9-month-old puppy won't settle in his pen anymore
Howdy folks; I've got a Spoodle turning 9 months in a couple of days, and while he's a wonderful little ball of fluff the majority of the time, he's also well into a very difficult stage of adolescence. I work from home and have a play-pen set up behind me where I put him for naps, and from about 4-7 months he was excellent at settling down and going to sleep a few minutes after being put in the pen. We had a good routine of 1-2 hours awake, and then around 2 hours of napping.
The last few weeks though, he's been nearly impossible to settle at any time of day. I'll put him in his pen and he'll stand at the gate and whine and cry and refuse to sleep. Sometimes he'll start a high-pitched barking. I do my best to ignore him as much as I can but after an hour of endless whining it becomes very frustrating and difficult to ignore. Sometimes if he does sleep he'll only be down for 30-60 minutes before he's up and crying again. I try to reward when he's quiet but it doesn't seem to change anything because it gives him attention.
I still don't fully trust him to free-roam around the house as he'll eventually start chewing on something somewhere. For a few months he was quite relaxed and I could let him nap out and about but lately he will not sleep whether in or out of the pen.
I try to mentally stimulate him before I put him into sleep and I have a few toys in there, but he's not very toy-motivated so he often ignores them and just tries to get my attention.
Any advice for a stressed-out, exhausted owner trying to get his work done?