Our pup is going to be 7 months old and for the past two months wakes up at 230 so I put him outside to use the restroom as we are also having trouble with potty training but he won’t calm down till I give him a cup of food. He then falls asleep and is ready to eat at 430. He eats dinner two cups at 5. I walk him around 700 at night to get rid of some of his energy
It sounds as though he has trained you well. If he demands food and you give it to him, he will demand food. If you want to keep him on 3 meals, then you may be better spacing them out through the day, rather than the night eg 8am, 2pm, 8pm
Your dog has you in a routine you need to break or it will go on and on. May require some sleepless nights to adjust this behavior.
My pup is on two meals a day. One at 5:30AM and the other at 2:30PM. No treats in between these times except for small reward during training time retrieving bird dummies and then only a high protein low fat treat. That's 1-1/4 cup each meal for a 12+ week old pup. Will move forward the PM feeding closer to 5:30 PM as she gets older. Making what the dog needs convenient on your time schedule is the only way to go.
If your puppy wakes up at 2.30am and you respond to that by taking him out, you are reinforcing his waking up and demanding something at this time. It's going to sound tough, but you have to set your alarm for BEFORE the dog wakes up because your first step in solving this, is to stop the habit happening of the dog waking you up. So - set your alarm clock for 2am, get up, wake the dog up and take him out to toilet. Dog is now empty and you have not reinforced him waking you up. Well, you're just making this nighttime wake up call even more amazing if you introduce a midnight feast into it!! Just attention and going outside is reinforcing enough, add a meal into it and of course your dog is never going to go through the night. Heck, my dogs know when their meal times are approaching during the day and if I started feeding them in the middle of the night it would take no time at all before they were waking me up to let me know it was dinner time... I'm afraid the solution to this one is tough love. Dog goes back in crate after toileting and then you just ignore all noise - no food in the middle of the night, that's crazy... He may make noise for a week or so but you just have to ignore him and then it WILL stop if you can ignore it completely and for long enough.
