Help with 2 year old chihuahua rescue. Crate/Walking help needed!
Hi everybody!
Me and my wife recently adopted a 2 year old, 8 lb chihuahua. We've had her for 3 days, she is really sweet and shy. All we know about her is that she was fostered for 2 weeks with her sister (or maybe daughter?) and that they were not a bonded pair. Her records show that she was a stray prior to that.
She is NOT AT ALL food motivated. We've only discovered that she likes chicken and that she responds great to praise. So it has been harder than expected to train walking and crate training. We are not doing open feeding, and have tried to hand feed her while training but it hasn't worked out since she only eats her meal if it's floating in chicken broth and water. She hasn't shown any interest in play or toys.
She's been slowly coming out of her shell. We live in a very busy city area so the first few days she had trouble during her walks but now she is more confident and it has been easier to get her started on walking. We started with giving her chicken as a treat but she is sometimes too anxious to eat it on her walk so we have just been repeating Yes! with a clicker and that has been working better.
Crate-wise, it has been hard. We have been dropping treats in her crate and have only been feeding her inside. She doesn't really go and explore it otherwise and we have attempted to get up and leaving her for a period of time in her crate by herself. We have also tried lick mats but she doesn't really pay much attention to them. She has gone 20 mins max in the crate by herself before starting to whine. She does sleep in the crate overnight without complains!
We know that it has only been a couple of days and that dogs take a while to decompress. However, day 5 will be the first day in which both me and my wife will need to leave the house and that she'll have to be by herself. We are anxious that she won't be able to stay in her crate for an extended period of time. We have been able to alternate being with her with our work schedule but we will need to start leaving her crated for at least 4 hours.
She spends most of the day sleeping and has been great at potting outside! No accidents have happened!
What should we modify? Any tips/ tricks/ or advice? What should we do so that she can withstand an extended period of time in her crate?
Just looking to do what's best for our baby! :)