Puppy is hot-natured
Puppy, Australian Labradoodle, is now 12 weeks old. We got her at 8 weeks, and the first few nights in the crate were unbearable. Of course we took her out, calmed her, ended up sleeping on the floor with her (we don't do the dogs in our bed thing). She wasn't afraid of the crate, would eat and play in the crate but when you locked the door, she melted down. We set up a corral around the crate, opened the door and she was fine sleeping on the floor next to the open crate, within the corral. We added a floor fan, but no change. Then we noticed how often she plopped down on AC registers. AH-HA, she is hot natured. So we pulled the bedding out of the crate, limited it to 1 medium plush toy, and she slept like a puppy should. By 11 weeks she was sleeping 7 hrs/night in the closed crate. We've since talked to other ALD owners and it seems to be a trait in some of these dogs. Although we read everything we could get our hands on, there was no mention puppies being hot natured. We thought giving her a fluffy bed was the sweet thing to do, but it just caused her to overheat. Gotta listen to the doggo!