Trouble sleeping at adolescent age

[Poncho]

Hello all!

Our 1 year old baby mini has always been a great sleeper. You have to drag her out of bed in the mornings and she used to put herself to sleep in her crate.
About 1 month ago she had a phantom pregnancy and she now doesn’t sleep through the night.

We made the mistake of letting her sleep in our room as the vet said she could be crying worrying about her “babies”.

She now cries at night 3 or 4 times.
She doesn’t stop crying until we enter the room.
We keep the lights off, do not make eye contact or engage.
She settles after 5mins and is snoring and we leave the room.

This is obviously a worry for the neighbours, and we need to work at our best and not tired.
Her routine hasn’t changed, or her diet.

She has a pee at 9:30pm before bedtime at 10pm and has plenty of walks during the day.
The vet has given her the all clear from the phantom pregnancy so it is’nt this.....

We don’t particularly want her sleeping with us.. we want our perfectly behaved pup back who we had before the phantom pregnancy.
We have tried hot water bottles, pet remedy diffusers, radio on at night... We can’t let her cry. She’ll wake up the whole town!

We are running out of options to have her in with us. Which we don’t want to encourage for when we expand our family and have a baby we do not want to have 2 babies in the room!

Help!!!
Any other suggestions?

Thank you!!

[zeta1454]

This is a difficult situation because of disturbing the neighbours especially. Having allowed your little one into the bedroom, she is now reassured and happy to be with you (her family). You could continue with your current plan (which is fine in itself but could take a long time with you losing sleep and the neighbours being disturbed) and hope she eventually does settle through the night but the simplest and least stressful way will probably be to allow her to sleep in the bedroom, if that means she will sleep through without crying.

Dogs are by nature social and sleep in "cuddles" together for warmth and safety if they can. This can be "trained" out of many puppies in the early days but, once they experience close sleeping with the family it will not be easy to change.

Does she use a crate? If she sleeps in a crate normally or, if you can encourage her to sleep in a crate, you could have her in the bedroom in the crate either as a stage towards sleeping in the crate outside the bedroom...and, eventually, in the crate in a different room. This would need to be done gradually over weeks or months but might work, as the crate becomes the safe space and can reassure some anxious dogs. If she accepts the crate, even if only in the bedroom, it will mean that she is not on the bed or otherwise "in the way" if you add a human baby to your family