Hi all, Hope you are all good? Just to say loving the forum so far, really reassuring and some really helpful people - who I am hoping to call upon! We have an 11 week old lab puppy, Murphy, and have a question around when he wakes up in the morning. So he has been sleeping in our room in a crate since we got him 3 weeks ago. Figured he will be sleeping in our room going forward so why not just do it from the beginning. He settles really well at night and goes to sleep without a fuss at 10pm (during the day is a different matter which we are working on ha). Really lucky so far that he generally sleeps through from 10pm to about 6am when he gets us up to go the toilet. We have been trying to then put him back in his crate until 7am, just to get him into that routine. Generally he settles ok for the first half an hour (until 6.30 ish) but then is unsettled and barks a lot. He has a variety of textures of chew toys in with him but he just barks. We try to wait until 7am still and don't let him out until he has a quiet moment (but we have also have neighbours on both side to consider which is an added stress). He has always been to the toilet at 6am so we know that's not the problem, pretty certain he is barking because he just wants out (when we do open the crate he doesn't rush out as if he does not want to be in there and he is always happy to go in). But just wondering are we asking too much of him to be in his crate for that amount of time? We are conscious we don't want to give in to the barking and create the behaviour that if he barks he gets what he wants, but equally conscious he is still only little. Thanks!
Hello, 10 till 6 at that age is amazing. He is doing brilliantly. However at 6, he is ready to start his day and ready for food. He is most probably hungry and ready to get out and about. I think it would be hard for him to go back and settle. Personally, I would get up with him and know that it will get later as he gets older.
