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Hello! Just got my Talos tonight and I've run into a bit of a snag... My bedroom and any usable shower and/or bed is upstairs. My dog knows what stairs are and learned about them in a prison program. But he hasn't connected that my stairs are the same type of deal as the prison stairs. Originally, I wanted his crate up in my room next to my bed. That's obviously not working out. Right now, my solution is to crate him downstairs and hang out on the couch, but just for tonight. What I want to know is how to proceed. I'm concerned that if I go sleep upstairs and leave him down, that he will get separation anxiety, since he's a very personable guy (which would make separation training and going to work very difficult). I went up to shower and heard him crying downstairs. He stopped when I scolded him, though. I also need solutions that would work for one person, as I live alone :/

Some background: We've had Mika now for about 6 months, and have had very few problems with him. He was a double-bounce and had been in three foster homes and two homes before we got him. He's smart and his last foster mom was pretty good about laying out the rules. Mostly he's a good boy, but he's got a couple issues. When he is unsupervised, he has to be crated. Really this is for his own protection, since he is SUPER destructive. Most of the time he is fine, but occasionally he finds things and chews them up and very often ingests them. We tell people his middle name is "dietary indiscretion." He's like a lab in a greyhound suit. I don't think this is anxiety related, since he's done it before with us sitting in the same room. It's amazing how quickly he can rip open a toy and eat the stuffing, squeaker, and sometimes the toy itself. We have very limited toy options for him now, sadly. He also rips up pillows, cushions, blankets, dog beds, dog pads, rugs... You get the idea. I think he enjoys it! His crate is downstairs, alongside our other grey's crate. We can't have him upstairs with us because he is not trustworthy with our cats, and quite frankly, they need a refuge from him. He's always been happy in his crate, and sometimes goes in there on his own. He doesn't fuss or cry when we leave, and until now, he's almost always been fine in there at night. The new problem: Occasionally in the past he has whined in his crate when we've gone to bed. It's happened maybe 4 or 5 times in the 6 months we've had him. One time he had diarrhea, and another time was a bad reaction to tramadaol. I usually wait until he's quiet, and then take him outside on a short lead to make sure he doesn't need to pee or poop. No petting, no cookies, just a quick outside, since I don't want to reward him. Sometimes he continues to whine, and we ignore him and it stops. This happened on Wednesday - he cried for awhile, I took him out, he cried for awhile, and then cried and howled for awhile (maybe 15 minutes), and then finally stopped. No problems on Thursday or Friday. Not a peep. Last night (Saturday), the same thing happened again. We went to bed late (as we often do) around 1AM and the whining started at 1:15. I took him out again, and he did nothing outside. I put him in his crate, and the whining escalated to howling. I took him out again, and this time he peed. Back in the crate, then more whining. Then howling. Then full-on barking. We figured he would tire himself out eventually, but he barked almost non-stop for 45 minutes. I came down to check on him, and he was standing in his crate, wide-eyed and panting. We tried turning the light on for him. More barking. Finally, around 3:15, I gave up and came downstairs to sleep on the couch. He could see me from his crate. He stopped barking but would break into whining, so I finally just let him out. He flopped down on a dog bed and went to sleep within 90 seconds. I know I shouldn't reward his barking/crying/whining with attention or by letting him out, but two hours of barking was really more than we could handle. Today I am exhausted and not sure what to do if it happens again. We need sleep! And I'm concerned the neighbors will complain, eventually... I've thought about muzzling him and leaving him out of the crate, but quite frankly, he's pretty destructive with the muzzle. He rubs on things violently. There's a spot on the outside of our house where he's rubbed the paint off trying to get his muzzle off. Inside, he knocks things off shelves, scratches and dents walls and scrapes furniture trying to get it off. Suggestions? Thoughts? Help?

Hello. My family adopted an almost 4 year old greyhound close to three months ago. It has been an adventure to say the least! Here’s the rundown of the biggest problem at the moment… At night he’s waking me up crying and barking. We bought a crate and had been putting him in that at night but he now it has become a problem as he gets very upset during the night, even has tried to bite his way out of the cage and getting his jaw stuck. For several days we tried having him upstairs with us. The first night we baby gated him into our Master bathroom, which worked out well. Night two he wanted nothing to do with the bathroom so we let him in our bedroom and put him in a crate that was right next to the bed. He also was very upset in the crate even with it next to our bed. We tried letting him out of the crate and baby gated the entrance to our bedroom but it took him a long time to settle down. The next few nights were even worse so we ended up putting him back down in the family room. We do not crate him at this point, although his crate is available to him, which he will lay in from time to time. The only catch with him being back in the family room is that we cannot let him out immediately before going up to bed at night (10 pm). We have to let him out early enough (around 9-9:15 pm) that when he comes back in he can lay down, settle in and then fall asleep while the tv is still on before us going up for the night. When we go to shut off the tv we put the radio on for him. If we don't let him settle we're faced with him whining, barking, etc. until we come back down. With all this said, he is still waking me up 1-3 times in the night. Each time he barks he is up and standing by the gate to be let out. Only once did I come down to find him laying down just looking for someone to be near him. He typically eats dinner between 6-7 pm and then has treats at 8-8:30 or so. I also try to limit his water after dinner. Any suggestions on how to phase out these night time outings? I know he can hold it since he's home alone while we are at work and is not having accidents. Thanks for any help you can provide.