Barking at night

[baublegirl454]

We have 2 dogs, a jack Russell cross (6) and a lurcher (4). They've generally been good at night, they are in the kitchen and have an open crate & a sofa to sleep on. They used to occasionally bark if there was a Fox in the garden, so we would let them out (only way to shut them up), they'd chase it out, then back in & back to sleep.
Lately however, the lurcher has started barking as soon as we get into bed. Not frantic barking, just a single bark, every 8-10 seconds, going on & on. If we go down, the jrt will want to go out & she will follow, but it's clear that she's not really barking for that. We've tried ignoring (controlled barking if u like) and sometimes that works & she gets bored, but I'm worried about disturbing the neighbours. In the end I got really cross last night & shut her in the crate (haven't done that for years) and she whined a bit but was ok. However I don't think that will work longterm. Any ideas for what I can do to make her settle?

[missbattenburg]

Single barks like that tend to be attention barks and my guess would be she has learned it's the way to get let out.

If she were mine, I think I might ignore it totally. It likely won't last more than a few nights as it's a new behaviour so the learning will be undone quickly. If I were your neighbour, a quick explanation of what was happening and what you were going to do about it would mean I wouldn't mind the disturbance for a few nights.