leaving your doodle home alone

[Kendra MacEachern]

Hey everyone,

 

My boy is now 9 months old! so hard to believe but he is!

I am just wondering when you started to leave your doodle home alone not in a crate. Mine is crate trained and he spends his time in his crate when I am not home...he usually comes with me everywhere I go! but I would like to start trusting him to behave while left at home.

 

Any suggestions about when to start and maybe some tips from past experience?

 

Thanks !

[J and Riley (and Luna)]

We have been trying to get ready for this by leaving Luna to wander the house unsupervised while we do other things.  She still manages to get into some things, but we have a good idea of the types of things she tries to get into... that way when we do want to start leaving her alone we will know what to puppy-proof :)

[Jarka, Monty & Auggie]

Monty just turned one year. I followed all the wise advice and started crate training as soon as we got Monty at 2 months of age. We did not give him a full run of the house, we had the kitchen area gated with his crate in it. The truth is that I can either work from home or take him with me to work, so I've never left him alone in the house the whole day. However, the whole crate training stopped when Monty turned 5 months. He got neutered and spent the night in a crate at the animal hospital. Ever since he came back home the next day, he refused to sleep in his crate downstairs. He wanted to be with us upstairs. So I got him his own bed upstairs in our bedroom. He would either sleep on the bed or in our bathroom on the tile floor that's cool for him.  We kept the crate downstairs but he would not go into it to take a nap. He would just plop down anywhere near us to take a nap during a day. By 7th months of age, he has not had any accidents in the house for several months. So we took down the baby gates and gave him a full run of the house. He's not a big chewer; I think the only thing he chewed up was a magazine accidentally left out when Monty was 3 months old. As I said before, we've never left him in the house for the whole day (and I'm honestly not sure how that would work), but we went out for a dinner with my husband here and there. The longest we were out was 5 hours. It was in the evening, so at the time we left it was dark outside. By the time we got home it was already 10pm. By the look of the dog I could tell he was fast asleep; I then found a warm spot where he was resting in the living room. We did leave a couple of lights and a TV on for him. He just slept through the whole time we were gone. Agan, not sure what he would do if left home alone during a daytime for a long period of time.

[Andy Huntsman]

We did it gradually with Roxy, who is almost 9 months old now. After she was potty trained, we let her sleep in our master bedroom which has an attached bathroom. We just shut the bedroom door to the main area of the house. So Roxy got used to a little bit of freedom overnight, where she could move around to different spaces before she settled on a final sleeping place.

 

Then we started leaving her on her own when we ran short errands. Since she sleeps a lot in the morning, it seemed like a good "ramp up" strategy for us. Never had any problems with 1/2 day or less.

 

Then there were a couple of unusually long days, where Roxy was alone for more than 8 hours, other than us popping in after 5 hours for a potty break. At the end of those long days, she chewed some drywall out of a wall for us... Now, we put her in all-day playcare on our "long day" each week. Costs a little bit, but Roxy loves it and she gets more socialization and play time, which is her favorite thing in the world. If there is a rare occasion where Roxy must be at home for more than a 1/2 day, we let her have free run for the first half of the day, and then let her out for a potty break and put her in the kennel for the last few hours.

So, gradualism worked for us, but it does have a natural limit since doodles are social by nature.