Intense Separation Anxiety/Barrier Frustration
Happy holidays, everyone, and happy new year! I am wondering if the folks who have worked through difficult crate training issues could tell me a little bit about what methods you used to help your lab puppy accept their crate.
My apologies in advance for the long post, but I wanted to include as many pertinent details as possible to give a clear picture of what we're dealing with. Our history: We've had our 4 1/2 month old female, Ellie, since she was 8 weeks old. For info sake, though I realize it's a controversial designation on the message boards here, she is a field trial lab from active hunting lines and we knew going in, having just lost our last field lab in July, how much activity, exercise, mental stimulation, and training we would have to provide for her every single day. I'm pretty much retired at this point and home during the day, so felt up for the challenges that would come from raising a healthy dog from a working line.
We've been able to meet and successfully deal with all of her run of the mill puppyhood issues (biting, house training, commands, recall, socialization, etc.) but for one glaring exception: crate training. At this point, it's beginning to look more and more like severe separation anxiety/barrier frustration and I am beginning to feel increasingly desperate to find way to leave her alone in the house in order to get some errands run (or even have her confined so that she is safe while I take a shower). No matter the amount of exercise she has prior to being confined or if she has peed and pooped just moments before going into either her crate (in our bedroom) or her indoor ex-pen (in the living room), she pees or poops in her space and barks non-stop till I come get her out. We're talking hysterical, eye bugging, panting barking. I brought Ellie to puppy daycare in an effort for her to be supervised so that I could get some errands done on a day too hot for her to be in the car and while she did fine out and about with the big dogs, when they put her in a crate for a time out/nap, she rubbed all the hair off the top of her nose (and then flagged her as "no crate!"). We've set up a puppycam in both rooms, so we know she never relents and quiets down (before the camera, I left her in her crate to "cry it out"-ugh- for 60 minutes, not realizing she had popped all over the space). I just need to add that Ellie has some serious gut/skin issues that have made it impossible for give her the kind of high value treats that one would normally use to distract while in a crate (we're still trying to get her settled on a food without repeated bouts of diarrhea/loose stool/straining/severe itching, but that's for another post).
Things we have tried since she was 8 weeks old:
- slow acclimation training to the crate (she'll go into the crate when we give her treats, and we work on this every single day for anywhere from a few seconds to thirty minutes, but we have not gotten anywhere with this, no matter how slow/over the course of weeks we go. Close the door on the crate or the ex-pen and when her high value treat is finished, she flies into a panic. I want to add that we have been practicing removing her from the crate/ex-pen the second her high value treat is finished before she starts to bark in order to short circuit the panic. This has not led to any progress so far.)
- We feed all her meals in her night time crate or her ex-pen. All good things happen in these two places.
- changing the kind of crate being used (wire vs plastic airplane)
- bully sticks (gave her projectile diarrhea)
- her favorite toys mean absolutely nothing to her in her confinement areas.
- frozen kongs (she abandons them when she licks off the areas she can reach with her tongue and we can't use the kind of treats most often recommended to stuff the things)
- kong treat training (again, difficult to do, as anything other than her kibble gives her diarrhea and she can get all the kibble out in record time)
- feeding puzzles (again, she's a master, and once all the kibble has emptied, she goes into freak out mode)
- elk antlers (loves them outside the crate, ignores them entirely within)
- exercise (we walk a mile a day in the morning, a mile after dinner, she plays with me for more exercise and trains with me for mental stimulation, goes to 3+ puppy socials a week, and has a number of puppy play friends who we meet for romps regularly). I feel very protective of her joints and don't feel comfortable walking her more than these distances at this time, though think she will really benefit from running with her daddy when she's an adult.
- DAP collar (worthless), DAP diffuser (worthless and sent me to the ER with a whopper migraine)
- Rescue Remedy (worthless)
- thunder shirt (works beautifully to calm her down her panting/eye bugging and keeps her from throwing herself against the side of the ex-pen, but then instead of barking, she just cries the most pitiful sounding whine, which she continues to do even after I remove her from the ex-pen/crate)
Things we've discovered we can not use as high value treats because of her gut/skin issues:
- peanut butter
- anything containing chicken
- bully sticks
- rawhide (woah, that was an unfortunate visit to the ER)
- cream cheese
- anything containing beef marrow
- "hypoallergenic treats" (hahaha!)
The interesting thing is that after a lot of work and practice, I was able to acclimate her to the car crate (she'll go in on her own and after a few seconds of complaining, settles in while I run errands for upwards of three hours). She also goes into her house at night to go to sleep and sleeps through the night (8 hours) just fine, but does wake us up with the panicked barking (she will not just rest quietly in her crate). She'll go into her ex-pen on her own with the door open to nap in the big bed in there while I am in view (though close the door and she goes straight into panic mode). She'll also hop into our last lab's PuppyWagon and nap if I am in that room (it's the Dutch Design one that looks like a babyjogger), but she will never, ever go into her night time crate on her own steam during the day. Ever.
We did a consult with a local vet behaviorist and after watching the videos we shot of Ellie in confinement panic, she basically told us we may never be able to use a crate with her. I find this very hard to believe considering she will tolerate the one in the car. I have started paying an awesome 12 year old in the neighborhood to come over and basically babysit her, which Ellie loves and the girl loves, and this gives us the ability to go out to dinner and have a date night, but it doesn't address Ellie's issues with being separated from us or being left alone.
I know a lot of people have success using high value treats and slow acclimating to an open crate and we have been working on this for 10 weeks now with no luck. Has anyone used a method not listed above that I haven't yet tried? Has anyone had success using an SSRI with their lab (I'm not ready to go down that road yet, but am curious as to whether or not it has been helpful to some). Thank you so much for all your input and help!