Hello! My partner and I brought home our 8 week old lab pup last week. We have been fortunate to have been able to visit him every week since he was around 2 weeks old so this has really helped him to settle in to our home over the last week. House training is going well so far and we have spent the first week making his crate a happy place - Pup will happily sleep in his crate during the day and will settle long enough to eat his meal from a kong with the door closed (about 5 mins at present). He has however been crying a few times through each night, we go to bed at 12am, set an alarm for 3am and a morning alarm for 6am but the crying isn’t always in keeping with this - sometimes pup is waking up at 1/2am but sometimes sleeps through until 4am (no accidents so far). We wait for several seconds of quiet and then calmly carry him out to our garden to wee. Once back in his crate, we wait with him quietly for a few minutes until he falls back to sleep and then go back to bed. Overall, I think this seems normal, however we aren’t sure whether we should be setting an alarm to wake us before he starts crying or if we should continue to be woken by his crying at odd hours and then let him out once he is quiet? Just want to be sure that we aren’t encouraging any unnecessary crying by accidentally rewarding him with attention! We haven’t attempted leaving him to “cry it out” yet incase this leads to distress or a negative crate experience? Apologies for the long post but any help is greatly appreciated
Hi there, congratulations on your new pup and welcome to the forum. It sounds as though you have got off to a pretty good start so far. Where is your puppy's crate located? And when your alarm goes off, do you take the puppy outside or just listen for him and leave him if he is quiet?
Hi Pippa, Thank you! His crate is located in our lounge (we spent the first three nights sleeping in the lounge next to his crate). At the moment, if our alarm goes off and we don’t hear him crying, we just snooze it for another half hour or so, however sometimes he begins crying once our alarm goes off so I think maybe we are accidentally waking him up earlier than needed!
