Sky is not happy with the crate/pen, advice needed.

I need some serious help with my little pup guys/girls. At the moment she is 11.5 weeks old.....

I've had her since Thursday last week, and she seems to be a really loving dog following me around constantly. She absolutely adores attention and fuss, and seems to be always want to be next to me. However at night I really don't know what is happening.

At the moment I've been working night shifts and I have no option but to put the dog in the crate, in the hope that she will just sleep whilst I'm not there. Yet to give the dog more freedom, I've bought a pen from ebay and inside that I put her crate with the door open. I hoped that this would give Sky more room and she wouldn't be unhappy.

To make sure she settled I even set up a Camera that I could view from my iphone. It showed the dog, barking and howling like mad and even pushing the pen into all different shapes (Yes it does not anchor) When I say howling it was almost like she is being murdered. After about 1hr (sometimes quite a few hrs) she seems to settle and go sleep. When I get in at 7am, I find the pen in another shape, and poo & wee all over the place. This has had happened for the past four days I've not been here. . I have put various toys in, newspaper down, and even gave her a Kong.

The times I am at home she does exactly the same whilst I am upstairs. This has resorted in my taking the crate upstairs into my room and putting it where she can see the bed. Once she can see me , and I say in a firm voice "NO, THAT'S ENOUGH" does she give it a rest. Again I get a few moments of crying and howling, but nothing major.

To top it off, I even recorded her doing a great escape from the pen. I didn't know they could climb so well at such a young age. All in all i've had a Staffy pup before, but she never seemed to have such an issues with the crate. Just feel a bit lost as to what to do :-(


Any help would be more than appreciated

James.

Hi James. She is in a new situation so needs to learn the rules. If your neighbours don't complain just let her play it out. Eventually she will realise that being alone is okay.

What do you do before you leave her by the way? Many people make the mistake of making a fuss of the dog because they think that the dog will be happy having had a fuss made, but its quite the opposite. If you know you are going to work, i would walk her (or play outside if her jabs are still to come) and then come inside and maybe feed in her pen. Hopefullly she would then be tired and full and very happy to just go to sleep! But you need to make sure you are giving no attention for a good 15 mins before you leave so that she goes into a calm state. don't even look at her. Good luck!

as for the poo and wee, shes only a little thing so unless you can take her out every 30mins all day and night she will have accidents until her bladder gets a little bigger!

Yeah I'm going to nip to the neighbours now and just let them know that she is a puppy and apologise if its a little noisy.

Before I leave her I tend to give her the final feed about an hour before I go work, let her go toilet straight after food, and then before I put her in crate and thats it. Prior to going to work she is probably lying on the sofa with me.

I never really thought about feeding her in the crate? I tried to avoid that so she didn't soil in there, but with the space of the pen I can always put more paper down.

I have tried leaving light, TV on but none of that helps either. I'm thinking maybe I need to make the pen more sturdy so she doesn't feel like it's weak and escapable.