Indie is our beloved 13 week cocker boy. He's always been reluctant to be left on his own, and I have been working on this. I regularly leave him for an hour a day, so he gets used to it. When I return, he is delighted, but I make myself a cup of tea, and ignore him till he calms down. This is working well, and he's slowly getting the idea.
The problem is night time. For the first couple of weeks he was fine, but he's getting worse and worse. He goes to his bed at 11pm, and we have a specially penned in area for him, of about 2 sq metres. He has his food, toy, water, blanket, hot water bottle,and his pee mat which he's a star at using, but the minute we put him in he becomes hysterical, and jumps repeatedly up at the barrier (a wooden board about 3 feet tall). Last night he did this until 1am, then settled, but was up doing the same at 4am. I had to get up as he'd escaped from the barrier and was howling and scratching at our door.
It seems to me that this is separation anxiety, but I just feel so low about it - every time he nips I'm pushing him away, and I feel if I leave him any longer during the day, I'm totally rejecting him.How is he going to know we love him? I'm not enjoying him at the moment, I'm so tired, and feel like all I ever do is scold him. We adore him, but I'm starting to think we are letting him down by not doing something right, we researched for 2 years so we could be the best owners possible, but I feel we are falling far short of that. He starts his puppy classes tomorrow night.
Any advice?