Trial and Error

[prosodic]

Our couple of nights with Reece so far have been pretty dramatic.

We crated her on Saturday night and then went to bed. After she watched us retreat into the bedroom, the whining started. Then the crying. Then the full-on howling.

At that point, I was worried about it disturbing the neighbors. So we came out and sat outside her crate until she calmed down and went to sleep, and then we snuck off to bed, leaving the living room light on.

Around 4:30 AM Sunday morning, I got a leg cramp and jumped out of bed. I tried to be as quiet as possible, but she heard me, and the whining started again. So Lance went out and slept on the couch until I woke up for good.

Yesterday morning, we found that she had pottied in her crate overnight, so we washed her crate liner.

We left the house yesterday for about 90 minutes without it being super traumatic for her. We went to Home Depot and Target and she seemed to be really good when we left and when we came back.

Last night, we got out a radio and put it on easy listening. We put her in her crate and stayed with her until she drifted off to sleep. There was a minimal amount of whining and crying.

We set the alarm for 2 so that I could get up and let her out in the middle of the night, something we had overlooked doing the first night. The process then started all over again...once we got her back in the crate, the whining, crying, barking, howling, etc. Lance ended up spending the rest of the night on the couch while I went back to bed.

I leave for work in about 45 minutes and I'm not sure how to handle it. Lance leaves before I do, but she's a Mommy's girl anyway. It's much less traumatic for her when Lance is out of the house. I have a Kong, and I plan to fill it with peanut butter and put it in her crate (she also has a water bottle attached to her crate). And I hope that will keep her occupied enough that she won't notice that I'm leaving. That's probably wishful thinking. Lance will be coming home at 11 to let her out and give her some exercise. He's going to change his work shift to work from 6-2:30 so she'll be alone less during the day.

So far, injuries sustained by me are minor, but numerous. Reece thinks that Mommy's arms and fingers are chew toys, and I have bite marks all up and down my arms. Plus, I was prying a piece of mulch out of her mouth last night (she loves eating mulch and grass) and got a really nasty splinter on my left index finger.

Welcome to Puppy Parenthood, I guess.

Comments

[just--a--girl.livejournal.com]

We have had the same EXACT problem with crating, whining, crying, howling, barking... I would really look into a collar to control that. It has done WONDERS for us. Each and every single time we crated our dogs, they would cry and howl for a good 10-20 minutes after we left them in the room by themselves or whenever we left the house. We picked up two static collars (shock collars) and they stopped it the second we started using it on them. However, since you have a pup, I'm sure you don't want to shock her, so why not try a citronella (http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2751019) collar? Same desired results, less traumatic and harmful. We're actually thinking of switching to citronella ourselves for the pup's.