Waking dog!

[twentyten]

Hi- desperate for advice! Our 6year old Doberman who seems in great health has started waking up at about 2 am wanting to go out then refusing to settle in her bed after. Whining and scraping the lounge door- only settles when I give in and bring her bed into our room.
(Now of course curled up asleep) any thoughts welcome! She is taken out several times a day- last wee at 10.30. Many thanks!

My 16 month old dog started this a couple of weeks ago. I was told it could be down to foxes at this time of year, as apparently the young are leaving their parents and tend to wander and get a bit noisy. Apparently dogs pick up the sound over a great distances, whereas we might not have heard them at all.

I don't actually think it was down to that with my boy. It started the night we wormed him and carried on for several days afterwards then settled down again, so now I'm wondering whether it could have been the wormer perhaps giving him stomach ache or something. I've Googled and restlessness and night-waking after using this particular wormer seems quite common - at least anecdotally.

No advice on how to stop it though. We took turns to go down and sleep on the sofa in the next room. We'd go downstairs, tell him to 'settle' through the door - without opening it - then sleep on the sofa. That seemed to reassure him enough for him to be quiet for the rest of the night and we didn't actually go in and reward his behaviour. The last couple of nights we snuck back upstairs in the middle of the night and he didn't notice and now he's back to sleeping through again.

Thank you! We have had a hedgehog in the garden which seemed to trouble her...