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i'm soooo tired....

pamela

Active member
hi all,

I'm in desperate need of advice! For the past 4 months or so we've been in a nice routine with Coco where we take her to bed with us to watch TV for an hour or so before we go to sleep, then we take her to her bed in the kitchen and all is great. My boyfriend leaves for work at about 7am and coco comes back up to bed with me until i get up around 9am. (she just looooves sleeping at the end of the bed.) This has all been lovely and a nice little habit until last week. She goes to bed fine but is waking up every morning scratching at the door and barking her head off trying to get us up to go fetch her. We haven't given in (because we dont want her to think all she has to do is bark and she will get her way) but last night we went to sleep around midnight and at 4am we woke up to hear her barking and scrathing like a lunatic! I think the bright mornings are leading her to think it is work time but at this point i am exhausted!! (it wasnt even bright out at 4am this morning :-( ) There is nothing wrong with her - she just wants to come upstairs!! My OH now thinks we messed up by letting her upstairs in the first place but it has worked fine for the past 4 months - why all this now?!! I dont know how to go forward with this one, i do not want to keep her upstairs all night and thought we had a nice little routine going where she wasn't left in the kitchen alone for any longer than necessary. Any suggestions on how to move forward?!!! any and all advice will be much appreicated as always... sometimes i dont know what i'd do without this site!
 
Hi Pamela,

I'm thinking that the problem is probably because sometimes she is sleeping in her bed and sometimes she is sleeping in your bed. I think dogs do better & are happier with a set routine. I guess I'd be making a decision to exactly where her bed is going to be (yours or her own) and just stick with that. You may have a couple of sleepless nights until she gets used to the routine, but in the long run I think life will be simpler.
 
Perhaps you could bring her for a nice long walk before bed time so that she's tired enough to sleep right through the night.

If Molly or Bella miss their evening walk they can wake at 5 or 6am scratching and barking (which is OK with me on a weekday but not on a weekend morning ;) )
 
Perhaps moving her crate to your bedroom would work better. That way, your able to sleep through the night without having her in your bed, but she doesn't feel so far away in the kitchen. It may very well be enough fo her to wake up at 4am and see that your still safely there in your bed...and she won't feel the need to bark.

I'll be honest, though. When we first brought Gracie home, she slept in her crate downstairs in the family room. After a week or so, that just didn't seem right to me, so we moved the crate to our bedroom...of course, most of you know what this led to...where does she sleep now? You guessed it! In bed with us! I wouldn't have it any other way, though!:p However, before we let her sleep with us, she stopped barking and whining when she was put in her crate at night...this worked much better for everyone than the downstairs arrangement. But, in the end, we'd just rather have her sleep with us!
 
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I also think moving her crate to the bedroom might help and whatever you do, don't give in to him barking to get up with you on the bed. Oliver sleeps with me when my boyfriend isn't over but if he is, he does just fine sleeping in his own bed beside my bed. It did take a few nights of him whining on the side of the bed to get used to sleeping beside my bed. I didn't give in--even though I wanted to!- and now he does just fine sleeping in his own bed on some nights and thinks he won the lottery when he gets to snuggle with me in my bed! I do, too! :) When my boyfriend is over it is just too crowded with all 3 of us because Oliver has a tendency to try to sleep with his head on our pillows!
 
I don't think anybody should feel apologetic about having their dogs sleep on their bed. To be truthful I'd probably do the same if I didn't suffer from chronic hay fever. I do however think it is easier on the dog to have consistency so he is not confused about what the house rules. :winkct:
 
Thanks for all the advice guys! I actually took her for a really long walk last night before bed and she was exhausted. she slept through to 6.30am downstairs until she start barking and scratching which wasnt too bad as my OH was up at 7am anyway... i'll suggest moving her up to our room permanantly and see what he thinks.. although i'm not sure he'll be too pleased!! he doesnt get any attention when coco's around!
thanks again all :)
 
Pamela, I sooooo feel your pain.

Cleo goes through stages of incessant howling. If we lived out the country, I'd let her at it and grit my teeth for the few days it would take her to cop on, but I live in a terraced house, with elderly neighbours on both sides so it is difficult as their sleep gets disrupted too.

That said when it was really bad in March, we just didn't get up at night and after a week, she stopped howling in the middle of the night, but began again with the dawn chorus. I thought we had settled into a routine as we used to let her upstairs at around 6.30, but the past two nights she has started this rubbish again. Last night she howled every hour on the hour so 15 minutes. By 4.30 I was deeply deeply unimpressed. Thinking about it now though, her routine was upset last night, as we were all activity in the house, until we went to bed exhausted at 1.00. Normally, we lounge on the sofa's from about 9 on and go to bed around 12, and so she snoozes and gets in the zone for going to bed, maybe all the excitment had her pepped up. :confused:

Maybe its just a stage and with the brighter mornings, their internal clocks are changing and they have to get used to a new timetable. I hope. :xfngr:
 
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We have had exactly the same problem of late. Chester always came upstairs for a while & then went back in his cage downstairs in the lounge to sleep. In the morning he would come upstairs & sleep on the bed for an hour.

A couple of weeks ago he wouldnt settle in his cage & had us up every hour for a couple of nights scratching to get out. We decided to stop letting him up with us to sleep and although it took a couple of days he is now back into his routine of sleeping downstairs. I think he just wanted to be with us and couldnt understand why he could sometimes but not all the time.

Although he has now decided he doesnt want to be in his cage & when I say go to bed he gets into his bed in the kitchen so that is where he is sleeping.

I wondered whether he liked sleeping in the cage in the lounge in the winter because it was all snug but now it is lots hotter he prefers sleeping in the kitchen as its cooler.

Who said they werent humans eh!!
 
We have always had our dogs in our bedroom.

In order to toilet train our youngest 2 pups, we kept them in one corner of the bedroom. They were away from our bed so we could get some sleep without disturbance, and they would not mess their area.

This has now progressed (wife's idea - and a good one at that) we got a baby's cot:) Now both Willow and Bailey spend the night in that and are able to see and smell us for reassurance.

Also, if they are desparate, I can let them out to relieve themselves.

They have a cuddle on our bed beforehand, and then quickly settle on their own bed.
 
A similar routine with no problems

Pamela. It sounds like you do exactly what my husband and I do and we have very few problems. Whilst I wouldn't mind having Lucy sleep in bed all night with us as she is nice and warm to cuddle, she unfortunately snores a ridiculous volumes and also makes it impossible to roll over as she lies stretched out without any regard for sharing the bed.
So she sleeps in the bathroom next to our room, kept in by a baby gate. When Adam gets up for his shower he lets in her in and she'll sleep with me for 1/2 an hour until I get up and stay in bed until I drag her out to eat her breakfast. We have had to be very firm about not letting her in when she cries. She'll do that sometimes if she's put herself to bed early (she decides when it's bed time if we're up too late for her liking) or just when she's decided it's time we should be up. She can be quite determined sometimes but she just gets told repeatedly to go back to bed and she eventually stops. She's a dog that rarely barks or cries, this is pretty much the only time she sooks. But it is 100% related to how tired she is and whether she thinks we'll maybe relent. Don't give in to the dog...If the routine suits you just stick with it and she'll learn. We did and we have no problems!
 
We had problems when lady was sleeping in our room in her crate i think that the room was too warm for her so we moved her downstairs into the kitchen dinner and she's fine never hear a peep untill we take her outside in the morning. Could she be too warm or cold downstairs?
 
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