ElvisTheNewf
Active member
It's no secret that Elvis can be a bit of a prince sometimes, but lately his OCD has gotten pretty bad.
Long story short, last weekend I left two boxes in our family room overnight. They were within Elvis' eyesight when he went in his cage for the night and he just couldn't handle it. He barked until I moved them to where he couldn't see them - even though they had been there all day and he had sniffed them and even helped me go through them without caring much. His cage door is always open but he never came out - he just sat in his crate and barked until I finally realized they were bothering him and moved them down the hall.
Yesterday I dared to decorate for Halloween, so now he can see some pumpkins and a fake mum from his crate. Last night he started pitching a fit again but we decided to just ignore the barking and hope he'd settle down. He's fine until we tuck him in and go upstairs and that's when the barking starts. He did quiet down after about 30 minutes of random barking, only to start up again about 5am this morning.
I hate ignoring his night time barking since he so rarely does it, but he's doing it more frequently now. I worry he's trying to tell us something's wrong but any time we go down there he's fine.
With a baby coming in a few months we're going to have a lot of new stuff in his line of vision and he's not going to be able to freak out over it every night. Any tips on how to handle this, aside from just getting out the stuff early and ignoring his barking? I know he's crying wolf but like I said before I'd hate to miss the one time he's actually trying to warn us about something. We're also not going to hide baby gear every night!
*If it helps, his crate is in our dining room. He can see into the hallway from one door and into the family room from the other. His crate has been in the same spot since we moved in 3 years ago and he's even more OCD about that so moving it isn't really an option.
Long story short, last weekend I left two boxes in our family room overnight. They were within Elvis' eyesight when he went in his cage for the night and he just couldn't handle it. He barked until I moved them to where he couldn't see them - even though they had been there all day and he had sniffed them and even helped me go through them without caring much. His cage door is always open but he never came out - he just sat in his crate and barked until I finally realized they were bothering him and moved them down the hall.
Yesterday I dared to decorate for Halloween, so now he can see some pumpkins and a fake mum from his crate. Last night he started pitching a fit again but we decided to just ignore the barking and hope he'd settle down. He's fine until we tuck him in and go upstairs and that's when the barking starts. He did quiet down after about 30 minutes of random barking, only to start up again about 5am this morning.
I hate ignoring his night time barking since he so rarely does it, but he's doing it more frequently now. I worry he's trying to tell us something's wrong but any time we go down there he's fine.
With a baby coming in a few months we're going to have a lot of new stuff in his line of vision and he's not going to be able to freak out over it every night. Any tips on how to handle this, aside from just getting out the stuff early and ignoring his barking? I know he's crying wolf but like I said before I'd hate to miss the one time he's actually trying to warn us about something. We're also not going to hide baby gear every night!
*If it helps, his crate is in our dining room. He can see into the hallway from one door and into the family room from the other. His crate has been in the same spot since we moved in 3 years ago and he's even more OCD about that so moving it isn't really an option.
)
