Barking at 5am every morning

[JustAnotherDayWorkingAtHome]

My 10 month old cockapoo boy has taken to waking up barking at 5am every morning it’s driving me nuts.

He sleeps on a bed in our room and sleeps well…till now.

I don’t know what is triggering it. He does bark at noises in the home/ postman/ squirrel in garden etc. He doesn’t need to go out as if I intervene he goes quiet.

Aside from being knackered I’m super stressed as we are on holiday for Xmas (booked for last year before we had him and moved due to covid) and we have house sitters coming to look after him so I need to sort this. Cancelling holiday not an option as is £££ was booked after a sad event we had two years ago pre pandemic.

Please help.

Ps we are away with him this week on holiday in UK and he’s done the same so not specific to home

Cold? Mine does a dawn patrol, gets one of us up to see what's wrong then nicks our warm spot.

Maybe he can hear something? Cold? Hungry? Toilet? Reassurance? It's not uncommon for dogs to hit a regression during their teenage months.

Is you're heating on a timer that kicks in around 4-5am?

It could be the noise of the pipes as they warm up, dogs hearing is very sensitive, and all the creeking can sound like someone in the house.

You need to teach him a command which means no barking.
My dog stops if I say ‘no’ firmly. I can also stip him when I know he’s going to bark by saying shhhh.
You need to find the command you want to use, then use it and treat until he learns it. You

Thanks all. The barking has def suddenly cranked up recently.

@GoodnightGrandma I have been using quiet and waiting for him to stop then saying quiet and giving a treat. I don’t want to respond with attention to the barking itself. The trainer said for a quiet command you should teach them to bark first then teach quiet. I can’t quite bring myself to demand he barks though.

I didn’t do that, I just reacted to and treated the behaviour I wanted.
Your breed tends to be quite vocal, I don’t think you need to teach him to bark !

Thank you I will persevere with what I’m doing with quiet then. I have treats by the bed now to reward when he does shut up. I hope this is temporary!

For now, I would wait until he's quiet for a few seconds to use the quiet command as he probably doesn't understand that it means "stop barking" just yet.

So at the moment, you saying "quiet" while he carries on barking has no real meaning as he doesn't change his behaviour or get a reward for doing what you ask iyswim.

It's something to address in the daytime and then transfer the command to night. So, that may mean teaching him to "speak" and then teaching him quiet. I know encouraging the barking seems like the worst thing in the world right now but it'll be worth it long-term!

There are loads of reasons dogs bark nearly always it is an emotional response rather than just a behaviour so needs to be trained in a slightly different way to teaching a quiet as a behaviour. Change the dogs behaviour to a situation and they will not bark.

They may bark for the following reasons:-

Frustration barking
Boredom barking
Fear Barking
Action Prompting Barking
Attention seeking Bark etc the list goes on.

I would initially assume if your dog has been asleep that he is barking from fear or anxiety to something. So in this case I would treat with a calm "thank you" and encourage them to settle again.

Watch out during the day for when your dog may start or stop to listen to sounds - when they do this affer a calm thank you and offer at treat. This will help your dog to be aware that sounds are not to be an issue and over time they will relax to the sound.

I never ever ever teach a dog to bark with the aim of teaching a quiet. (I do teach dogs to bark for different reasons) but would not teach a barky dog a skill they are genuises at already

Change a dogs emotion!!! they will not bark - not behaviour!

I hope you don’t have neighbours! Sounds very noisy. Teaching them the bark and quiet command will help.

@Hopeisallineed I intervene, it lasts 10/15 seconds and I’m trying to sort it…but thank you for your helpful comment

@PollyRoullson he tends to bark in day in response to someone coming to the house or something in the garden(eg squirrel) so my instinct is it is some kind of guarding bark.

Could he be hungry?

You are very welcome.

Derailing my own thread but if your dog barks is it your fault? Should your puppy be born perfect? Should you not get a dog if you have neighbours in case it barks? I genuinely don’t get why people feel the need to come on threads on MN and make you feel shit when you are trying to do the right thing…and yes @Hopeisallineed I’m looking at you

“Should you not get a dog if you have neighbours in case it barks?”

Yeah I think that’s reasonable if you’re waking your neighbours at 5am every day. In no other circumstances would it be appropriate to home animals in a residential area if they were causing a noise disturbance. If you have a big detached house or a farm then I don’t see the problem.

But how do you know before you get the dog that at some point this might happen I’m sure I’m not unique? I got the dog, he is going through what I hope will be a short lived phase, he is adolescent, I am not letting him bark nonstop I intervene, he stops. As far as I’m aware he’s not disturbing my neighbours (fwiw my house is detatched)…I just want advice on how best to counteract this so I don’t get woken up at 5am every day….I’m not suggesting it is reasonable to let a dog bark and be a public nuisance

You are obviously very defensive about the dog barking. I hardly made you ‘feel shot’ and if I did I think that’s on you and your defensiveness. Unfortunately dogs do cause a huge nuisance and ( as I’m sure you know, being woken up at 5 am every morning) from a dog barking or when there’s even a small disturbance ( from what you have said) then that can be really annoying for everyone involved. I did offer advice, in that you need to train it to bark and the teach it the quiet command. It sounds like it’s still quite young and training should always be on going. You can look at me as much as you want but I think, in answer to your question, people shouldn’t have dogs in built up areas that are causing nuisance to others if it’s ongoing, it becomes very difficult to live with. Intact it can be pretty tortuous. You already are finding this difficult to live with so I’d imagine, if you had close neighbours, they would too.

*shit!

I am not defensive. I just want to find a solution to a problem. He is a lovely lovely dog, he is young yes. I am fully committed to training him and I’m sure with the right methods I can sort thus, I am using a trainer but not seen her since this started but have messaged her also. I just don’t understand why people need to make unnecessary little quips when people come on asking for help. Yes I’m tired I don’t generally manage to get back to sleep after he’s woken me up. If it was longterm (it’s been just over a week) and I was aware he was causing angst to my neighbours I would obviously need to further consider what to do, thankfully my house is detatched my bedroom is at the back and theirs st the front.

Thank you for the advice on bark and quiet I
Am going to incorporate this too.

The reason I’m so stressed about this and as a result feeling very sensitive is if I can’t sort it I’ll have to cancel an expensive holiday I booked two years ago pre pandemic and pre puppy after my father in law died as I can’t expect a house sitter to have to deal with this and we obviously wouldn’t get a refund, first world problem and all that but not ideal.

Have you tried letting him out. I know you said you intervene with him barking, but perhaps he wants to go out.

I am up that time anyway, and if my dogs have slept inside (they are outdoor dogs usually ), then around that time they are very keen to be out. They go and scope the garden and that takes some time.

Don’t get stressed about it, DDog will only pick up on it which will make things worse. Persevere with the quiet command, and don’t even think about cancelling your holiday over it. He will behave completely differently for a sitter anyway.