[Caney Creek]

Without knowing more about the situation, I would tend to think that

1. She is crying so much because her sleeping arrangement has been inconsistent. It is normal for pups to cry during the night at first, which I'm sure you know, but if you give in to the crying and let her sleep with you or with the other dog then all she's learning is that her crying produces results. Now that she knows the luxury of sleeping on your bed and with your other dog, it is going to take MUCH longer for her to get used to her crate. She knows there's something better out there and that she will get it with enough protesting.

2. She was not very accustomed to her crate before she had to be left in it the first time. If you only had a weekend to work with her and then you went back to work, it's very possible that she was not ready to be left alone in the crate at that point. And, since then, she gets left there twice a day during the week -- once by you in the morning, and once by the dogsitter in the afternoon. That action of someone locking her up and then leaving is very stressful for her, and it sounds like on a regular basis she has more negative experiences with her crate then positive ones.


When Caney was a puppy we made the mistake of letting her sleep in bed with us the first two nights she came home. Then it was off to the crate (a foot away from our bed). It was WEEKS before she stopped crying at night, but we stuck it out and didn't give in to her, and eventually she stopped crying and was sleeping through the night.

We were very lucky that BF was able to take her to work with him when he was very young. Otherwise I'm not sure how we would have gotten her crate trained. He had a crate for her in his office and worked with her in his free time at work for the first few weeks she was with us, and then he transitioned to leaving her at home and just coming home to let her out on his lunch break.