Another puppy one..

[NewYoiker]

I didn't want to hijack the other threads! We have a very runty puppy who is absolutely tiny but very feisty!

She's lovely and I'm getting there with the biting! However we're following the rescues advice about her being upstairs with us so she sleeps in her bed in our bedroom. My issue is if she needs to pee in the night I take her out and when we get back upstairs she's ready to play!

If she falls asleep downstairs by the time she's upstairs she wants to play, I'm talking playing with her blanket, playing with her bed, pouncing on our bed etc.

It's like if she's asleep she struggles to get back to sleep and then is over tired. If anyone could help me out I'd really appreciate it! My DH is slowly losing his mind

Here's what I did with mine:

• he slept in a crate (well, when very small in a travel box!) by the side of my bed
• when he cried I woke, picked him up without eye contact or speaking and carried him to the garden
• i popped him down and told he to go wee
• once he had wee'd, I picked him up, no speaking, no sudden movements, no eye contact
• i carried him back to his crate, popped him in it and got back into bed, lights out

If he made a fuss, I dropped my hand down to the crate and repeated ad nauseam "settle down, hush now" over and over in a soothing, quiet voice

Play was not an option. He could stay awake and cry or he could fall back to sleep - the result was the same.Stay consistent and strong and she will learn that night time is not play time and never is.

Another thing I did (and still do) is use an alarm clock to indicate day had begun. I'd set it for when I wanted to wake up and even if I was awake before then, I would lie quietly until it went off. Sometimes I sneakily change the time to bring to forward or push it back, if I wanted a lie in or was getting bored and wanted to get up earlier than planned. I stuck to a rule that puppy got NO interaction at all (except the wee routine) before that alarm went off. He learned pretty quickly that it wasn't worth trying unless he'd heard the alarm.

@missbattenburg that's fab thanks!

No probs, I would expect the first few nights of a new regime to be worse, not better. This is because the dog is learning what used to work, doesn't work any more - so they tend to escalate it before giving up.

Without pics we don't even believe you have a scrumptious puppy....

She's a very small border terrier but she thinks she's the size of a wolf hound..

I have had two puppies as an adult and both slept downstairs in the kitchen as pups. I never once got up at night to let them outside. I always used newspaper not puppy pads. They both learnt quite quickly to be quiet and toilet training.

Weeing etc at night are part and parcel of having a puppy IMO for a couple of weeks.

Your pup is very cute 🐶

Ah what a cutie!!