So we crate train Shelby, & she sleeps in our bedroom. The other day my fiance had to get up at like 6am for work-related things & as soon as he left, Shelby started whining & crying & would just NOT stop! I put a blanket over her cage & yelled at her to stop but she wouldn't! She is fine when we are BOTH in there, but once one of us leaves she starts whining & digging at her cage, it is getting to the point where I am losing sleep over it. Any advice out there?
P.S. we can't move her crate anywhere else in the house because there is NO room anywhere!

Also, is it weird that our dog will pick up anything & everything off the ground & eat it? It is almost impossible for us to "puppy-proof" our home because she seems to get into & find stuff no matter what! & I fear that one of these days she is going to pick something up & choke on it or something.

Snow will eat ANY and everything, therefore she is not allowed to roam free at night lol I have a long list of things she has consumed within the course of three months, so now matter how much you puppy proof, she will find a way to eat something!
Snow started whining after we crated her..it was always in the morning once she saw movement from either myself or my husband...whoever gets up first takes her out to pee, then she will lay quietly in her crate until the other person gets up.
We kind of have a routine with it now....before it was soooo loud with her in the mornings.

If it isn't possible to take her out in the morning that early, maybe try giving her a kong, it will keep her busy instead of whining.

haha from everything I have read, it seems like huskies are little scavengers, we don't let ours roam around at night either (obviously) lol I am deathly scared to let her out at night, she would probably poop, pee & tear our bedroom up, we have too many valuables & electrical things exposed that I would not trust our dog by herself. I am afraid that we will never be able to let her do that even when she is older. But I am hoping that once she matures & grows out of her crazy puppy phase we can let her freely roam around the bedroom & sleep with us outside of her cage without getting into any trouble!

Your dog sounds exactly like Shelby. lol. I didn't try taking her out to potty after he left, maybe I should try that. & we always keep her favorite toy in the crate with her so she doesn't get bored. How old is Snow? She is beautiful by the way.

Snow is two. Unfortunately we did not experience the crazy puppy years with her. I need to start a scrapbook for her to show what she looks like now. Her coat has come in all the way finally lol
She had the worst habit of peeing on her bed, which was not in her crate, but thanks to everyone on here we tried a few different things and she is pee free at night now! Lol

She will grow out of the crazy puppy stages eventually:)

Our will woo and whine if one of us leaves the house / car without her for a tiny bit... but it isn't prolonged. She generally just goes back to sleep after 5 mins of it. She won't do it if we crate her though.

In terms of chewing items on the floor we really don't have that issue... For some reason She has always understood what her toys are, and those are Ok the play with / chew on. Everything else is off limits.

Every now and then she finds a small piece of food that falls that we don't see but even then thats rare... I've actually had Tika go into another Dog's treat bag, grab a treat and walk up to me with it and drop it at my feet and then look up at me.

She can and does rarely get into the cat food, but that has been maybe 4 or 5 times in the 9 months we've had her? There was that week that cat turds were the BEST THING EVER though... that wasn't fun.

I don't know, I want to say it's been NILIF training that has her acting like this; but truth be told... She just a good dog.

~Chris~

ShawnaAD wrote:

Snow is two. Unfortunately we did not experience the crazy puppy years with her. I need to start a scrapbook for her to show what she looks like now. Her coat has come in all the way finally lol
She had the worst habit of peeing on her bed, which was not in her crate, but thanks to everyone on here we tried a few different things and she is pee free at night now! Lol

She will grow out of the crazy puppy stages eventually:)

Awww you should post pictures! I love white huskies. & congrats on being pee-free with her! We are learning new things every day with ours, & enjoy going through this forum & learning even more.
& I actually wish we would have gotten Shelby at 8 weeks when she was first ready, but didn't have the funds, or find a breeder until 4 months later & she was bigger, but just to be able to snuggle & play with a cute little puppy is amazing to me, so I could watch her grow up & give her the interactions & attention she needed to develop. We're having issues with her being so skittish & scared around people & feel that she developed that personality trait from before we adopted her. She just didn't seem very used to people, when we first saw her she ran away from us in fear & cowered under a car in the garage.

Tika wrote:

Our will woo and whine if one of us leaves the house / car without her for a tiny bit... but it isn't prolonged. She generally just goes back to sleep after 5 mins of it. She won't do it if we crate her though.

In terms of chewing items on the floor we really don't have that issue... For some reason She has always understood what her toys are, and those are Ok the play with / chew on. Everything else is off limits.

Every now and then she finds a small piece of food that falls that we don't see but even then thats rare... I've actually had Tika go into another Dog's treat bag, grab a treat and walk up to me with it and drop it at my feet and then look up at me.

She can and does rarely get into the cat food, but that has been maybe 4 or 5 times in the 9 months we've had her? There was that week that cat turds were the BEST THING EVER though... that wasn't fun.

I don't know, I want to say it's been NILIF training that has her acting like this; but truth be told... She just a good dog.

~Chris~

Aww! haha that is too funny. Sounds like a good dog! When I had my other dog, she would like getting into the litter box too, so gross! It's unbelievable what dogs will put in their mouths. I don't understand the "tastiness" of cat poop.

Wow Chris, that is awesome. Snow doesn't even hestitate when it comes to treats haha

The treats weren't hard to be honest. That was NILIF.

Tika was EXTREMELY fixated on food when we got her. she was from a litter of 3, both the other 2 were males, and she was the smallest. She wasn't malnourished at all, but I think they let them compete and work for their food so the speak.

When she would eat at home she wouldn't chew, just swallow. You could hear the sounds of the kibbles coming together as they would slide down her throat. I was pretty sure she was going to choke on a kibble sooner or later, it was actually very scary. I would cringe every time I heard it.


Feeding times became waiting contests. She had to sit and wait until she relaxed about the food before I would let her touch it. "Leave it" became a very important part of our training and it is probably the command she is best about. I started just by blocking her to the food bowl until she sat down and looked at me. Then I would hover the bowl just above her nose until she sat and looked at me. And then I would simply just put it on the floor. All 3 ways I would constantly say leave it, sometimes leaving the room for a couple of minutes. I would also randomly place my hand directly into her bowl so she could understand when a hand goes near it I need to stop. I ONLY put my hand into her food because I knew for sure she wasn't food aggressive in anyway shape or form and I like her to be prepared for anything. I supervise her 24/7 but you never know when it will randomly happen that for some reason someone does it.

Once the food relaxed Leave it became something we always use when giving her treats. Especially if it falls on the floor by accident but we would give it to her anyways, we would say leave it.

It's gotten to the point where I can take any treat and shove it into her face. She will move away from it like it's no big deal. As soon as I release her she goes Ape for it though.


I'm not claiming Tika is wonder dog here though. We caught her two weeks ago on her bed licking and chewing the end of a cucumber that has fallen on the floor that no one had noticed. She was hiding it with her body kind of and slowly licking and checking to see who, if anyone, would notice. My wife just grabbed and said "NO" and moved it to the other end of her doggy bed and said "Leave it" and walked away. When she came back the cucumber was still there and she released Tika to be able to eat it again this time without hiding it.

She is still a dog and full of trouble when she wants to be, and that treat was a one time thing, though she hasn't been in that position again. She stares at the cats eating their food all the time, even when she has a full bowl of kibble, and i'm sure I'll catch here in their food again at some point.

Just keep at it and be persistent. NILIF takes a little time, but in the end it works wonders. Theres a switch that goes off at some point that they just begin to look to you for everything. But it is nice I don't have a pup that is constantly testing me and checking theirs limits every day.... Been there done that, I just got a bit lucky this time around.

I Think this is the point I need to find a piece of wood to knock on right?

~Chris~

Of the two dogs in my photo, I only still have the black one (the sable one was my roommate's dog). The sable one, Apollo, was typical of huskies -- if he got bored and it was in range of his mouth, it was food. The end. Fenrir is surprisingly well behaved, though, even without training. He doesn't chew on what isn't his, doesn't go in the house, I can leave him out in my room and he won't demolish everything, he doesn't bounce off the walls...and he's a puppy!

But, he's getting worse and worse about food. He's learned that he can jump up to counter height to steal things and he's very defensive of both myself and treats.

The only time he's ever freaked and tried to dig out of his crate was when the tornado was dangerously close to us. That was...not fun.

There are two angles that I see here. One is that it's morning, and since someone is getting up, Shelby is disturbed and wakes up fully, ready to go potty. In the case, I'd guess she's used to being let free and taken to potty when you guys get out of the bed, so now that she knows the routine, she's confused that it's changing.

For that case, it's a matter of practicing, and ignoring her. When we first moved Isis and Dante into our room overnight (crate free), they would decide it was time to get up and go potty as soon as one of us got up. That was fine most days, since we didn't get out of bed until we really were ready to get up, but on the rare morning we'd have to get up for something (noise, personal business, etc), before we were totally ready to get up for the day, the dogs would be ready to go too early. We actually had to build up a small "hill" of blankets in front of our faces, when we got back in bed, so Isis couldn't see us. Once she knew she wasn't getting any attention (positive or negative), she'd go back and lay down.

The other issue is the pack splitting mentality. Shortly after we got Dante, he had gotten very used to the whole pack being together. He would downright refuse to come inside before Isis did, or go outside without her coming as well. Also, the first time my wife left the house with the three of us there, he went on a rescue mission and searched the whole house for her, then came back and stared at her spot on the couch while whining. I didn't encourage or comfort him during this, I just let him whine and when he was quiet, I'd praise him and pet him.

Giving any attention just seemed to encourage the behavior, as it seemed to simply be attention seeking behavior. When they seek attention incorrectly, we try to simply ignore them (jumping up, leaning, barking, etc), and if they actually are bad, they get taken directly to time out, told they're getting a time out, and then given a 30 second to 1 minute timeout. After that, they will get attention again when they ask for it correctly.

I've only had a crate for the past month or so. When I first got Chloe she had destroyed a few things, nothing too expensive though. I keep everything out of her reach that she would chew up, of course there's the occasional sock that she finds who knows where. At night she sleeps in her crate, I never close the door. The only time she whines in the crate is if I leave the room with the crate closed. She absolutely hates it when I leave.

Since you are wanting to keep her in the crate I would recommend getting bones and chew toys to keep her occupied. Find something that really keeps her interested and give it to her before she whines otherwise she will assume this is what gets her treats.

I have a ton of tennis balls, kong toys with her favorite treats, and a huge bone to keep Chloe occupied throughout the day when I'm busy or gone. I think she is the farthest away from puppyhood now than she ever has been.

Thanks for all the tips everyone, I will take everything into consideration & practice those ideas with her, I am sure we will get past this phase with her! We appreciate all of your friendly advice.