The whining, oh please help me stop the whining!

[Heidi]

Okay, I admit it, I need help. I kept brushing this off as a puppy thing. But I just don't want this to be an issue when she grows up.

So we adopted a 6 month old choc lab in September. She is doing extremely well! We love her to pieces, and really there aren't any problems.

BUT it is starting to feel like she now knows she can get what she wants by whining.

Mainly my problem is in the morning. Now I know she is a puppy, and has a smaller bladder. So I do get up when she whines to let her out and pee, but I have noticed that she doesn't always want to go out!

I am starting to believe that she just wants us to get up and play. She is just letting us know it is a new day to play when she whines. Because she isn't always eager to eat right away, or go pee.

FWIW we sleep upstairs (dogs aren't allowed up there because of new carpeting), and the dogs have the run of the downstairs at night, so she's not crated at night, just when we are gone in the day.

She also whines when she can't see/be with our older black lab, or when she wants her squeaker toy, but we have taken it away momentarily because the squeak is driving us nuts, or if her water bowl is empty and she needs a refill.

The hardest part is not being able to tell what she is whining about. I have no problem letting her out when she needs to go, or giving her her toys, or giving her a fresh bowl of water, but I feel like I am caving in to the whining and teaching her this is the proper way to ask. Sometimes I think I just need to ignore it (like at 5:30 in the am), but then I worry about whether she really does have to go out to pee.

The whining is just grating on my nerves, not to mention it is a heartbreaking sound!

Any suggestions are good, but I am thinking if I can teach her other ways to ask for what she wants she wouldn't have to whine. I just don't know what to teach her!

Wow, sorry this is so long for a silly problem, if you got to this point, thanks for reading!

[boilermaker]

I'm not an expert, but I think you need to reinforce what whining is ok for. For instance, if the dog whines to get you up in the morning, take it outside, give it enough time to reasonablly pee, then crate her until you are ready to get up. She may whine more for a little while at first, but should learn. If that doesn't work, I would simply crate her at night and see if that helps at all.

Also, is it possible to teach her "quiet". We have taught our golden to stop barking when we give him the "quiet" command. It took awhile to learn, but it works well now. We did not use a barking collar or anything, just positive reinforcement.

Good luck. It certainly can be annoying.

[strawberry4]

Try this, but make sure you are only doing it for whining that is not necessary:

Put about 10 pennies in an empty pop can and tape it shut. When your puppy whines or does something else not acceptable, shake the can behind your back. Do not let him see the can. The can will startle him. Keep doing this when he whines. We got this idea from a dog training book and it did work for us. We trained our dog not to get on the couches and not to whine in his crate (after he had just gone outside to pee!). I guess dogs do not like this sound.

HTH!

[Hello Kitty]

We have the whiniest dobe ever, and our trainer got it to stop.

Whining for food, water, bathroom is perfectly acceptable and rewarded, however gratuitous whining is not accepted. What we'd do was say SHH!, and then squirt a little lime juice (from one of those plastic lime things) into her mouth. After awhile, she started to realize that whining = lime = bad. So now, we can SHH! her, and she'll stop. Every now and then, we have to get out the lime to reinforce it. But the lime has helped incredibly!

Good luck. I thought it was never going to stop!

[mrsk]

My BIL uses the pennies in a can and it works everytime. She's even gotten so if they shake the can and say "Go Pen!" she goes right to her pen.

[TaterBaby]

We had this same exact problem with our chocolate lab. Basically we just used positive reinforcement for whining when he really needed to go out and when we knew he didn't, we ignored it. We were able to tell the difference because he would whine AND go to the door when he needed to go out, and just whine when we wanted to play, lay on the couch where we were laying, etc. He is now 10 months and it has stopped completely except for whining to go out, which of course we want him to do. However, he does sigh heavily when he doesn't get his way!, but it always makes us smile and isn't annoying like whining.

[Heidi]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I am printing this thread out now to show my husband and I think we will give these suggestions a shot.

I think Matty is still young to expect that she won't whine at all, I just don't want to create a problem that will last after she outgrows the puppy phase.

[Smittenk]

I feel your pain!

We have a 9 week old chocolate lab. His whining...actually crying grinds into my head. We have stopped it at night though. It took 4 nights of ignoring him with pillows over our heads and it has now stopped. We crate him though and he hasn't had an accident in his crate. I think he just had to learn to be on his own and also to hold his pee and then he was good. He has actually slept and kept himself entertained from 10pm-7am once!! That was awesome.

I like these suggestions though...My problem is Barley crying during the day if I leave him. He can't be on his own for some reason then. I want to praise him when he stops crying but he doens't stop so that won't work. I have started crating him for an hour or two during the day and I just leave so I don't have to listen to it. He is getting better with that each time I do it. I am going to try the can and the spray bottle...they are excellent ideas! Hmmm I might get my life back and be able to leave the kitchen!!

Good luck with yours!! Next up after whining...biting...my hands will never look the same :rolleyes:

[kemorr]

Hmm, I might have to try that lime thing....

I have a 3 yo German Shorthaired Pointer, who whines constantly. It is her only fault. She doesn't bark, doesn't chew, doesn't jump, doesn't do anything bad except whine. The funny thing is that she doesn't whine when she wants to go outside - she just sits by the door quietly. Mostly she whines when she is bored and wants interaction (which, being a high energy breed, is often).

Anyhow, I did expect this because if you research German Shorthairs, all the books say that whining is a common trait. The same may be true for labs.

If you can't train her out of it, you do get used to it. It used to drive me crazy. Now I can completely tune it out and ignore it. 3 years does that to you..:rolleyes:

[Hello Kitty]

SmittenK, our dobe still crys when we leave. It's changed from an inconsolable worked-up howl for hours to several minutes of crying. I'm sure our apartment neighbors were estatic that we moved. :o

I don't really know what to say about that - I make a point to leave her every day for random amounts of time, so she knows I may be gone for 5 minutes, but I'll come back. If I leave for 8 hours, I'll still come back, KWIM? I reward her for me coming back - we walk around the house and make sure everything is intact (not like I would be mad if it wasn't) and tell her what a good dog she was, and give her a treat.

[Heidi]

SO I tried ignoring this morning, it may have worked a little.

She went to bed at 10pm, then was crying at 5:30am, so I went downstairs and let her outside - and OF COURSE, she didn't even leave the deck, so I know she didn't have to pee right away. Our other dog went out, and Matty ate breakfast, then Joey came in and Matty finally went out. When she came back in I shut off the lights and went back upstairs (about 5:45 now - I was just hoping to get her to 6:30). She whined and whined the second I went upstairs, and that whining went on until 6:20, and then stopped for 10 minutes. I decided to get up in that 10 minutes to show her I would come downstairs when she is NOT whining.

So I don't know if we are on the right track or not, we will see how tomorrow morning goes. Ahh, i love waking up early on weekends! :rolleyes: