Will we ever be able to leave him?

[dicdicnurse]

Our wonderful cavapoo puppy is 15 weeks old and has been with us for 4 weeks. We have cracked the toilet training (unless the weather is like it is today!) and are working on the sleeping.
The one thing we want to achieve by Easter is being able to leave him in the house for an hour without us.
We have started leaving him in his pen for 5 mins and aiming to build up the time but he is hysterical the whole time! (We can see him on the ring camera). Should we persevere or have we messed up something?!
Disclaimer, we are first time dog owners and have discovered we worry more about doing the wrong thing than we did with our kids! 🤣

Took us lots longer than that but our cavapoo is fine for 3-4 hours now.

What do you mean by hysterical, and what do you do?

Just leaving him to be hysterical and returning just teaches him that being hysterical works.

He starts jumping up to try and get out of the pen, crying and howling.
He calms down as soon as we get back.
We had some success with a lick mat but only a minute or two.

You need to think about what the dog is getting out of his behaviour. They don't understand good / bad, they just understand what benefits them and what doesn't.

From what you've said, it sounds like you leave, he goes nuts, and you return. QED from his point of view going nuts works as you come back.

Try smaller steps. Leave the room for 5 seconds, reward him if he is quiet. Then 10 seconds, then 20 seconds etc. If he isn't quiet, no reward, or response of any kind, but go back a step.

Try not to scold, or respond to the undesired part. Scolding will just get him to hide it, and responding in some other way may reinforce that what he is doing works.

That is rewarding him for being destructive/naughty. If you go back when he is crying etc you are teaching him that being naughty gets results.

You have to let them cry it out and only return when they have settled or gone to sleep.

It’s horrible (and it breaks my heart every time I train a new puppy to do it) but it needs doing. Eventually they realise. You have a dog that is bred from two intelligent lines - this means he learns quickly (the good and the bad, sadly). He’ll cotton on after a few times of him being quiet and then you returning 😊I recon it’ll take a week of solid practice before he cottons on and you can leave him for longer stretches.

Great job on the house training though! I so often hear/see new owners who are still using puppy pads at six months - so you’ve done really well there!!

Edit: he is BEAUTIFUL BTW

Thank you Both!
We will scale it back and do a re set I think. I can see now that we are rewarding the behaviour.
A couple of weeks ago I thought we would be cleaning up puddles forever so I guess it's a case of perseverance.
He's quick to learn so hopefully if we are consistent the same will apply to this.

Ps, thank you! We are of course biased but agree he's very handsome!

Have a look at both the Dog Training advice and support FB group and Julie Naismith sub threshold training. Loads you can do to build his confidence alone but be prepared to not be able to leave him and him be happy about it until he is well into adolescence and if not, through it (18 months or so). He is a breed that often needs extra help with alone time too. Of course all dogs are different. Mine is an independent breed and we have only now started to build really reliable alone time at 16 months (and it's mostly going very well and quite quickly).

Stressed dogs do not learn. So when he panic he's learning nothing - only that being alone is scary. You need to take it way more slowly and be prepared to need to be around for him for quite some time yet! In answer to your thread title, yes but only if you do it at his pace and wait until he's ready.

We have a 7 month old cavapoo and the first few times he was left alone for awhile he barked quite a lot. We usually give him a frozen kong (with some peanut butter etc in) and that occupies him for quite a long time. He voluntarily goes into his pen and doesn't even notice when we go out because of that.

If yours has something like that which can occupy him for longer then you might find you can go and be back before he really notices you are gone and starts getting upset. So he learns you will be back, without you have to reward bad behaviour.

Also leaving him when it is nearly nap time means he is more likely to settle down and go to sleep when it is for a longer period of time.

We didn't build up the time that slowly - more like 10 mins, then half an hour a few times, then an hour once we realised that he wasn't getting upset. (no patience!) We can now leave him for two or so. Probably longer but I feel bad!

I agree with surviving. Please. Please don’t leave a puppy that isn’t happy to be left. All that happens is they get more and more anxious. If you let them be with you they develop confidence and are then happy to be left. No one can say whether that’ll be by Easter though.

When do you try to leave him?

Random times in the day when he's awake and excited or after walks when hes tired?

Your best bet is to try after he's had a walk and or play and is due a nap.
Wait till hes looking like a nap is imminent and pop him in the pen then go and sit somewhere else in the room or potter about and ignore him then he's not panicking you've left him.

Doing this will reinforce that he's always calm and sleepy in the pen and you can then build on that good behaviour and after a while when he's got the hang of that add in going into another room to get a book and slowly draw it out.