46 she’s all settled now! she’s extremely attached to us though, when we take her for walks we let her off leash and she’ll just follow us around – doesn’t care for balls, sticks etc
if she’s in the car and i’m outside filling up with gas she’ll cry, howl and scratch to get too me. Like Mike said about some GSDs she flips out if there’s anything stopping her having access to us.
She doesn’t cling to me at home, she just needs to know she can get to me if she needs. She goes off and sleeps under a table or in her crate but when we put a barrier there, ie. door, shut her crate door… not a good result.
This is the big hurdle for us – how to transition her from sleeping on her mat into the crate – i’ve been sleeping in the lounge on a mattress for 5 weeks now slowly getting her used to this crate we’ve got. Problem is it’s a soft crate and i know she’ll destroy it if i just close it up and go upstairs to sleep. I want to make the crate a positive experience so i’m just slowly graduating her into being in there more often like for meal time, whenever she’s sleepy, and we’ve trained her to ‘go in your crate’ for a treat etc. but at night she likes to move from the crate to beside the mattress (we don’t let her on the bed of course) so when i close it, she just claws at the door and starts to whimper which leads to howling which will lead to hysteria not long after!
i cut back on affection too, only pat her now if she does something for it and we’re cutting any ‘cuddling’ out all together. when i get home i don’t give her attention till she calms and then its a brief pat and a scratch.
