CAITLIN FITZGERALD

Great, thank you for all this information! She stopped acting sick shortly after my last post so we’re just going to watch her and I’ll set up a camera. I am pretty certain she forgot to pee. She is only territorial with the cats when they walk around her while she eats or chews high value treats and the amount of urine was wayyy too much to be one of the cats. The jumping on the couch is playful. She will play with the cats who always start it but then they walk away so she starts chasing them to keep the play going. They’ll run to the couch to escape and she follows them. I will not risk confusing her so we’ll just keep her off the couch. Thanks again! 🙂

Actually, I am starting to think maybe it was a UTI now or something medical after all because she vomited this morning and hasn't touched her breakfast yet. I'll take her to the vet. Also, upon considering further, we don't know if she peed when she was outside with the kids so she may have forgotten to go with all the fun and excitement and then they left and she couldn't hold it in. Curious why she is going on the couch but last time she had an accident on the floor, we struggled to hide our frustration (we saw it as it happened) and since she's not allowed to be on the couch and she eats on the rug, I wonder if that seemed like a location that hadn't been assigned any value... if that makes sense? Also that is where the cats like to sleep so maybe she was marking. We would not mind letting her sleep on the couch with them (she's tried a few times) but when she starts playing with them, she tries to chase them onto the couch when they go to their hammocks. Is it possible to teach her that it is acceptable to sleep on the couch but not jump on it or chase the cats? Or would it be better to just keep her off it completely?

Hi Adrienne! I’ve been so proud of Atari, we haven’t needed to seek your help in so long. She is now 1 year and 5 months old. (cattle dog /Labrador). We had an incident about 5 or 6 months ago where she seemed calm and she’s been getting super comfortable and happy with the cats and everything was great. Husband and I both started our nightly routine of getting ready for bed and doing some cleaning. We come back into living room and find a puddle on the couch. We didn’t see it happen, we almost didn’t even know it had happened. She seemed calm before and after and the cats weren’t even nearby. Ok so we decided to see if it happens again and cleaned the cushion so she shouldn’t be triggered to do it again. Then tonight, we had some friends over with their 10 year old sons. They love her, she’s played with them many times, and she was calm and happy with them. They left and everything was normal and calm in the house. We leave the room briefly and come back to find a puddle on the couch and footprints/pee all along ALL of the cushions. She was sitting on the ground calmly after. We have no idea what is going on and she doesn’t seem distressed and she had been outside only an hour earlier and we didn’t have anything unusual beforehand so I don’t think it was medical or needing to empty her bladder. She also knows she is not allowed on the couch. Those are the only times so I don’t think she is marking and the weird thing is no one was even around. The cats were in the room but not even near her. (I don’t know for sure but she loves them). Sending photos of earlier today so you can see is calm with the cats and kids. Please let us know your thoughts as it seems totally random and unexplainable to us. thanks, Caity

Hi Adrienne, Thank you, that is all so helpful and reassuring! We will build these things into our routine and keep working with her and the kitties. 🙂

Hi Adrienne, So I guess not the last update for Atari after all... she's been doing really great with the kitties. We have been letting them out every night for about an hour and they walk around and she follows them and smells. They swat at her and sometimes hiss on occasion but for the most part, they just keep walking around her and even trying to play with her. She just follows them and smells them. She sometimes hits her threshold where she will sort of follow them quickly - not quite a chase but bordering on a chase and then we end the interactions. Most of the time though, she ends up sitting down or laying somewhere and they stare at each other calmly or she will even look away for a bit. Then they start walking around her again and she follows them more. They seem to be trying to get her to engaged though because no one sits still for long. We watch almost the whole thing but feel ok doing our chores as we prepare for the next day and just always staying close and within earshot. No one gets too intense and the cats are very comfortable. They walk with their tails straight up and body relaxed and can always escape over the gate if they get annoyed with her. Atari has her ears and tail up like she's excited but she doesn't express any sort of aggression or hunting stance and if they swat at her she does not react at all. If the cats hiss like they are getting annoyed, we end things. Each night seems to be better than the previous one and we can see that in the near future they will all hang out without being so excited. However, we have had three incidents where she has peed in the house now. She went almost 4 months without an accident (aside from occasional excitement peeing when she sees new people). The first two times it was right near the sliding door to the backyard and we did not see her do it. We had left the room for a moment and came back to the puddle both times. We figured maybe she had needed to go because she had not been outside in about 4 hours (should not be an issue though as she can go like 10 hours at night) and she's 9 months old now. We started taking her outside to pee before we let the cats out and that seemed to stop it. However, last night, we forgot and she did it again and this time in the living room. I was there this time. The little white cat was laying on the couch. Playfully swatting her with no claws. She was sniffing the cat with tail wagging and they were happy/relaxed. Then suddenly Atari took a step backward and peed. I don't see any sign of aggression or stress from her. She loves the "kitty time" - she even sits at the door during the day sometimes and cries for me to let them out. I call her away and she stops. But I feel like she likes seeing them and they like it too. Could this be territorial somehow? Not sure if this is something to worry about and how to even fix it? The real goal is that the cats can hang out with her all the time and not just for an hour a day. Are we making a mistake by letting her smell them and follow them? We were doing the whole training thing while they walked around but we couldn't stop the cats from trying to play with her so we gave up and that's how we ended up where we are.... thanks for your time.

Hey Adrienne! Just wanted to share a final update on Atari and the cats! We’ve come so far. Thank you for all your help! by the way the little one is under the curtain but hard to see. They’re both there.

Here’s an update! I don’t know what happened to our puppy but she’s been much easier lately and this cat training time was like shocking. Thanks Adrienne!

Thank you so much! We've been doing these things and it's helping. I'll look into the muzzle too. I didn't know that they were used like this - I always assumed they were mean to use so that was eye opening.

Just thought I’d share this update as I’m proud of her. So I suck at recording a video while using the truck remote so this isn’t a great video but as you can see she is now ignoring the truck and the kittens! On Thursday the 1 year old jumped the fence before I could stop him and she chased him up onto the cat tree though so we’re still a long ways from real cohabitation I think… it’s frustrating because I’m worried she’ll never ignore them but we’ll keep doing daily sessions. The cats are impatient for her to get there too and she really wants to be their friends she just can’t behave herself just yet.

Thank you! We'll try these things. 🙂

This helped a lot to understand her. It also makes sense why every day has been different. We're trying to find signs to help us hit her sweet spot each day where she's stimulated and worn out but not overly so. I love this idea! Thank you. We have been working on this. She's great at targeting the hand but still struggles with the idea of the post it when I put it on the wall. However, to be fair, I've only tried it twice so far. yes, we're definitely going to try that! This all helped a lot. Thank you. I feel myself bonding with her more and more and my patience is definitely better. She's also been much better the last three days or so. Only mildly hyper and quick to calm down (knock on wood). I am sure some of it is in response to my feeling genuinely less annoyed with her. We also got her a ball that has another ball inside and she's been playing with it a lot and also started stuffing her kong with a biscuit so it's harder to get out. That's all helping her. I hear you about not comparing her to our corgi and you're totally right, thank you for saying that. I think it's mostly upsetting to me that I thought I was mentally prepared for having her and then I feel like I've not been handling it well (too impatient, frustrated, not expecting how hard this would be). I thought I knew what I was getting into because I've done this before. However, I definitely need to focus on what is rather than what I expected it would be like. I know we'll be ok once we get past this puppy stage. Thanks again!

Thanks again, you are really helping me so much!

Ok that’s all very helpful! Thank you for responding to both posts. I’m sorry if we seem so dramatic - the struggle is real over here. But understanding her working breed stuff and why she is so high strung helps. We moved the sleeping mat to another room and she just had her bed now so no more peeing at night (yet). She did pee on some papers at my parents’ house yesterday and the old dog was not around - my mom said she was playing with her outside and then she ran around the house and then peed somewhat randomly. but otherwise, after reading your response I took her on a longer walk this morning and it helped a lot. I think if I walk to little then she gets wired but if I walk a lot then she gets worn out. Then tonight instead of a second walk we took her to the dog park since she is now fully vaxxed. When we came home she napped and then she was able to play in the backyard for about an hour until she decided to bark at them and we redirected her and then brought her inside. Fetch outside also helped a lot last night. so we’ll keep working on the stuff you suggested - thanks again! as for the cats, she’s doing great but can’t handle the fence being down. How will we know if we can progress? I can’t find a play pen that looks sturdy enough for her size and since we haven’t crated her I’m not sure how to advance this This video was after 10 minutes of her sitting and doing training/games with cats there - tonight was even better than what you see here - we let her look at them as long as she stays calm but as you can see I struggled to redirect her too. I think her “come” has definitely become poisoned

Last night we do not know why but she peed on her mat again when we were getting ready for bed. There was no yelling or upset - she was just sniffing around something really intensely under the dresser but we don't know what she was smelling - and I was just trying to get her to settle down for bed. Dan was sort of playing with her, trying to get her to relax. I went to wash my face and then I heard him calling me. She peed all over her mat. Neither of us got mad and we were just cleaning it up which took a while as there was tons of pee. I left to throw away the paper towels and as soon as I walked out, she peed on the floor. We didn't get mad - but we don't know why she did it twice. She did drink a lot of water last night but she also peed before we brought her to the room. I think it was behavioral but we're not sure what is going on. We're going to cut her off from water a couple of hours before bed but she gets thirsty so I don't know how well she'll take that. This morning, she has been a handful. We let her out three times and she went potty and then went straight to the fence where the neighbor dogs sometimes are. They weren't there and she cried nonstop. She would not listen to us when we tried to distract her and we had to use high value treats that we save for puppy class to lure her back. She threw several tantrums and has stood at the sliding door and barked since we brought her in. I could not redirect her constantly as we both had meetings so we just let her bark it out. She's so bored but doesn't want to use licking mat, kongs, frozen rag, or toys. She just wants to go outside. She also went to bark at the door where the cats were. Also, she had seemed calm at first but the cats wanted out so we decided to let her stay on leash with them and moved the gate to the bedroom so the 1 yr old cat can feel safe. (She had been doing so well with the cat training so I guess we got cocky). The 8 month old cat went to the hammock above the couch and Atari didn't chase her at first but then changed her mind and jumped on the couch, over the spikey mats, onto the back of the couch so she was face to face with the cat who hissed at her. I grabbed her and we took the cats out of the living room again. Yes, we moved too fast and now I worry we stepped backward. Now she's been barking nonstop at both doors. We're not giving her attention - she finally gave up and fell asleep right now as I was typing this message but it was about 2 hours of this. So anyway, not sure what to do about the obsessive wanting to go outside and bark at dogs + constant boredom. She literally only wants us to engage with her and will not play alone. Even with her stuffed kong, she will only eat them if we hold the kong for her. I thought about getting her a puzzle but I don't think she'll use them because she tends to get frustrated very fast. Also, when I was throwing the treats to get her to walk away from the doors, she started doing it for attention and to get the treats so I think I must have done it wrong. The only thing that makes her quiet/calm is giving her a bully stick and obviously we can't give her bully stick after bully stick. I worry they'll lose value and upset her stomach. So I feel like I must be doing everything wrong because she's peeing at night almost every evening now and she's no longer redirectable - starting to behave even worse all the time.

Thank you Adrienne! We're going to work on these things some more and implement the new stuff. I appreciate your thorough guidance as always. 🙂

Thanks again! She was most definitely entering flight period. Her teeth were also bothering her a ton - she lost four or five in two days and today she's been very good all day. So I think the teeth were a major part of the problem. We did more cat training but let the cats walk around and she threw a crazy tantrum wanting to chase them - she would not listen to us on the training anymore and it probably sounded to the neighbors like we were doing something terrible to her. Then the next morning she was hesitant to put on her harness for a walk. So now we're back to doing the cat training with the gate between them and feeding the cats treats while she trains/ignores them. Seems there is no solution but time for the cat thing. However, I'm making a point to go and spend more time with them during the day so that it is not just Dan with them and that is helping. I think they thought I was replacing them with Atari. There's not much else we can do at this point so I hope the cats will be ok over the long haul. Some day they will all be friends! Understanding her flight period helped a lot though. I got some plastic scat mats for the couch (NOT electric - they are just sort of spikey but not enough to hurt her) and she has stopped jumping on it. She's been pretty good the last two days and we're working on making ourselves more interesting to divert her from chewing on furniture. Things are getting better. Aside from the tantrums, which I hope will fade with age, we are seeing some improvements now that we understand what is going on. However, I took her to my parent's house yesterday so we could run some errands and they have an elderly dog she wants to play with so they have to keep them separated so she doesn't keep barking at him to play. She went over to the elderly dog's blanket and peed on it. Was she marking it? How do we prevent her from doing that, especially when she is at someone else's house?

Hi again, Ok, so now we have some new issues coming up and it sort of feels like everything is getting way harder even though Atari totally knows what we expect of her by now. I can tell she does everything for attention because she will start to chew the table or something and I will see her and she instantly stops and pretends she's doing something else (like "I was just gonna lick it, I swear"). Some things are getting a little better - car rides are getting somewhat calmer as long as we give her a chew or I pet her and talk to her. She waits for me to get up before she gets out of bed now in the morning. She's doing really well with the cats as long as it's supervised and controlled. However, the cats keep crying to come into the living room and trying to escape their side of the house because it's like they want to be her friend and she keeps trying to open the door to the hallway now even though we keep a gate there too. (She figured out how to open the door and my fiance calls her a raptor, haha). But without the controlled visits, she will chase them instantly. If we engage her the whole time, she will relax and ignore them. They escape once a day now, and attempt even more often. Today we tried to let them all roam and we kept the leash on her and supervised but then we both had to get back to work so it was not something we could do for long. She kept trying to chase them anytime we did not make her sit. That would be ok to live with if that is all there was - but now she is jumping on the couch for attention and chewing it up and she is throwing more and more tantrums - ear piercing ones. Basically for the dumbest reasons like she wants to go for a walk in the middle of the day which we never do. We are also surrounded by houses with dogs who bark (not all the time, but probably once or twice a day- no big deal) and she always ignored them before but now she barks back - today she barked at noises at the front door that I couldn't even hear - probably people walking by at the street? She's also getting more demanding of our attention. It used to be that I could work and she would take a nap, but now if she hears my fiance's voice when he's on a work call, she will wake up and run to the door and then throw a tantrum wanting him to come out. She wants us both to be with her now. Tonight, I was the only one home and I was on the phone but she got so upset that I was not paying attention to her that she started trying to play bite my legs and jump on the furniture to get my attention. When I ignored her, she threw a loud tantrum. I kept ignoring her and she got right in my face and barked. She has also taken to trying to bolt outside the front door whenever she can - even though we always make her sit and wait before she is allowed to walk through any doors. Now that she is getting walks, she tries to rush outside even if we are going to take the garbage out or get the mail. I thought we were doing everything right -redirecting her instead of giving attention - working on her impulse control, training her - she knows tons of commands and games. At puppy class, the instructor saw that we make her sit at the door and wait before she walked through and she commented that even the dogs in her obedience II classes can't do that yet. But when class starts, she gets so excited that she struggles to look at us or listen to us - we basically stop existing once the other puppies arrive. We've increased the value of her treats which helps a little but not a lot. We basically try to survive until puppy play time - but it's embarrassing when she throws a tantrum and all the other puppies are learning their commands and being all quiet and stuff. She's a social butterfly and just wants to go play with them but the first 2/3 of class are for obedience training. She also gets excited and pees when she meets new people almost every time. I just don't know what to do about the excitement stuff. She walks great and we go twice a day for about 15 minutes - aside from zig-zagging, she basically walks next to us every time. We're working on heel still. I'm increasing the amount of times we train her to listen to her name at home - but once we're out in the world, it doesn't matter anymore. She has no name. So I guess I could use help on the tantrums and the over-excitement and any additional advice on the cat stuff? I don't know if we should just keep doing what we're doing and be patient... but it does feel like everything is getting harder and I worry that it's all because I'm doing something wrong. Should we do jazz up/settle down when we have friends come over? How do we redirect her from barking at the cats through the office window or the neighborhood dogs - when we are inside the house? Because I feel like us going outside is a form of reward but then I can't stop it without doing that. And she won't stop on her own, I've tried waiting to see if she does. Thank you. 🙂

Okay, we were starting to feel like we had this figured out. Atari got her second shots so we were able to take her on short walks but no park this week. Vet also thinks she is younger - probably 12 weeks but maybe even 11. She has learned a lot of things very quickly - she has "leave it" down pretty well when food is involved and she is better about playing with her toys by herself. When she does chew on something else, she is quickly redirected. At night, she can settle down for bed in about 10 minutes and any time she is up in the middle of the night, she goes right back to her bed after. She also learned to play fetch and even the car rides are getting easier. There is light at the end of the tunnel! (Separation anxiety is still taking some time.) However, the cat stuff is getting worse. The cats spend a lot of time sitting outside the door that separates them. (They have most of the house and Dan's office is there so they are rarely alone). I am not sure if they are upset they cannot roam the whole house or if they are looking for treats because when we do "cat time" with Atari, they know they get to just eat treats on that side of the gate. But they all seem obsessed with each other. Now Atari wants to sit at the door and bark at them. Our cat training times have gone very well. She totally ignores them and focuses on us doing the "look at me" and "leave it" stuff. When she seems bored, we will mix it up and do other stuff like lie down, get up, or track. But then we close the door and she wants to go back and sit there. This just started yesterday. For the last week, we could do cat time and then close the door and it was over. Now she obsesses on that door. We redirect her but it's nearly constant. And sometimes the older kitten will cry for a second which riles her up again. We did let her go (leashed) to visit the kitties today and made her sit and look at the 7 mo. old. (Older brother hid in closet) But we can't let her go off leash and if we don't redirect her the whole time, she just wants to chase/play with the cats. She's way bigger than they are so it's definitely not a good idea. Is there anything we can do differently or do we just have to wait for her to desensitize... some day? People keep telling us to just let her go and have them work it out because apparently their cats smacked the dog on the face and the dog left them alone. We know this will not work with her and could result in injury for either her or the cats - most likely the cats. But this is really hard and I'm wondering if there is a better solution that might help speed this up?

@Adrienne Farricelli Thank you! I've shared all of this information with my fiancé and we're reading the links and applying everything. We also ordered a thundershirt after I saw one of the pages you shared. We finally found a puppy class and she is enrolled for tomorrow! Also, good news: I tried jazz up, settle down and she learned it on the third round and is already nailing it. There is light at the end of the tunnel thanks to your guidance. I sincerely and thoroughly appreciate your posts and the amount of knowledge/details that you put into the responses. You and the other members of this community who responded to my OP have really helped us to get on track. I think we've got a great dog and once she gets out of the puppy stage, she'll be a wonderful companion. OH - one more question: At night, when we go to bed (we have her sleep in a dog bed, which she is good about doing. We close the door to the bedroom so the cats can roam around the rest of the house and we stuck a gate at the door so no cat paws can pop out from under the door). If she doesn't see the cats before we take her in the room, she can calm down in about 15-20 minutes and fall asleep on either the floor or the dog bed. However, if she needs to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, we have to completely calm her down again before we can go back to bed (after we take her out). As long as the cats don't come crying for attention at the same time, we can redirect her to play with her toys calmly. If that doesn't work, we just rub her belly or ears until she relaxes enough that we can get into bed. If we don't, she will chew on her bed, cry until it escalates into a tantrum, or paw at the door at the cats. Is this reinforcing anything bad or is that alright? I suppose this is where a crate would be helpful, but even if we get a crate, she will have to learn to use it and I don't know what to do, especially if it is 3 AM and I just want to go back to bed. Thank you.

Hi Adrienne! Thank you for all of this information. At 3 months, your pup's window of socialization is about to close, but these pups should still be granted ongoing socialization in a safe manner. Yes, we have been taking her on car rides. We took her to my parent's house for a play date with their dog but he is very old and was not interested - he just went to sleep and she got bored with him. Yesterday we arranged a play date with an older but not as old Labrador. He played with her a little bit but mostly they just chilled together and I am delighted because I'd rather her learn from a mature dog than another wild puppy. We're reaching out to anyone we can to schedule other play dates but it's been hard to coordinate our schedules. We're trying! I only found one puppy school that allows unvaccinated puppies and they were booked for 6 months so we're stuck with finding play dates and trying to get creative on our own. Thanks for letting me know to have her walk on other types of surfaces. We've had a few people come by our house for other reasons and she was great with them. She is submission peeing though and I saw you had a page on that so I'll read up on that. We're really worried about missing the window for socialization because we want to be able to take her everywhere with us and have her be fearless. I'll see if I can have people come by with costumes too. It's interesting that you mention she doesn't know how to play. Have you tried tossing her kibble for her to catch? Or her chew toys? How about using a flirt pole? I would expect a pup of this age and breed to have some prey drive. Did she get a check-up from the vet just in case? When we get her to the vet on Monday, I will ask her to check this. She chases crickets and flying bugs outside and she wants to chase the cats. She obsesses like a herding dog. I've tried throwing all kinds of things at her and she won't catch them though. It's so weird as our last dog did not need to be taught how to play. Most likely, your pup's screeching is also what may have grabbed the attention of humans by the side of the road so this instinctive screeching has been ulteriorly reinforced. That is so interesting! She sometimes does a single screech when she wants our attention. It seems like each day we make good strides with some things and then something new comes up. Yesterday we had some great sessions where the cats sat on one side of the gate (in the hallway) and she sat in the living room and we got her to "leave it" and "look at me". This lasted about 10 minutes and then I didn't want to burn her out. We also did that this morning for about 5 minutes, twice. The cats are dying to play with her and we have to give them treats and pet them to stop them from jumping the fence to get to her because then she chases them and they get scared. It feels like we're making baby steps with that but then I noticed that she is barking more outside which she never did before and now she is chewing everything in the house like the curtains, furniture, rugs, etc. We've moved a lot of the throw rugs out of reach, our shoes and things like that - but I don't want to take down the curtains and I used anti-chew spray on the furniture but she doesn't seem to care. We had success keeping her busy with the kong for two days but then she got bored with the kibble/peanut butter plug (puppy pb not human) and so I put wet food inside with it and then she went and buried it in the back yard and we can't find it. When we give her high value treats like bully sticks or pig ears she wants to bury them instead of eat them, or she gets really wired and hyper. It feels like any solution is not long-lasting. This is a good question, also because it may seem like if we use one approach or another we are a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place. If we give the puppy attention in these cases, we may risk that, over time, she may eventually learn that her behavior works in getting what she wants, but ignoring would trigger an extinction burst (Jennifer already pointed you to some sources that discuss this term, but we'll cover more about that below) and the occasional spontaneous recovery-not great if you have neighbors who share a wall. This helps and I'm going to read all your material on extinction bursts. Yesterday I had a personal meltdown when I was trying to focus on a meeting for work (early in the morning) and she was wild and the cats were scratching to come into the living room and she was obsessing on them. But then I read the other responses to this post and started doing the airplane game (she aced it immediately) and separation anxiety games (did pretty well) and noticing that her behavior was attention-seeking so that helped me to be patient. Now things are much easier with her HOWEVER, I'm worried that I am reinforcing it. She is extremely well behaved when we give her our whole attention. But if we do other things, she starts chewing the furniture, the two rugs we have down (all the rest we put away until she's older), and this morning she even started chewing on my arm. I have given her every type of toy possible and we froze an old dish towel and had her chew that in case it's related to teething. They help her but not when she wants attention. If I sit near her on the floor, she is an angel. I don't have to pay full attention to her but just sit nearby. But obviously, I don't want her to depend on me not to mention that obviously I cannot do this all the time. I have a full time job and while I am home a lot - I do have a lot of other stuff in my life that have gone to the back burner since we got her. Tackling puppies misbehaving for attention is not an easy task. It requires a different approach than a dog crying for anxiety. You need to firstly evaluate whether your puppy is crying because of a truly impellent physiological need (thirsty, hungry, tired, too hot, too cold, under-exercised, needing to be taken out to go potty) and once you have ruled that out, your next step may be ignoring unwanted behaviors. This is the most difficult part because you need to ignore these behaviors totally, no looking, no talking, no scolding, no pushing, no making eye contact. No attention at all, even attention of the negative type. You would therefore have to pretend as if your pup isn't there, waiting for her to give up engaging in the undesirable behavior. I've been rewarding her with petting and verbal praise when she chews on her toys by herself (without me sitting nearby) but that is never for long. When she starts chewing on everything in sight, shouldn't we be correcting her so she stops doing it? How do I find the balance between not letting her be a wild dog who destroys the house and reinforcing her attention seeking? When she cries, I look out of the corner of my eye to make sure it's not a physical injury and ignoring it. The little whimpers are reducing and we have not had a tantrum since Tuesday evening. I feel like she knows we don't want her jumping on the furniture or chewing it - if we ignore it for a few days, will she stop dong it for attention or will she think she is allowed to? I don't want to confuse her about "the rules" either. I have been trying to stimulate her with training (and we tried to teach her to "find it" but that didn't go well at all). So when she's acting calm, I'll sit with her and train her and pet her. I will stay on the floor while she chews alone and then go back to my desk. She'll chew on her many toys for a while and then about 10 minutes later, she gets bored and wants attention. Without fetch or going on walks, I don't know what to do without overwhelming her with more training. We go outside to the backyard and she runs around there but never enough to do anything. I feel like my whole day is stopping her from chewing on things she should not. However, it's important to rule out anxiety. There's a difference in the body language/ vocalizations of a puppy crying simply because of being cranky and one crying from full-mode anxiety panic. I suspect she does get anxious but I cannot figure out what triggers it yet. She definitely has no frustration tolerance - when she wants to see the cats, she obsesses. Like I said, leave it and look at me is definitely helping and I think she's going to desensitize at some point but it's hard to tell what is frustration vs anxiety. The car gives her anxiety but we're trying to push through it with some car rides. When she cries, we ignore it and then when she stops, my fiancé pets her and rewards her. However, the last car ride resulted in almost nonstop screeches that made my spine literally jump. We'll try ear plugs for the next drive and maybe shorten the rides. I did just order some calming chew supplements and we'll see if that helps. Of course, one must factor in, that the longer one has reinforced attention-seeking behaviors, the longer it will take to extinguish and this can a pain-staking process, which is why this is far better being tackled earlier rather than later, ideally taking as many preventive steps as possible. I definitely want to get this tamped down and resolved ASAP before she gets any habits! While young puppies are balls of energy, but their energy drains very fast and they need sleep to recuperate. It is estimated that young puppies require around eighteen to twenty hours for sleep per day. This may sound a whole lot, but it makes sense since puppies do most of their growing while sleeping! So it sounds like your pup needs her quiet spot- that is, definitely away from the cats. Sticking to a routine can help provide structure and reassurance. You can help a cranky puppy fall asleep by reducing stimulation and taking the following steps: We do keep the cats in the other half of the house almost all the time. At night, we let them roam and she goes in the bedroom with us. But we have not crated her - we don't have space for a crate. Yesterday I got her back up to 15 hours of sleep in the 24 hours but I can't seem to get her to sleep beyond that. Do you think it is important we crate train her? I realize everyone says it's great and helpful but I read about Aussies that they can't handle a crate for long because of their energy. I'm open to figuring out how to make it work if it will be life-changing but we would have to rearrange our furniture to keep a large crate and I would rather not. We did try the puppy music youtube station yesterday and I think that helped her sleep longer! Oh and today I have been able to leave her alone for a few minutes at a time but only if she is calm. She sits or lays in the living room and stares at the door waiting for me. I praise her when I come back. I think the peekaboo game helped yesterday. But when she was hyper this morning, it was not going to happen. I gave her a peanut butter chew stick when I had to leave her alone for 2 minutes and she was fine with that. Seems leaving her alone is about timing. Thank you for all the help. I am so burned out. My fiance and I take turns watching her but since he works in the office (side of the house with the cats) and my work station is in the living room, most of the puppy time has been on me. After work, we can take turns but we're both exhausted and sick of it. We love her and know it will get better some day but anything we can do to make this happen faster will help our sanity.