Puppy's First Night

I got Beanie, my first dog a lot older than Bailey, who was 7.5 weeks when I took her home, so I'd expected Bailey to adjust as well as Beanie could, not knowing better. I'd left Bailey on the first night downstairs with Beanie, in separate crates so Beanie didn't have to cuddle up next to some stranger.

Well, it was an hour in the car from Buckinghamshire in the middle of winter for Bailey, and must have felt like being abducted by well meaning aliens into outer space in a weird space ship, landing in what seemed like an eternity later on an alien home planet. Bailey slept all the way through, tired out by the experience, but the first night, realised the permanence of her alien abduction situation after seeing another fellow doggy in captivity from an earlier abduction, imagined the worst and whined and cried herself to sleep.

Points for making sure Beanie didn't get disturbed by a stranger: FAIL.Points for making sure Bailey had a good experience at home: FAIL.
Points for attempting not to create a clingy dog who clearly felt abandoned and didn't trust humans: FAIL.

Next night, upstairs next to my bed. The following week, I gradually increased the distance of her sleeping crate to my bed, and the following week, further away, until finally she was reassured that I was still going to be around the next morning and she'd get fed, same time, same channel. Some websites talk about ignoring your puppy when they whine and cry for attention, believing that if this attention was paid any mind, that this develops a clingy, attention seeking dog. Suspend that for the first few days I think now.

Contrary to paranoid behaviouralists, your puppy simply won't know enough about how you're going to behave in the first week to manipulate your behaviour by whining. As it is, you know little enough about your puppy to manipulate its behaviour, much less the other way around. After your puppy settles in (a week or two later, perhaps), continuing this treatment may give rise to attention seeking, which will quickly die down with ignorance.I'd thought to let my puppy learn that making a noise won't ever get me to turn up, by way of hoping that when the puppy is young without a developed bark, it is far preferable that the puppy never learnt to bark at all. Little did I know anyway that a puppy's bark, despite all best intentions, develop anyway, and sound very different from a whine and a cry!