Nik
Well-Known Member
Hi! I know I'm late to the thread and it looks like you have got a lot of advice from very good sources already.
My advice is the following.
Start NILF immediately and follow it religiously. No dog in your house should get toys until they earn them. If they try to steal from one another (even the two little ones from each other) squash that immediately. If someone steals they don't get a toy. Toys are your's to distribute. All good things come from you (that's the foundation of NILF). There are lots of YouTube videos on NILF. I recommend watching these if you haven't already.
For the time being I would not leave the new dog with the old ones unsupervised ever. Invest in a baby/dog gate (I have one that I use to separate my kitchen from the rest of the house and it is a wonderful tool). If you have kitchen chores take the CC with you and leave the little guys in the rest of the house with your kid. The little dogs probably need breaks from your new younger CC. Even my wonderful extremely peaceful senior citizen dog needed breaks from Diesel once in awhile. Puppy or young dog energy is a LOT for an older dog to deal with and some older animals are less tolerant then others. Think of them as crochety old people who don't really want that giant sized baby constantly bugging them. They need breaks. Lots of breaks. They might learn to like your CC if they only have to deal with him in small doses at the start.
Work on "place" with all the dogs, especially the CC. Drill "place" constantly. Reward him staying in his place and minding his own business with a special toy or bone he ONLY gets when he is settled in "place". Place can be whatever you want it to be. It can be his dog bed, it can be his crate with the door open, it can be his spot on your couch. And the word doesn't have to be "place" and he can have multiple places. My dogs have several places depending what room of the house we are in. The place command is a sanity saver.
As for the crate I don't use it as a punishment per say but I do use it as a time out. If they get overly worked up and need to wind down sometimes they need some quiet time. It's good not to turn the crate negative but if the dogs are worked up and need quiet separation time then use crate. Crate should be safe space where they feel they can relax and where they can go (or be made to go) when they have sensory overload.
I don't think that letting the dog sleep in bed with you is a big no no. I choose to let our dogs sleep with us most nights. Some nights they don't get to. Since we use NILF they have to earn their bedtime with us every night. This means we run them through certain commands and if they obey they get rewarded. At bed time reward is sleeping with us. If they are bad at bedtime and refuse to settle down for sleep then they go back to their crates for the night.
Separation anxiety is tough and it sounds like your CC has it bad. Work on the crate by trying to make it like a bedroom w door open at first. That is how I got Diesel used to his. Every time I do the dishes he now goes into his crate (it is in the kitchen) and lays on the bed and waits for me to finish the dishes. In the beginning I would sometimes go into his crate with him ... sometimes I still do (he had separation anxiety in the beginning also so he liked me in there with him... some dogs don't and want it as their own space just for them so know your dog and what he likes before trying that).
Now it might be the case that your dog will never adjust to the crate. My dog Cerberus was claustrophobic and would hyperventilate and have severe panic attacks and make himself sick in the crate. We didn't crate him as a result. The baby gate work great for partitioning off parts of the house so you can have safe areas for your dogs or separate them without always having to crate.
Certain verbal cues worked great for helping Diesel with his separation anxiety. For separation anxiety I accidentally trained Diesel with the phrase "Hold on. I have to change. I'll be right back." I would say this to him when I got home from work and he was frantic to be with me. I would always change before taking him outside to potty and play with me. After awhile his frantic barking, whining, pleading etc would be completely stopped with that phrase and I could even use it if I wanted to spend an hour of quiet time alone in the bedroom. It took awhile to get to that point but having a phrase that let him know he wouldn't be alone for very long and then we would do something fun together afterwards made a big difference.
One of the big things with separation anxiety is teaching your dog that you will always come back. Teaching him that he doesn't need to panic when you are gone. It took a very long time for Diesel not to be barking frantically at me when I left for work in the morning and not to be barking frantically for me when I got home after work. For the first two years of his life I would come home at lunch every day and that helped. My husband works a later day then I do so he would only be alone for 2 hours before I would be home for lunch and another few hours before I would be home for the day. He is almost three now and he no longer barks at all when we leave and he doesn't panic when I leave him alone. But, I still have gouges on the walls in the kitchen from when he would panic.
My advice is the following.
Start NILF immediately and follow it religiously. No dog in your house should get toys until they earn them. If they try to steal from one another (even the two little ones from each other) squash that immediately. If someone steals they don't get a toy. Toys are your's to distribute. All good things come from you (that's the foundation of NILF). There are lots of YouTube videos on NILF. I recommend watching these if you haven't already.
For the time being I would not leave the new dog with the old ones unsupervised ever. Invest in a baby/dog gate (I have one that I use to separate my kitchen from the rest of the house and it is a wonderful tool). If you have kitchen chores take the CC with you and leave the little guys in the rest of the house with your kid. The little dogs probably need breaks from your new younger CC. Even my wonderful extremely peaceful senior citizen dog needed breaks from Diesel once in awhile. Puppy or young dog energy is a LOT for an older dog to deal with and some older animals are less tolerant then others. Think of them as crochety old people who don't really want that giant sized baby constantly bugging them. They need breaks. Lots of breaks. They might learn to like your CC if they only have to deal with him in small doses at the start.
Work on "place" with all the dogs, especially the CC. Drill "place" constantly. Reward him staying in his place and minding his own business with a special toy or bone he ONLY gets when he is settled in "place". Place can be whatever you want it to be. It can be his dog bed, it can be his crate with the door open, it can be his spot on your couch. And the word doesn't have to be "place" and he can have multiple places. My dogs have several places depending what room of the house we are in. The place command is a sanity saver.
As for the crate I don't use it as a punishment per say but I do use it as a time out. If they get overly worked up and need to wind down sometimes they need some quiet time. It's good not to turn the crate negative but if the dogs are worked up and need quiet separation time then use crate. Crate should be safe space where they feel they can relax and where they can go (or be made to go) when they have sensory overload.
I don't think that letting the dog sleep in bed with you is a big no no. I choose to let our dogs sleep with us most nights. Some nights they don't get to. Since we use NILF they have to earn their bedtime with us every night. This means we run them through certain commands and if they obey they get rewarded. At bed time reward is sleeping with us. If they are bad at bedtime and refuse to settle down for sleep then they go back to their crates for the night.
Separation anxiety is tough and it sounds like your CC has it bad. Work on the crate by trying to make it like a bedroom w door open at first. That is how I got Diesel used to his. Every time I do the dishes he now goes into his crate (it is in the kitchen) and lays on the bed and waits for me to finish the dishes. In the beginning I would sometimes go into his crate with him ... sometimes I still do (he had separation anxiety in the beginning also so he liked me in there with him... some dogs don't and want it as their own space just for them so know your dog and what he likes before trying that).
Now it might be the case that your dog will never adjust to the crate. My dog Cerberus was claustrophobic and would hyperventilate and have severe panic attacks and make himself sick in the crate. We didn't crate him as a result. The baby gate work great for partitioning off parts of the house so you can have safe areas for your dogs or separate them without always having to crate.
Certain verbal cues worked great for helping Diesel with his separation anxiety. For separation anxiety I accidentally trained Diesel with the phrase "Hold on. I have to change. I'll be right back." I would say this to him when I got home from work and he was frantic to be with me. I would always change before taking him outside to potty and play with me. After awhile his frantic barking, whining, pleading etc would be completely stopped with that phrase and I could even use it if I wanted to spend an hour of quiet time alone in the bedroom. It took awhile to get to that point but having a phrase that let him know he wouldn't be alone for very long and then we would do something fun together afterwards made a big difference.
One of the big things with separation anxiety is teaching your dog that you will always come back. Teaching him that he doesn't need to panic when you are gone. It took a very long time for Diesel not to be barking frantically at me when I left for work in the morning and not to be barking frantically for me when I got home after work. For the first two years of his life I would come home at lunch every day and that helped. My husband works a later day then I do so he would only be alone for 2 hours before I would be home for lunch and another few hours before I would be home for the day. He is almost three now and he no longer barks at all when we leave and he doesn't panic when I leave him alone. But, I still have gouges on the walls in the kitchen from when he would panic.
