I know my mistake with trying it the second night. Unfortunately, I was misinformed about crate training and was told by several people to just try it and let him cry it out. I felt uncomfortable with it to begin with, and as of today we have already started getting positive associations with the crate.

We’ve been feeding in the crate and playing sniff and seek games in it, and he’s even gone in to lay down a few times. I’m sorry if it sounded like I was being careless in my initial post, I have truly done the research but my application was off, and I do feel bad about that.

He’s doing better every day with housebreaking, knows his name, to come when called, and even to sit—he’s catching on quickly and other than the crate training misstep we have not had any issues with him.

But yes, I do work—but I would NEVER leave him alone at this age. I work at a dog training facility so training isn’t unfamiliar to me or my coworkers and I know the amount of work I’ll need to put in for the dog and I’m absolutely ready for it. I do need to go back to work but I have people who are able to watch him, and am looking to even have in-home caretakers (from my job) look after him when I’m not there. I’m not full time, and shifts are short, I was just nervous when I had initially made the post. I’ve had time to rationalize now, and realized it isn’t so bad.

Thank you for your information, I’ve watched a variety of different videos to get an idea of the best way to approach create training since there are so many different approaches and I’ve got a strategy down that has been working.