# Puppy suddenly hates crate, advice please.



## lofgren (Sep 25, 2010)

My dog is eight months old. We have had her for four months. We don't know what breed she is but most people guess husky/German shepherd. We have been putting her in the crate at night and when we go out for more than a few minutes since we got her. She has never had any problem with this, and in fact when we call "Bed Time!" she would come running and go in the crate and lie down.

We have never used the crate to punish except when she bit us, when she would go into the crate for five minutes or so. We have not had to do this for a while now, maybe a month and a half.

Everything changed earlier this week. She began whining, at first only occasionally, but then steadily more. Then she started refusing to go into the crate. Now I am up at 2:30 and she has been crying since I put her in the crate when I was preparing to go to bed at 11:30.

The first time she cried for more than an hour (three nights ago) I brought her out of the crate since it was so unusual for her to behave that way and I was concerned there was something wrong. However all she wanted to do was sit on the couch with me and chew her bone, like a little kid who wants to stay up late eating popcorn with her parents. I ended up falling asleep and she did the same.

Since then I have just ignored her, but she whined incessantly last night and the night before, keeping me and my wife awake until around dawn when she finally stopped for an hour or so.

This is getting to be a vicious cycle. She stays up all night crying and then sleeps all day, and then she has a ton of energy at night so she stays up whining. She doesn't want to play in the yard because she is so exhausted. In fact she kept sitting down suddenly and refusing to budge so I cut our normal walk short this morning and brought her home so we could both get a half hour nap in before I started work (my wife and I both work from home). It does not help that I am at my wits' end for lack of sleep, which makes me less interested in keeping her awake as well as stressed out and short-tempered (very bad puppy-training attitude).

Luckily she is pretty well trained otherwise. Not police-dog level, mind you, but she doesn't chew my shoes, she comes when I call, and she gets along with our cats. Mostly. But this is a really bad thing she is doing. My wife has trouble sleeping and has to take sleeping pills, and if she gets woken up then she is up for the rest of the night because she cannot take the pills again the same night. I am afraid I may have to put the pup in the foyer (we share it with neighbors but they are pretty understanding) in order to get her far enough away from the bedroom in our small apartment that she does not disturb my wife. Of course that will not solve the problem and if she starts barking I don't know what we will do…

If anybody can offer any advice it would be hugely appreciated. Once we move in two weeks she can start sleeping in the bedroom with us, but until then she needs to stay in the crate and we need to be able to sleep.


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## theyogachick (Aug 2, 2009)

Ah, you have reached teenage dog years....I am right there with you. The age that a dog suddenly forgets who she was and turns into an evil version of themselves. (Gracie, my 8 month old puppy, has gone back to peeing in her crate during the day on occasion, so I know how baffling this new crate behavior can be...)

Is it possible for you to move the crate to a room farther away from your bedroom (not the foyer?)? That's what we had to do with Gracie...she would whine and bark all night and keep us up. She still gets up and does it from time to time (I know because I tried to move her crate to the living room and she woke me up at 2 AM with barking, so she was promptly moved away again).

You can try covering the crate with a blanket to make it more den like...or put a fun toy in there with her.

If that isn't possible, can you move the crate into the bedroom? I know you said she can sleep in there when you move, but can you start with the crate in there now or is it too small of a space?

I know that crate issues are frustrating (I have had my fair share of them), but you need to stand firm. Do not let her out if she is barking--she only learns that when she barks, she gets out. 

Wear her out before bed if possible (fetch, training, a walk...something). Maybe if she is tired enough she will sleep through the night.

Good luck!


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## lofgren (Sep 25, 2010)

Thanks Yogachick. We definitely put a toy in there with her every night. Unfortunately our apartment is very weird, so the only place she can go that is separated from the bedroom by more than a single door is the foyer. My concern with moving the crate to the bedroom is that the cats may taunt her all night long. They are devious bastards and I don't trust them.

Last night I took her on a short walk before bed to see if that changed anything. Since it is the weekend I will try taking her on a longer hike in the woods and see if that changes anything. Unfortunately all she wants to do once she is out of the crate in the morning is curl up and sleep, and I am right there with her. I never thought I would have the problem of trying to PREVENT the dog from settling down!

I had been warned about puppy teenagers, but other than this crate thing she is not acting out in any way. I guess we will just have to keep our eyes on her.


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## lofgren (Sep 25, 2010)

Well we thought we had found a solution, but last night was the worst ever.

On Saturday and Sunday nights I put her in the crate and sat in the study with her for about half an hour. She whined a bit but then she quieted down and went to sleep. When I left the room she whined a little bit more but again quieted down and went to sleep.

But last night when I left the room she began whining and crying, and got steadily louder and more excited. Finally I returned to the room hoping she would quiet down again, but she didn't. She finally started into this howling yelp, and I swear it sounded like she was being tortured in there, but I didn't even want to look for fear of encouraging her. The performance crescendo-ed around 5 am, and finally died down around 6 am, an hour before I usually let her out. At that point she had been crying for six and a half hours straight.

Can anybody else confirm that they have experienced this before and it is probably just puppy teenage rebellion, or is something else going on here?

If it is rebellion, is it really helping to keep her in there when she obviously does not want to be there? I need to be able to put her in the crate when we go out because I still do not trust her when we are not around, and I do not want her to associate it with torture. I was thinking of sleeping on the couch with her for the rest of the week and then trying again to see if she has gotten over it, but I do not want her to think that she has "won." Another option would be to just lock myself in the study and sleep next to the crate on an air mattress, since she did settle down when I sat with her and only became agitated when I left the room. But again I don't know if that will actually fix the problem, since in the future she will be sleeping at night in the bed with us but needs to be comfortable in the crate while we are gone (so I will not be able to sit with her, obviously).

She managed to wake up our upstairs neighbors and their toddler last night, which led to a conversation I was not excited to have as I stood in the rain this morning waiting for her to pee. I love Fiver to pieces but oh man is she trying me right now.

On the plus side, her behavior around strangers has actually improved in the past few days since she is too exhausted to jump at them. Definitely trying to take advantage of that with lots of praise and treats when she greets people well. If that behavior sticks this past week might actually be worth it.


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## doxiemommy (Dec 18, 2009)

If you don't trust her to be out of the crate when you're gone, then you probably don't trust her to be out at night, right? If not, then she needs to be crated. 
It's possible that part of the problem is the puppy "teenager" stage. It's also possible that something spooked her when she was in her crate and now she is afraid to be in there if you're not around.
If you trust her at night and she is potty trained, you could have her sleep with you (if you're ok with that) or in a dog bed next to your bed. BUT, then, again you said the cats might bug her.

Are you home during the day? I think you need to get her out of the cycle of sleeping during the day and wanting to be up at night. I would suggest taking her on several shorter walks during the day, so that you are keeping her active throughout the day. Then, one longer walk before bed. Hopefully, you can tire her out so that she sleeps. If you can get her so tired that she'll sleep through the night once, maybe you can stay on that schedule until she is consistently sleeping at night!!


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## lofgren (Sep 25, 2010)

Thanks Doxie,

I trust her at night because until this behavior started she would sleep all through the night. She has slept with us a handful of times before on special occasions, and she stayed beside us almost all night except when she got up for a drink of water, which instantly woke me up as well.

I am worried about the cats prodding her when she is in her crate and cannot defend herself. I am less worried about it if she is lying in bed with us. Even the night last week that she spent outside the crate because I was concerned that she was sick (when all of this first started), she hardly moved from the couch.

One thing that might be worth mentioning is that she is afraid of the dark. This was much more serious when she was small, but she still does not like going for walks after dark and if we are out in the woods hiking near sunset she gets very nervous and twitchy. Could this kind of the regress during her teenage phase? Typically I leave my monitor on for about 15 minutes until the screensaver kicks in after I put her to bed, but when she was a little pup we had to leave the light on all night.

I can think of a handful of other things that might have spooked her, but it is pure speculation.

I am home all day but unfortunately lots of short walks does not necessarily jive with my schedule. She gets a walk in the morning, playtime in the afternoon, and then after work ends she gets a long walk and playtime in the backyard. She can go outside on her own during the day if she asks, but she usually just grabs a stick and chews or rolls around on the grass. I can probably add two more short walks to that schedule in the afternoon, plus one right before bed. Her playtime has been lackluster since for obvious reasons she does not much feel like running around.


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## Cracker (May 25, 2009)

Five and a half hours straight is NOT normal. An hour or so, yeah, but most dogs (like babies) will scream/whine themselves into exhaustion and then fall asleep. I would highly suspect you are looking at a juvenile fear stage problem here, especially when you noted that she has trouble with darkness. There is some talk of juvenile myopia occurring and being the cause of juvenile shyness etc. There is a thread here somewhere on DF about it....It is also important to think about the possibility that you are dealing with a health issue, sleep disturbances in humans are often linked to health issues and behaviour is also highly related to chemistry in the body and brain. Maybe a vet check or discussion is in order?

Either way, all of you have to be able to sleep..for your mental and physical health. I would suggest you try a night light again, maybe look into a DAP diffuser and take up with some clicker training sessions (working on shaping and working her BRAIN) to help tire her out, rather than just physical exercise. You can also work in feeding her evening meal in a food dispensing toy (works the brain AND keeps the dog active while she "works for her keep"). You can also try supplementing her with melatonin at night to see if it helps.


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## lofgren (Sep 25, 2010)

Well we all slept soundly last night. I let Fiver sleep on the couch instead of putting her in the crate (with the lights off, even). Since we are planning on letting her sleep in the bedroom once we move in about a week, I will just sleep on the couch with her until then and we will put her in the crate for about two or three hours each day to ensure that it does not start to feel alien to her. This will more accurately simulate those times when we want to be able to use the crate anyway.

I have scheduled a vet appointment just in case. I don't like letting her "win," but if 5 hours straight of whining is truly not normal then I would rather let her sleep outside the crate and make do on the couch than continue to torture her. I fall asleep on the couch more often than I would like to admit anyway, so it's not like it is that big a deal. I just wish I understood why she used to come galloping over to the crate and curl up to go to sleep right away, and suddenly it is this awful ordeal.

Thanks everybody for your suggestions. Really as far as bad behavior goes this was not that big a deal, but try telling that to me when I got maybe twenty minutes of sleep the night before. At that point it felt like a catastrophe.


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## doxiemommy (Dec 18, 2009)

Glad you got some sleep! 
If you are still planning on putting her in the crate for 2-3 hours each day, maybe you could try breaking it up into smaller time periods. That way, she might not get AS worked up, and if she doesn't get as worked up she might not see it as a horrible thing, just something she doesn't like.
So, maybe 30 minutes here, and an hour there (particularly when she's ready for a nap!), etc. But, make sure you don't let her out mid-whine.  Wait for a break in the whining, however brief, even if it's just a few seconds, and let her out then.


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