Help Needed! Crate training - crying in the morning

tauket2

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Mar 5, 2019
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canada
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Nikita
Hi,

i'm hoping some of you can help me find a strategy to deal with this...

Our brand new 10 month old female is very quiet in her crate at night. The first few days she cried a bit at night and i corrected the situation by getting up and giving her zero attention and just bringing her outside for a 2 minute potty break every time she would bark. It seems to have worked because now she is quiet all night but for the past few days she begins barking and whining at 5:50 AM sharp. Now this puts a fork in my "boring 2 minute potty break" because i normally get up at 6:00 am on weekdays and take her for a walk and playtime before leaving for work. I'm scared that i'm reinforcing her behaviour of waking us up every morning.

So what i've been doing is getting up and going to sleep for 10 more minutes on the living room couch. from where her crate is, she cannot see me getting up and cannot see me in the living room but she can hear me walking through the house and that seems to be enough to get her to stop crying. If she picks it up again I'll say her name with a deep, stern voice and she stops again. When she's been quiet for a few minutes i get up and let her out.

Now my question is, am i reinforcing her bad behaviour by letting her know that i'm up? How else would you deal with this? Letting her bark it out is not an option.

thanks!
Chris
 
Last edited:

ddnene

EBN's SWEETHEART aka our little GOOB
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Jun 19, 2013
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Willow (2015) Walter (2014-22) Winston (2012-13) Wellie (2012-13) Bella (2007-13)
She knows that you are awake, so she wants OUT... I would try to stretch those 10 minutes everyday and see if she can last until 6am. To be honest, she is doing very well sleeping thru the night at 3 months... I don't think my bulldogs could hold it until they were 6 months old tops.
 

Manydogs

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May 2, 2013
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This is absolutely amazing! I think that when mine were 12 weeks, I got up probably every 3 hours to take them out. When she cries, I would assume that she had to "go".
Whey don't you take her out, then ,as Tracey suggested, try to add a few minutes each time. She is so young to be holding her bladder for so long.
 

cefe13

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Sep 12, 2013
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Castor (2013-2021 RIP)
There are different approaches to bringing up dogs (and kids), and I don't know if one style automatically will lead to a better life for the pup (or child). Having said that, I must say that the routine you are trying to establish is not the only way to go. For me, trying to curb or correct an emotional need in a pup does not sound right, and I don't see an emotional or physical need as bad behaviour. In short, I see no reason to disregard a pup (nor a child) that cries. I would pick it up straight away and comfort it.

I cannot think you create a monster by showing a dog that you see/hear its needs, and it is not a given that dogs have to be crated. As I have said many times on this forum, in my country it is actually against the law to crate a dog. Here dogs sleep in baskets or beds.

I remember puppy time - I took Castor out every night once or twice until he was 7-8 months. I would set the alarm clock and take him out for a quick potty break and then back to bed (his bed was then next to mine so that I could pat him if he needed that). It was like having a baby again - one is terribly tired but it is a brief period of time that one misses when it is passed. Castor will soon be six, and he has never ever told us that he needs to go out. Perhaps I am naive or just incredibly lucky, but I want to believe that by establishing routines that worked for him as well as for us, we trained him to trust us that we will take him out before he needs to go.
 
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T

tauket2

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Mar 5, 2019
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canada
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Nikita
  • Thread Starter
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She knows that you are awake, so she wants OUT... I would try to stretch those 10 minutes everyday and see if she can last until 6am. To be honest, she is doing very well sleeping thru the night at 3 months... I don't think my bulldogs could hold it until they were 6 months old tops.

I made a mistake! she's 10 months old!
 

Lalaloopsie

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Apr 18, 2016
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Cape Town, SA
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Belarus
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Tank
In Europe we don’t crate dogs! Never heard about it before I joined this site, and I am pretty sure it would be considered animal cruelty in most European countries- locking dog in crate, whether it is for toilet training or “for safety” when you leave the house.
Crate toilet training is convenience for owner, but actually if you think about it, you make puppy hold his wee until you take them out. They feel uncomfortable.
What we usually do is
1) get a puppy usually only during vacation time (we have considerably longer vacations in Europe:) so you have enough time with puppy
2) they are roaming free at all times (maximum you lock them in a room when you leave the house) and we observe them and note when and how often they usually pee and poop
3) try to prevent them from relieving themselves NOT by locking them in cages so they suffer from need to go, but carefully watching them and taking them outside very often
4) for accidents inside we have a plastic toilet with pee pads, with time you won’t need it
5) we get up BEFORE them so you take out warm puppy from bed, give him thousand kisses (it’s the best!) and carry him outside for toilet matters. Or you can use it as a teaching moment for pee pads usage, because first thing puppy will want is pee, so you put him on a pee pad and praise him and give treats when he wees on it.

When your puppy cries in the morning it is most probably she cannot hold it anymore, as general formula is that puppy can hold urine amount of hours equal to his age. In your case it is 3, so she is not being obnoxious, she suffers.
 

JordBully

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Jul 13, 2018
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United Kingdom
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Coco
Hi,
We had exactly the same problem as you are describing above. We used to get up to take our Bully outside to go to the toilet but it got to the point that she didnt go when we took her outside, we would then go back to bed and after half an hour or so she would start barking and crying again. We knew that she could go through the night without needing to go the toilet so we where able to rule this out. After making sure that nothing was startling her or waking her up (the times would be different every night and we also invested in a pet cam to see what she was doing just before she started barking)

We found out it was simply attention seeking, she is not able to sleep with us at night as she snores so loud and me and my partner are both very light sleepers. If we where to let her out she would be excited for a few mins and then go back to sleep and if we went downstairs and sat in the lounge out of view from her she would settle down and then wait for us to let her out eventually.

Ignoring her didn't seem to help as she would get louder and the crying would become more constant so we tried to speak to her via our Amazon Elexa speaker which is in the same room as her. If she barked we dropped into the speaker from our phones and tell her No. We only needed to do this a few times and now just the sound of the speaker stops her and she then waits for us to get up and come downstairs.

Every Dog is different but we found the above to work well!

Good luck!
 

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