[BruceUK]

Alfie near enough without fail gets the total zoomies and mentalness when we get back from a walk. Normally we take him straight outside to pee and run it off, but it's quite annoying and he can really jump up and nip at clothing when he's that hyped up. I suspect he's just over tired cos as soon as we get him into his crate he passes out, but any tips for how to handle it? We don't make a fuss about coming in.

On a related note, we've decided we need a puppy safe time out area for him, see above about jumping up and nipping at clothes. We have 2 candidates, one is the hallway at the front door which has the benefit of two doors to access it so can get to it quickly and easily wherever bad behaviour happens, and once the doors are shut he'll be totally isolated. The down side is that we'd have to get him in there and shut the door behind, which is tricky when he often heel-hugs.

The second option is to put a gate between the kitchen and the utility room. We'd planned to do that anyway as it would be a larger safe area to leave him in when we go out, rather than just his crate. It's not as central as the hallway, and being gated isn't complete isolation, but the flip side is the gate would make putting him in there easier. Is it a complete no-no to have his time out area in the same place as where he gets left?

 

[BruceUK]

Thanks, that's pretty much what we do, although it was a struggle yesterday not to scold him while crating him after he nipped both of us on the back of the legs in a few seconds just after walking in the door! We definitely need the time out area for escalation as turning our backs on him now just seems to make him want to jump up and bite our legs.

Annoyingly he's an angel(ish) the rest of the time.