How many times sgiuld i get up in the night with an 11 week old puppy

[beautifultrauma]

I have an 11 week old puppy who is coming on well with toilet training. We take him out every hour or so and reward him when he goes. Our issue is with night time. He will wake and cry for a while, and it's hard to know if he wants to pee or just wants attention. Sometimes it can be every hour, and when I take him out he does pee. But yet if he's asleep on the sofa he can hold it for 3 hours or so! I just don't know what to do!

Also he just doesn't like being left alone. We have him in our utility room with a baby gate on the door so he can see and hear us, but he still cries. I have a few meetings coming up and will have to leave him, only for an hour or two hours maximum, and I am worrying about this, as he loves company and hates being alone. Can anyone please help?

[MrsMaisel]

Sounds very hard - I really struggle when my sleep is affected for days on end (like with a newborn) you have my sympathy.
If you have the resources, you could try speaking with a dog trainer?

[Chimpd0g]

Our pup is 11 weeks old and goes to bed at 10, wakes up at 3am for a wee, back to bed then up at 5 for another wee, then up at 6-7 for the day.

I spoke to the breeder the other day who said he was surprised because she slept through for her at 8 weeks, but then admitted that she let her pee on newspaper in the crate. It's knackering but I'd rather she peed outside. Hopefully we'll be able to drop the 5am wee soon!

[Feltcushion]

Do you cover the crate?

Our puppy moved onto beds at about 14 weeks and that worked well, now at 24 weeks he choses bed, crate or floor in bedroom. Sleeps through and has done since he moved onto the bed. I know some people don't like dogs on beds but we have a big throw at the bottom for him.

[adaline]

He's tiny and he's upset because you've left him alone at night in a dark room with no source of comfort. We let ours sleep in our bed (which I accept isn't for everyone) but he takes comfort from being close to us. Can you have the crate in your room so at least he can see/smell you, and then slowly move it further away while he adjusts and gets used to it? In my opinion dogs shouldn't be left to cry for hours. He's crying because he's scared and lonely - he needs comfort not to be ignored.

I think people expect far too much from very young puppies. He's just a baby and he's been taken away from everyone and everything he knows and is now expected to settle all by himself in a strange house. He's telling you he's unhappy so don't ignore his needs - adjust your expectations! Move his crate upstairs so he can hear, see and smell you. Put an old t-shirt of yours over a hot-water bottle in the crate and maybe a stuffed toy so he has something that smells of you and to comfort him in the night. Covering his crate with a blanket should help as well. He will settle and once he does, you can slowly (over a period of days/weeks) move the crate away from your room and downstairs to where you want it to be when he's an adult. He'll need go to the toilet at least twice a night for a good few weeks yet, so I'm afraid the tiredness and early starts is something you'll need to get used to. Ours is six months now and while he generally sleeps through, he still gets up for the day around 6am and needs letting out for the toilet and his breakfast.

It will pass but I think you need to a bit more patient with him and adjust your expectations slightly.

[Feltcushion]

Sorry, I assumed the crate was already in the bedroom. If not do that first. All of our pups started in the bedroom, moved to landing and then kitchen.

[QOD]

I got the Gwen Bailey book. Her night training was to have it in a basket (except we used a crate) right next to you and gradually move it away. Pup had about 10 ish days or rather nights

She started out on dds bed and gradually moved away and now sleeps in the lounge.
She did do some whinging a couple of weeks ago but she’s been having a phantom pregnancy so I did go to her and cuddle for a bit and she’s been perfect since
I’ve never let her out at night to wee, didn’t occur to us but she sleeps like a log for hours Doesn’t even usually have a wee when she does get up. She’s a tiny chihuahua
Do you love the dog? I love mine, we all love her, so so much that I’d have given in and had her in my room if she’d been distressed

[QOD]

Also maybe get a crate? Was she crated at breeders? Ours was and was ableto be left for 4 hrs at a time already when she came to us at 13 weeks. She came from a busy household with kids and school runs and the like. She’s an absolute joy and I had no idea you could love a non human so much ha

[MsHomeSlice]

What sort of dog is it? Ime some are easier to settle, and some hate being on their own.

When we have a new pup the overnight routine is
out for a last pee/poo as late as possible
settle pup in crate
crate is covered and we take it in turns to sleep on the sofa bed any "creating" is shooshed, but there's no removal from crate unless there is a pee/poo required
Up when pup wakes

this can mean the pup is not in the crate until midnight, 1am and then is up again at 5am but it does establish the crate as their nighttime routine and once they are happy to go in over night without company and dry you can work on earlier bedtimes and later wake ups.

Usually within a week they are totally happy to be on their own overnight, no fuss, they just assume you are still there even when you are not.
We also leave the radio on, so they have company and do not hear every last noise either outside or in the house

tbh if your pup is capable of a three hour sofa snooze I'd expect a decent stretch overnight ...midnight to 6am...if tired out and crated.

[SlothMama]

Puppies cry at night and cannot be expected to hold it all night. This should have been taken into consideration when you got the puppy.

Try covering the crate, making it more snug, putting a piece of your clothing in the crate, an adaptil plug in may calm them down at night.

Our pup is 4 months, she tends to cry at 4am to be let out for a wee and then is back to bed. She sleeps in her crate in our bedroom and when she wakes again around 6am we let her onto our bed to sleep until 8/9. When she was younger she would have some bad nights but she's a puppy so we expected this could happen.

With puppy pads we only use them to line her crate as its a fabric crate and we put her vet bed over the top. I've never liked pads as I feel it encourages them to toilet in the house

[beautifultrauma]

I have tried all of these things. I'm not expecting him to stay in his crate all night without going to the toilet. Hes not even in his crate now as he was getting too distressed. He is in the kitchen behind a stair gate. I have been sleeping in the living room on the sofa. I would just like to get some sleep and my DC to get some sleep. It is making me ill.

Of course I thought of all of this before I got him. I didn't come on here to be judged, I came on for help.

[adaline]

If he's distressed then you're too far away. You need to go right back to the beginning with him and sleep in the same room. He will sleep eventually but good habits take a lot longer than a week to form.

I remember the first week with ours. He was 12 weeks old and sleeping in with us and all he did was bark and whine. He cried at his reflection, when he couldn't see his reflection, when the lights were too bright, when the lights were off - it was really hard and we both spent the first week or so absolutely exhausted!

But it does get better, you just need to be consistent and stick with it, whatever method you use. Be it having him upstairs and moving his crate, or putting his crate downstairs and you retreating until you can sleep upstairs without him crying. But if he's still whining for two hours you're obviously too far away, so you need to change what you're doing with him. Either move his crate into the living room or have it up in the bedroom until he learns to settle.

I don't think people are judging you, I think they get frustrated reading posts like this. You've only had him a few weeks and you already want to re-home him. And there are posts like this on here most weeks. Puppies are hard work, they're exhausting and frustrating and good God mine brought me to tears the first few weeks we had him - the barking, the biting, the crying, the hyper half hours when he should be asleep. But it does get better and I look at him now and he's come so far.

if you're determined and consistent he will get better but yes, it will be exhausting and frustrating for a while yet, I'm afraid.

[BiteyShark]

I get it, I was sleep deprived for a good month getting up for pees in the night followed by all the relentless toilet training etc.

But you are talking about rehoming him and it's only been a few weeks. What we are trying to do is not judge you but show you that it's temporary. It will get better, they do grow up quickly. So if you want a family dog you have to manage the sleep either by just putting up with the tiredness or changing how you manage the puppy to make him feel settled.

I see you have abandoned the crate. You still should look at making a little den for him as sleeping in the open is probably scary. You can buy soft igloo beds which mine slept in for a long time. This could help him feel safe. If you don't want to buy anything then think of making a makeshift den. Use the crate and leave the doors open but throw lots of blankets on top and put a snuggly bed inside.

Or think about termporaily moving the bed into yours or in the living room then slowly moving it out as he gets more settled. Lots of people have done that and it worked for them.

It's about finding what's right for your puppy and your household. Honestly most of us have been there and we know it's hard but there are a few things that you can try.

Have you looked through all the past puppy survival threads? We all do different things and maybe someone on there has posted a technique that would work for you.

[MsHomeSlice]

tbf it's a week, you haven't tried that much!

We have lots of puppies through the doors and depending on pup it can take a month to get them truly settled

I was dead on my feet from the last one...two whole weeks of surviving on 5 hours sleep a night, dh was busy at work too ,so it all fell to me and no chance of an afternoon nap because of the constant outside for "busies"

get the crate near you at night , you on the sofa and him in the utility is too much distance and that's why he is fussing.

It's no good coming on here saying you feel judged when so far all you have done is moan about how tired you are and give us precious little specific info about anything else.

all we know is that the pup was creating merry hell at bedtime at 11 weeks and at 12 weeks he is doing the same. And he doesn't like being on his own in the kitchen during the day.

[BiteyShark]

Tbh if you have made the decision to sleep on the sofa have you thought about getting him settled in the crate in the living room at night. When he's settled for a few nights you could start moving the crate slowly to the door, the further away just a little bit each night until he's back in the kitchen.

[missbattenburg]

OP, I think we all understand the unreasonableness that comes with a lack of sleep and, if you suffer with other medical issues as well (e.g. anxiety) then this can feel even worse. By 12 weeks I am guessing you are now in full on melt down that this behaviour will be forever. For me, it was this fear that was the worst aspect - always thinking "what if the dog does THIS (whatever he was doing at the time) for the rest of his life"

It won't.

It passes.

Calm consistency is what the puppy needs. He needs to be able to rely on exactly what will happen when he does x, y, z.

I personally found having him in my room worked best but if you want to keep him downstairs and are already sleeping on the sofa then follow a routine from there.

I am not totally clear when yours is causing 2 hours of hell - when he first goes to bed or in the middle of the night but I guess the approach is the same regardless.

Give him a nighttime routine so he can learn it is time for bed. I would recommend keeping it at approx. the same time every night - just at first. For me, we did the following at 10pm every night:

• turned the TV off
  
• all got up
  
• did a little tidying up in the kitchen
  
• let him out for a wee
  
• brought him back and took him to bed
  

None of this involved excitable actions so no playing, making excited noises, or anything energetic. He soon learned all of this happened immediately before bedtime. Dogs are pretty good at staying with a routine once they have worked it out.

I then took him into my room and let him have a little potter about while I brushed my teeth etc. I have an en suite so could still keep an eye on him.

I then popped him into his crate For the first few nights I then sat down immediately outside the crate with my fingers stroking him through the bars and gently spoke soft words, repeating the phrase "settle down" often. This helped him settle down and allow himself to feel sleepy because I was right there with him. Once he started to dose off I would slowly move away. The first night or two this crate had to be right by my bed and I had to have my arm down by the crate door - it took me half an hour or more to move from that crate to my bed and I kept talking "settle down" all that time until we both fell asleep. Using the phrase really helped later because he's accidentally learned what settle down meant.

If he cried in the night I got up and without speaking or interacting at all I carried him into the garden, popped him down and told he to "go wee". Once he wee'd I took him back to his crate.

I repeated that every time he cried at night but he never got anything else from me than a trip to the garden. Not a stroke, not eye contact, not a cuddle. Nothing. He was good about not running off into the garden but if he'd tried that I would have clipped a lead on him to take him out.

The first week or so he woke me 3 times a night. The next week it was twice a night, following week was once a night and then we started to go through the night without waking.

Once he got to the point of going into the crate without fuss I started to move it away from the bed. I did this LITERALLY one inch at a time. Each day I would move the crate back by an inch until it was eventually the other side of the room from me. Battendog sleeps in the same room as me but otherwise I would have moved it slowly out the bedroom door and across the landing.

Perhaps you could do something similar? Crate him right by the sofa and slowly move the crate away from you and into the kitchen - at which point you might be ok to quietly shift from the sofa to your own bed again.

All that said, Bitey is absolutely right that all dogs and homes are different so you must work within your own set up. My dog took about 4 weeks to go through the night but he could have taken 1 week or 10 weeks - both would be "normal". You have to work with the dog you have.

There was a thread a few months ago with an Old English Sheepdog (I think) that was having a very similar issue to you. Might be worth looking it up for a read because with mn advice (tweaking to suit the OP and her dog) and a consistent approach they made great improvements within quite a short space of time.

[Namechangeforthiscancershit]

Definitely no judgement from me. I’ve definitely taken the easy option!

No DC to keep awake but a crazy chemo schedule and working all the time, so I have to do for what works. I really do think you’ll find something to work for you. It’s still really early days.

[Winchester89]

We never got up in the night with our pup- had puppy pads down - didn't hinder his toilet training, he's 6 months now and can hold it all night and doesn't have any accidents.
He stays in the utility room downstairs, cried for first couple of nights then was fine.

[SchoolNightWine]

After my initial reply on Monday, I had 2 awful nights with my puppy not settling at all. She had been sleeping on the sofa/on us from 8pm until we went to bed at 11.30 and with us all day, and I think she then didn't like being left on her own at night, and had had too good a chunk of deep sleep by bedtime.
This has worked for us from Wednesday (although she had been good at settling initially so I'm sure that helped it worked quickly):
Less sleepy cuddles through the day so she gets used to being apart from us a little more
No sleeping on the sofa from 6pm - a good chew toy/kong/frozen carrot keeps her busy and awake for some of the evening.
A walk out about 9.30.
Remove her favourite toy late afternoon and give it to her in her bed at bedtime. Give it again after every wee in the night.
I really think the sleeping in evening and constant attention through the day we're the worst things, so maybe concentrate on those over the weekend and see how you get on. So hard to not pick up and cuddle all the time though - they're just so cute! Good luck

[AgathaF]

If he's in the kitchen then he won't know that you're in the living room. You might as well be in your bed, or next door to him. Take his bed or crate into the living room, or into your bedroom if you want to get back into your own bed, and let him get used to sleeping near you. Give it a couple of weeks. Gradually move him further away towards where you want him to sleep.

I get that it's exhausting, and that you just want to sleep. We have a 15 week old pup. It is bloody tiring, but it's a phase that just has to be managed for a few weeks. Make it easier on yourself though, let him be close to you so he feels safe and secure.

[beautifultrauma]

Thanks SchoolNightWine, that sounds exactly like ours, he dozes throughout the evening on us/sofa til he goes to bed. Tonight I am going to have his crate beside me and see if that helps, and will try the rest tomorrow.

[Namechangeforthiscancershit]

Good luck tonight

[beautifultrauma]

I am on the sofa tonight, and his crate is beside me within touching distance. He has fallen asleep ok so I just hope he gets on ok. I was just scared of making bad habits that I couldn't break, by staying so close to him, but I guess the reassurance is more important.

[BiteyShark]

How did it go last night?

Don't worry too much about creating bad habits as the priority right now is to manage his crying and for you to feel in control with better sleep. Once that is established you can then look at moving the crate further away from you in small steps.

[adaline]

Reassurance is definitely more important at that age. You can move him where you want him sleeping permanently once he's happy and settled.

[beautifultrauma]

He slept til 2am, took him to toilet, then again til 5.30am and took him outside again. Can cope with that! Thanks everyone.