I'm looking for some advice. We have a re-homed one year old lab. She is utterly adorable and very keen to please and everything is perfect part from the fact that she wakes at 5 am. It's dark at 5 am and I would rather be asleep. I have tried leaving her for 20 minutes, but it's having no effect. This morning I left her for 20 minutes, then let her out and put her back to bed. The sad noises were too much. I am aware that responding to her cries would seem as if she is being rewarded for this behaviour but I'm not sure what to do about it. We cracked the settling alone at night with very little fuss but this is a harder nut to crack. Any suggestions great fully received.
Does she need to go to the loo when you let her out? If so, maybe move her dinner time earlier and restrict access to water late in the evening. And move your last "empty" of the night as late as possible. I find my two sleep in if they've been tired out by a long walk and/or a good training session in the evening. Does she settle back down when you put her back to bed?
Hi there and welcome , Really great to hear she's found a safe and happy home with you and mostly settled. I had something similar with Dexter when he was around the same age.....I realized it was a sound ( that of the golf course vehicles starting up at the bottom of our garden) he was clever enough to realize it meant I would appear about 30 mins later....it would still be dark but his timing was so accurate! Boy if I was late down the stairs ,did I get moaned at! Could she be hearing a boiler going on,a neighbour going to work,your alarm and making an association? We dealt with it by going through the pain of listening to the moaning ....and never going into him while he was making a noise....it didn't take long ... Of course all of this became irrelevant when at 18 months he finally made it onto our bed I'm not suggesting that as a solution in your case .....butnitndoes make a big difference! Best Wishes Angela x
Thanks for the suggestions. I suspect she gets up that early because that's what she is used to, but it could be the boiler coming on Dexter. We have no neighbours, and I certainly don't have my alarm set that early so it's neither of those. I'm not going to let her into the bedroom, but she settles back into her bed in the kitchen if either of us are in there with her. My fingers are crossed that when the clocks go back. We might get another hour in bed.....?
If you have no close neighbours, I'd get ear plugs and ignore her, going down only when she is quiet. I am a very heavy sleeper, once I'm asleep anyway, and when my dog was young, he slept at the back of the house - I wouldn't wake if he made a noise, and he is silent now in the house. I honestly think that this is because the arrangement just so happened to mean I would never respond to any sound he made. That said, he sleeps with us now - not least because otherwise I wouldn't know if he were seriously ill or something was wrong (I tried a movement baby alarm but it kept me up all night.....) No noise does have its downsides!
I have the same problem with my two five month old Chocolate girls, they are crated in the kitchen, but no matter what time we put them in, they will start moaning between 5.30am-6.15am. We thought it was the day break, and we even blacked out their crates at night, but to no avail.
