I Leave My 13-Week-Old Groodle Home Alone 8 to 9 Hours — Here's How We Actually Get Through It

Real solutions for real pet problems · FurTrouble

November 19, 2025

I stood at my front door on a Monday morning with my keys in my hand and my stomach in knots. Behind me, my 13-week-old groodle was watching me through the crate bars with those enormous puppy eyes, and I was supposed to walk out and leave him for nine hours. I had done the math a hundred times and it made no sense to me: how do you leave a literal baby alone for a full workday and call yourself a good dog owner?

That guilt is the part nobody warns you about. It is not that the logistics are hard, though they are. It is that leaving feels like abandonment every single time, even when you have done everything right. Here is what actually helped me separate the real problem from the guilt, and the system we built that works three days a week.

Why This Happens

The first thing to understand is that a 13-week-old puppy does not have an adult bladder. At that age, most puppies can only hold it for roughly an hour per month of age, which means at three months you are realistically looking at two to three hours max, often less. So the core problem is not that you are cruel, it is that an eight-hour stretch is genuinely longer than your puppy's body can manage. That is a logistics puzzle, not a moral failing.

The second thing is that sudden alone time is scary for a puppy this age. He has just left his littermates and his mother, at exactly the developmental window when he is most wired to be near a warm body. Being left alone in an empty apartment is not neutral for him; it is a big emotional event. That is why the goal is never just "leave him," it is "teach him that aloneness is boring and safe."

There is also a real risk of setting something permanent if you skip the ramp. A puppy who spends week after week panicking alone can learn that being alone is terrifying, and that habit is far harder to undo than it is to prevent. So the priority is not perfect attendance at the office. It is meeting his needs so the alone time, however long, is calm rather than traumatic.

What I Tried First — and Why It Didn't Work

My first attempt was to skip the crate and just give him the run of the kitchen with some toys. I figured more space would be more comfortable. It was a disaster. He pulled down a dish towel, shredded a bag of flour, and spent the day stressed because a whole open room is a lot of territory for a baby. Space is not the same as comfort, and too much of it is actually overwhelming at this age.

Then I tried to rely on a pet camera alone, watching him on my phone all day. That is the trap of the guilty owner. The camera gave me anxiety, not a solution, it told me when he was crying but did nothing to make him calmer. I caught myself sneaking out at lunch to rush home, which was not sustainable and honestly made his schedule less predictable, not more.

My third mistake was trying to power through by letting him cry it out from day one. For a puppy this young, cold-turkey aloneness does not build confidence, it builds panic. He learned to scream, which is the opposite of what I wanted. I had to back way up and accept that this was a training process with steps, not a switch I could just flip.

What Actually Worked

The thing that pulled it together was a proper crate schedule paired with real help. His crate is the right size, big enough to stand and turn, small enough that he does not want to soil it, and it stays a happy place. He gets a good, tiring play session right before I leave, because a tired puppy sleeps. Then he goes into the crate with something to occupy him rather than with me standing there crying in the hallway.

The single biggest fix for the "eight hours" problem was arranging a midday break. On my three office days, a walker comes in around the four-hour mark to let him out, potty, and reset, and that changed everything. Eight hours is a stretch for an adult, let alone a 13-week-old. Splitting it into two calmer four-hour blocks meant he was not in distress by the time I got home.

Building his tolerance on my work-from-home days mattered just as much. I practiced leaving for short, boring stretches. Five minutes, then fifteen, then an hour, always coming back before he hit panic. That is what taught him I always come back. On days he was extra wound up and struggling to settle for his nap, I used a natural calming chew with melatonin, and it took the edge off so he could actually sleep through part of the day instead of staring at the door.

I also had to deal with the barking that came with hearing my neighbors in the hallway. Every footstep set him off, and that revved him up right when he should have been relaxing. I used a humane ultrasonic deterrent, kept aimed at the door, purely to interrupt that particular habit so I could redirect him to his chew. It is one tool in the rotation, not a magic wand, but it broke the reflex of barking at every sound and let him settle back down.

Finally, I stopped trying to be perfect and accepted the arrangement. He is safe, he is fed, he gets a midday visit, and he sleeps most of the day, because that is what puppies do. Guilt was making me overcomplicate a problem that good logistics and a couple of tools had already mostly solved.

What I'd Tell Someone Starting Today

Do not try to tough out eight-hour stretches with a 13-week-old. Get help for the middle of the day, even if it is just a neighbor or a teenage kid down the street. Crate-train with food and patience, tire him out before you leave, and build his tolerance in small steps on your days off. The guilt will fade once the system is working, because a calm puppy is a lot easier to leave than a panicking one.

Three months in, my groodle walks into his crate on his own, naps through my workday, and greets the walker like an old friend. He still loses his mind when I get home. That part, I have decided, is a feature, not a bug.

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