Transitioning dog out of crate for nighttime?

[Bet01]

Our 14 month old whippet has slept overnight in her crate happily since she arrived at 12 weeks. She doesn’t go in during the day unless she’s very tired. We were happy she was happy, and it definitely helped with training her to go through the night without weeing somewhere random.

But now she’s older I’d really rather she just slept on the sofa so we can get rid of the massive bloody thing. We experimented with leaving her on the sofa when we went to bed a month or so ago, but she started barking at 1am as she must have heard a noise.

We haven’t tried again but now we need a proper plan. Do we just cold-turkey it and endure a few night’s barking (assuming it does only last a few nights, rather than forever) or is there a better way? I guess we could just carry on with it, but it takes up half our living room.

DH thinks that because our downstairs is completely open plan, it’s too big for her, and she gets anxious about the amount of space she has to ‘defend’; is that true? And we have big glass sliding doors at one end which I’m sure doesn’t help…in which case I’m not sure there’s a solution because it’s impossible to divide up the space.

Any advice appreciated!

It's interesting as I was speaking to DH about something similar.

Our dog sleeps in the office. Once he's gone to bed we don't hear a peep from him. Even with people coming and going (I work till midnight and get home about 12.30 plus adult kids coming n going) however during the day he will absolutely bark. It's mainly if the door goes, he hears someone upstairs etc.

Sometimes we can be in the garden and he thinks he hears someone in the house, bark like mad and will go and check. Once he's in bed though, nothing.

Seems likes your DH may be right. Not sure how you address that though if your house is completely open plan

Do you have a table? We have a bed under our kitchen table for our pup. Might be worth a try if it's the openness that's the issue?

Interesting! We do have an office, but it’s actually our small third bedroom so it’s upstairs. I guess that doesn’t matter though? Maybe DDog will settle upstairs..we’ll give it a go and see.

That’s a great idea too @Mariposa80 we do have a kitchen table we could put her bed under. I think we need to experiment with different locations as it feels a bit silly to run up and down the stairs telling her off when she barks, when it’s a perfectly natural thing for her to do…

Move the crate to the third bedroom for a week, then remove the crate and ddog should get the jist

Agree put the crate in the location you want the dog to sleep for several nights , then build up to having crate open for a few nights then remove the crate if the dog is happy. If you want the dog to sleep in a bed then put the bed into the crate for a few nights until the dog is happy with the bed. If you see the amount of soil and sand in your dogs bed are you sure you want that on your sofa?

But also ponders if the dog is happy as things are and you all sleep well....

We did a gradual transition from the crate when we felt it was getting a bit small for our lab, we just started to leave the door open so she could come and go and eventually we worked out she was spending all time on the sofa. Perhaps try that for a little while?

Thank you all, I like the idea of moving the crate into the office first and then leaving the door open and then getting rid of it altogether…

What happens if you leave the crate door open where it currently is? That's what we're currently doing with ours and he stays in his crate however it's not an issue for us as it's out of the way.

I'd just be tempted to leave the door open where it is.

If that doesn't work, reduce the bedding slightly in the crate to maker the sofa a much more comfortable proposition. It may take until the weather turns a bit colder to tempt her...

We've just gone through this with our 18 month lab - open plan downstairs, has happily and voluntarily headed off to his crate to sleep at night but we knew we wanted to let him have a choice over the summer as it got warmer to be able to move around but we also wanted to keep the option of the crate as his safe space (he will often choose to go there during the day when busy with work/guests etc). We just started leaving his crate door open, cleared the room of anything he could access that might harm him (he's really good at not interfering with stuff that's "not yours" as he's been told this from day one and we leave shoes, bags etc lying around and he's just not that interested but we still tidy them away at night because he is a dog) and a month in now sometimes he'll sleep in his open door crate, sometimes his nest bed, sometimes on the sofa. What really tickled me is that we had a motion sensor camera on him for the first few nights - the lazy lab picks one spot and stays there all night. I thought they were meant to move around but the only time the camera was set off was when insects flew by! He has his teenage moments but such a good boy in the house. We have decided to keep his crate as his space to escape and occasionally pop him in and lock it for a short period to he keeps used to it should we need to secure him for any reason in the future (if he needs proper rest, for his own safety etc).

Thanks @bingohandjob that's super interesting. Did your Ddog bark at all when you started the new plan? Despite not being a breed known for barking, our whippet seems to be the exception! I didn't really think of just leaving the door open. The last few nights she's headed to her basket at bedtime (it's separate to the crate - she sleeps in it during the day) and has been a bit reluctant to get in the crate, although once she's in there she seems fine. So maybe tonight I'll try bringing her to the crate, but leaving the door open and going upstairs as usual and seeing what happens. Even better, our neighbours have just gone on holiday so I won't feel too guilty if she barks 🙂 I'll report back.

No, no barking at all. He's not a big barker though - he does a few loud "hello" barks at people new to the house and normally just one loud "HELLO" to regular visitors but other than that, not barky. I guess the only thing he did a little different was, being out of his crate and hearing us go to the loo before normal getting up time was a little unusual for him as he was out of his crate so there were a few days of transition whining but we didn't respond, just left him to it until the time we'd normally go. He quickly got over that! He pretty much goes and sleeps in his crate at bed time now anyway but I like that he has the choice to move if he wants, especially when it's a warm night. Good luck!