Morning all, Hope everyone is well. We have a 16 week Old beautiful Lab who was sleeping ok ish at night. We have always been up around 4am as that is when she needs a toilet break and back down till 5 30 am. Recently, Ada has taken to crying and barking on the hour every hour and we've no idea why. We have tried to ignore her after we check if she needs a break and ensure her crate is clean and dry before putting her back in for the rest of the night. We are both working full time so we are very tired. Ada does have company in the day and is walked . Ada spends three days with a dog sitter and 2 days my parents come over, so I doubt she is lonely. Maybe that's the problem. Any advice would be appreciated. I have to work on figures on most days and looking at an Excel spreadsheet with two hours sleep is causing issues . Thank you. 9 Michelle
It doesn't sound like you've crate-trained your puppy... instead your puppy has trained you to let her out when she makes noise. A 16wk pup should easily be able to go through the night and should not need to get up at 4am. So - you've responded to her noise to 'check' her crate... thereby reinforcing it... and training her to repeat it.
Hi, Thank you , you're right. Reading it back now, it makes perfect sense. Case of just not responding .
I would also suggest you set an alarm before she needs the toilet to beat her to crying and re-enforce that she only gets out when quiet. We haven't crate trained our pup however we did set alarms when she was young so she knew when 'toilet' time was.
