Puppy Survival Thread Autumn 2025 - all welcome!

[VanGoSunflowers]

Hello everyone! Won’t tag you all as you know everyone is welcome 😊

Honestly, that gives me hope!

Can I ask what age you all left pup home alone at? I have a doctor's appointment when mine is ten weeks old and would be gone 60-90 mins. He naps in the crate and I'm in and out of the room, or working upstairs. Actually leaving the house is a different thing though!

I didn't leave mine alone until later than that - maybe about 12/13 weeks, can't remember exactly.

However, the breeder who has 3 dogs herself (and kept one of the puppies in the litter I got B from) says it's ok to leave them alone in their crate immediately. She says you can't hear them whining from Tesco's! And it's better they get used to it early on than trying to suddenly introduce leaving them alone once they are adult dogs. I do think the good thing about puppies is even if they make a fuss initially, they soon fall asleep.

It's hard emotionally though to leave a young puppy. And I always think it's better to build up to it slowly, personally. So I started with only leaving mine for 30 minutes, then an hour. I wouldn't leave a puppy for 90 minutes the first time I went out, but that's me. At that age I would try to get someone to be there to supervise if possible. If it's not possible and the doctor's appointment is important, I guess you do need to prioritise your health.

Honestly I think that’s fine. Maybe try nipping to a shop for 10-20 mins a few times first? Build him up to it.

Yes I think building up is the key thing. Appointment is Friday, I'll try smaller periods over the week at the same time as the appointment and see how that goes but I will see if I can get a family member to come in on Fri at least to limit the amount of time he's left. I just wanted to check there isn't some rule I didn't know that they're not to be left at all until x weeks old or something.

I can ask my breeder and I think she'd be in line with the 'you can't hear them cry from Tesco' approach!

From day one! For a mixture of a few minutes to a couple of hours the first day. She loves her crate - slept through the first night (or at least, didn't cry or whine or bark). Perfectly happy pottering around her little area with her toys and snoozing (can see her on the camera).

Hey,

Ellie is 10 weeks now. From the second day we got her at 8 weeks, I put her in her crate which is in a playpen and went out for a short walk. She was fine, was fast asleep when we got home! A day later I did the same and popped to our local supermarket which is down the road from where I live. I put the pup cam on and was gone for 40 minutes. She was fine and slept through it. She watches me go in and out of the front door and initially cried, but now she realises I come back.

Now two weeks on I can easily pop out for a few hours. I time her nap times, make sure she’s had lots of playtime beforehand as well.

The great thing is she now takes herself off to her crate when she’s had enough 🤣

I honestly feel the earlier they get used to it the better. They develop independence and need the sleep!

When they're ready. Moving to fast and you can end with severe separation anxiety and some breeds are worse for that than others. Crates are not safe in those situations and nor are play pens - I say this all the time, but I've known puppies at 8 weeks old dislocate their jaws on their crate trying to escape and chew through it.

It's down to the dog. Some will cope better than others. I couldn't even pee without the door open with my boy, who is now 3, until he was about 24 months. But his sister (raised in the exact same environment, exact same dam/sire, and by me) I probably could have left alone for a whole day and she wouldn't have cared.

It's one of those things you have to judge and decide on yourself.

The gate is closed when I go out. And she's safe and happy in an area where she can do no damage, can stretch her legs and play and is content.

Breeders tend to be no nonsense types.

She also said, so what if they cry? She said they squeak when she leaves the room or when their mother did ( they were raised in a big crate with a run in her kitchen) but only for a couple of minutes & they have to get used to it.

I have a fabric type crate from Amazon which always has the door open so Ellie doesn’t see it as a prison. The play pen has the door closed when I go out, she understands it’s sleepy time and just heads straight into her crate. But I did. This from early on and she’s used to it x

Looks a really nice little set up @UnimatrixZeroOne

Tbh I don’t think puppies see crates like a prison anyway whether they are made of metal or fabric. To us as humans fabric looks nicer but I don’t think they see it the same way. As long as it has comfy bedding inside & maybe soft toys, it’s just their space to rest. Mine isn’t bothered now if I close the door or leave it open while he’s resting.

That's horrific! He's a cockapoo and they are absolutely prone to separation anxiety. The breeder's advice was to leave him alone eg sleeping downstairs by himself from night one to avoid this, but we have the crate in our bedroom overnight because the other school of thought is that leaving him distressed would increase separation anxiety. Because of the breed, I have been putting him in the crate for daytime naps and wandering in and out so he has short periods of being alone but never gets distressed beyond a bit of tired whining. His nap schedule is quite predictable so my thinking was I'd get out without him knowing I was gone, but if something wakes him while im out eg a noisy delivery or something then he could panic so really I need to know he can reliably self settle in there. I also want to be so careful about what toys I leave in the crate if he'll be unsupervised with them. I wish I had space in my house for a setup like @UnimatrixZeroOne but downstairs is all open plan so if he's left, it needs to be in the crate.

What kind of dog is she? She sounds delightful!

She looks so sweet!

@ItWasNotConvenient she’s a little Cavapoo! Not sure if I’m been lucky, but the breeder seemed to have maybe crate trained her so she wasn’t too bothered by it.

But also I’ve not shown any anxiety about leaving her either, I don’t try and make it a thing. She’s involved in our every day life, sleeps on the end of our bed. Goes to bed around 7.00pm, quick wee before bed around 9.00 and then not up until 5.00 for a wee and then back to bed until we wake up 🤣

But then she sleeps in her crate during the day.

My breeder also introduced the crate to the litter so it wasn't brand new. I think an earlier bedtime is going to help mine, he sleeps through a lot of the evening but intersperses it with my least favourite bitey madness so is clearly too tired for anything but sleep and a couple of toilet breaks from 7pm onwards.

Ellie tends to go crazy when she’s over tired. She’s normally done by 6/7 and that’s her for the night - I don’t try and push it while she’s so young. Initially I thought I had to knackered her out in the evening but that made her unsettled at night and was hard on us 😝

Agree with @TheHungryHungryLandsharks in that it depends on the dog. My 11 month old lab is a total Velcro dog and when I used to use a crate, he would only tolerate it rather than actually like it so I never left him in the house alone in there and instead puppy proofed the kitchen but I had to go soooo slowly with him at the beginning, literally going in to the hall and out of sight for a few seconds and came in to reward quiet/calm - did that every day and built up the time very gradually until I was sat in my car on the drive watching him on a camera for twenty minutes. I don’t leave him all that often now but when I do, he seems fine with it - no toilet accidents, zero destruction, always finishes his kong and after the initial burst of crazy lab excitement when I get back, settles down quite quickly. But he is a total softie and never did like being out of my sight when he was younger! Even know he still follows me everywhere given half the chance 😂 I was quite surprised the other day when coming out of the bathroom after a shower that he wasn’t lying on the floor outside and had taken himself back downstairs to sleep on the sofa!

B is also done for the night by about 7pm though we wake him up at about 9pm to let him into the garden for a last wee.

Partly because he’s so food obsessed I wonder if he thinks his day is done after everyone in the house has stopped eating 😆

@Twiglets1 mine is exactly the same as yours! He’s done for the day around then too I never considered it was because there’s no more food 😂

B literally puts himself in his crate as soon as dinner's over 😂

I didn't leave my puppy home alone until she was about 4 months old. Even then she wasn't alone, as I have two other dogs. When I needed to pop out before then, my neighbours looked after her.

I'm going to reschedule the appointment as it's too much to expect of a ten week old pup who hasn't been left but I am going to work on building up time alone as I don't have anyone on hand to come in, and he's such hard work I don't feel I could ask anyone to spend a couple of hours with him. I do need to be able to get away, not just for my physical health but mental too. I can't spend all my time with a creature that just wants to bite me and tear my clothes to shreds whenever we're together. I am feeling like a gigantic failure this evening and that I really don't know what I'm doing!