How can I get him to sleep through the night?

[AlliKat]

So our puppy, who will be 5 months old on Thursday is still not sleeping through the night. And it is killing us! :confused:

How can we get him to sleep through the night? We wonder if we have created a habit/routine of him getting up in the middle of the night to go pee, but if we try to just leave him in the crate, he'll pee in it.

I read some posts on here about removing the bedding from the crate (currently he has a towel in there) so that if he pees it is very unpleasant for him. Do you think this will encourage him to hold it for the whole night?

Any other suggestions? He usually falls asleep on the couch with us in the evenings - I wonder if maybe we should keep him awake so he is super-tired when it is time to go to bed?

Thanks for any and all advice! I need sleep! :)

[Boykins]

Hi Allison,

We have found that a couple of things helped to keep Boykins quiet through the night (from about 11pm to about 6:15/6:30am):
1. We pushed her feeding time back to about 7:30pm. She gets her last water with her dinner. Water up by 8:00pm. Sharp.
2. Walk about 30 minutes after dinner. Let her play/sleep. Walk again between 10:30pm and 11:00pm. (This is often referred to as the "forced march," as she is sometimes so tired she can barely muster the energy to be carried downstairs, let alone go out and do anything! :)

Initially, we were feeding her a bit earlier, and were not quite so strict about cutting off her water. Taking control of these two key things really made a big difference between getting up at 3:30am and getting up at 6:30am!

Good luck!

-sarah and boykins

[AlliKat]

Thanks for the responses!

His crate already is in our bedroom... and his housebreaking is actually going fairly well (finally). He hasn't had an accident in the house (outside of the crate) for almost a week now. He will stay in the crate for 4 or 5 hours during the day when I am out and he is okay. It is just that pushing him to 7 hours (say from 11 to 6) seems to be pushing it.

He usually gets his dinner around 6:30 - I'll try pushing it back a little and making sure we get rid of his water by about 7:30 so he can try to go to bed at 11.

As for the bedding... it seems so cruel to remove the towel.. but if that will work, I'll try anything! So do you recommend not putting ANYTHING in the crate and just having him sleep on the plastic tray?

Thanks so much!

[citygirl]

My two pups seemed to have awfully small bladders and would need to go small amounts quite often when they were five months old. In fact, I thought that they might have a UTI, so I took urine samples to the vet for processing and they came back negative. The vet said she thought that they would just take a little while longer to develop a larger bladder and be able to hold it longer. Sure enough, at about 7 months that stopped being a problem. Hang in there, your pup might follow the same pattern.

[Milos_Mom]

Milo has just gotten over this problem. He comes to bed with me around 10 p.m. and then when my husband comes to bed around 12, he takes Milo out one last time. And now Milo is still asleep when I go to get him up around 6 or 7 a.m.

When I was getting up with Milo at 3 a.m. -- I'd take him out to pee. No talking. And then straight back in the crate, no funny business. After I stopped the treats and the sweet-talking, he got the point. And it started getting later and later that he'd wake for potty time. And now I wake him for potty time.

It's amazing how these problems seem like so long ago when it was probably just one month ago!

[AlliKat]

So true Milo's mom! Bruiser is now sleeping peacefully through the night (in our bed no less :rolleyes: ) - he can go for 8 or 9 hours snoring away, no need to pee appicon

I remember thinking that he would NEVER sleep through the night and therefore, neither would I... I guess he is just one of those pups that took a little longer to grow - he was 6 months before he was making it all the way through. Seems like ages ago now!