We have an 18 month old Lab who sleeps in a crate at night and is happy to be in there. She only goes in there at night and when we get up and start turning tv, lights off etc, she gets up and tootles off into her crate. The room is completley dark at night.
She usually starts nodding off on the sofa about 9pm but will only doze and if one of us goes into the kitchen, she will follow, maybe go out in the garden for a wee and then come back in and doze again.
The problem is that she is consistantly waking up and barking between 4.30 and 6 each morning, which means one of us has to get up (usually me) to let her out of her crate, she then goes for a wee and ususally a poo in the garden then comes back in and goes back to sleep until about 730/8am in the living room.
Im exhausetd with this early morning waking ( i work FT shifts) and wondered if the time she is fed is related to her waking time, ie does it usually
take XX amount of hours for her food to pass through her system resulting in her waking up to toilet.
She is fed at 8am and 5pm with access to water all day/eve and is usually walked off lead for an hour a day, so lots of running about.