket smelling of me, I spray his crate and blankets with Adaptil, his crate is covered and I even covered the windows to block out any light (he’s an early riser so I thought that might help). NOTHING works and I’ve tried everything. His routine is playtime from 7:00pm - 8pm, dinner roughly between 8-8:30pm, he’ll have a lil snooze on the couch until I put him to bed at 10:30pm.
Every night is different, most nights he will settle within 5 -10 minutes where as tonight it took over half an hour of him yelping and crying like he was being tortured. I know it’s not the crate itself because he does sleep in it, on a good night he will sleep from 10:45pm - 5:30am with no noise. I would love to have him in my room however that’s not an option as it my cats domain and I really don’t want to upset him. It’s been 3 weeks and I thought he would have become adjusted by now.
He is going to puppy school this week so hopefully that helps. Im really struggling with what to do and what approach to take. My family is starting to resent him and I know it’s not his fault but it is getting very hard.
Any advice would be much appreciated!!
Thank you
