Attention Seeker

Well it is safe to say that Rupert has a very fine set of lungs on him because he cried all of last night continuously. Now, not alone is this very damaging for your own personal sleep, but it's also a bit of an assault on the old emotional heart strings. I was very tempted to go see to him but we've decided to stick to our strategy of roughing it out and letting him get used to the idea that at night he sleeps on his own. The sooner we can get him over separation anxiety the better, and more the point the sooner I won't be housebound :)

I get up a little later than yesterday to try and get him used to the idea of sleeping in a little and do the usual of not going downstairs until he's been quiet for a couple of minutes and despite the crying he'd been clean all the way through the night and promptly did his business as soon as he was let out the back garden.

What with an early start and all of that it gives me plenty of time to do lots of things with Rupert. I put his collar on today so he can get used to it and he took that very well with just a little bit of scratching. I then also put his lead on and let him get used to it by just dragging it around - tomorrow I hope to get him to walk a little with me with his lead on. We also spent a good deal of the day trying to make his crate a fun place to be since I think he'll help with him at night. So I've started to teach him to get into the crate on demand by saying "in to bed" which he has picked up really quickly. I've also made him a toy which is basically one of his squeaky toys which I removed the squeaky from and cut a smallish hole into the top where I can put tidbits into, the idea being that when Rupert goes into the crate so does the toy and it will distract him for long enough that he settles in the crate more easily.

Other things we did today was practice walking down the ramp we've set up for him out the back door and generally encouraging him to do his business outside and plenty of other play as well.

Phil doesn't get home til late tonight so when he does get home we have more play time with Rupert and then put him in bed (Rupert, not Phil!). I've donated a smelly t-shirt from the bottom of the laundry basket to put in his crate and Phil warmed up his microwavable beeny baby and put that in there too, along with my homemade toy, so it was as comfortable as we could make it. There's no grantee that he'll be any better than last night, but from what one of Phils work mates tells us it gets better hereon in.

Posted by Abi on the June 26, 2006 10:10 PM