HannahCarney

Hello! Our 12 week old Cavachon picked up on her training really quickly and now we feel that she is hitting a bit of a roadblock... She is a very mouthy dog and we are really trying to train her not to nibble on us. She seems to get so excited and will lunge towards our faces and try to nip our noses. It's all in a very playful manner but after a "yip" and firm no and us ignoring her for a moment she still doesn't seem to associate that she is not supposed to do that. Any tips to help reduce this mouthyness? We also have been working on sit and lay down. She was amazing with sit and seemed really solid to move on to lay down. Once she had lay down we started to do a combination of the two back to back. Now, for some reason, when we give the sit command she'll go straight into lay down even with the different verbal and hand cue. We try to guide her nose up using a treat but she'll just stand, we try again, and then lays down. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this? We can't really progress with her training until we get this down but seem to hit a major stopping point.

Hello! Just an update... She can now get through the night without whining/crying which is amazing! She is starting to gain some independence and likes to venture into our back yard by herself for about 20 min before looking for us but otherwise she want's to be glued to our side. We have a XL crate between our work desks that acts as her playpen while we work. Unfortunately, it seem slick she get's extremely upset being alone in her crate even though we are right next to her. It typically takes about 10-15 min and she'll eventually tire herself out and falls asleep. Is this something you'd consider over her threshold? She's fine being alone sometimes and goes down in her sleeping create just fine. We aren't sure if she's anxious in the crate or she just wants to play. Thoughts?

Hi Adrienne, She is improving really quickly! We have it down to one outing/night and have avoided all accidents in her crate at night. For the most part she has potty training done but sometimes she has days where she seems to understand going outside to go potty but will sometimes choose to go inside. Sounds like more work and reinforcement?

Hello! I have an 8 week old Cavachon puppy at home. She's been with us for about 4 days now and are noticing some anxiety-related issues that we are trying to identify as between attention seeking or separation anxiety... She was given anti anxiety medicine to help ease her into the adjustment of the new home/being away from mom but it doesn't seem to help out a ton. We notice that she'll occasionally whine when in her crate but we have to be in the room for her to remain calm. Once we leave the room, in her crate or in the kitchen, she absolutely loses it and whines/barks. It's hard to tell if this is attention seeking, separation anxiety, or she needs our attention because she has to go to the bathroom. She has eliminated multiple times when she is whining and we can't quite tell if she was trying to get our attention to go potty outside or if this is separation anxiety signs. Usually the whining/barking starts, gets very loud, and lasts for 5-10 minutes before she settles down. We aren't 100% sure what the cause is of this behavior but want to solve it soon. It's heart breaking to listen to and ignore it. We did get her the Snuggle Puppy with the heart beat and that does seem to help, however, we aren't sure this is a long-term solution to her anxiety problems. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations. Thank you!

Thank you so much! That’s super helpful. I actually got the snuggle pup last night before we put her down. That paired with the alarms to take her out went really well. She only had 1 accident right before bed which is awesome!

I absolutely love your platform and it's so helpful with puppy training. I have a quick question. So our new puppy is very sweet and very new (day 4). We are working hard at potty training. However, I think it's hard to go about this correctly. Many people say to crate train them immediately (she is 8 weeks) but we can't keep her in the crate overnight without accidents (which we don't want her associating potty break with ehr crate). We would just hold off on the crate training until she has bladder control but the only way to keep her from whining at night. When we keep her in the kitchen alone she just whines all night. The only way we could get her to stop was to place her crate in our room near us then she'd stay quiet for the majority of the night. Would you have a recommendation for this? Typically the recommendation for reducing dog anxiety is a crate but she seems too young because of the lack of bladder control. It seems to be a cycle of contradictions with a tough solution. Any suggestion would be much appreciated. Again, I love your program and I can't wait to continue little Rhea's training and hopefully get her to be a licensed therapy dog. Looking forward to hearing from you! Hannah Carney