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?

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.