Puppy suddenly won’t sleep in crate at 14wks

[Murray]

Our standard schnauzer puppy is almost 15 weeks and has been with us for 6weeks now.

Apart from a couple of days at the start, he has slept well in his crate, sleeping from 9.30pm to 5.15am with one toilet break in the middle.

However over the last week this has all changed. He now wakes up about an hour after going to bed and cries and barks loudly. We take him outside but he doesn’t need the toilet. He then continues to whine endlessly until one of us goes down and sits by him to settle him. However it starts again the second we try to creep away.

We’ve ended up taking him out of the crate so he will go to sleep (which he does immediately on the floor) and then putting him back when he’s really exhausted, but this process takes hours and isn’t sustainable. Sometimes it doesn’t work and we literally get no sleep.

Although I hate hearing him cry, I am also painfully aware that going down to him is giving him what he wants, but we are stuck. We live in a semi detached house with children next door, so leaving him to scream all night isn’t something we can do. We also don’t have room for a pen in the dining room, and we don’t feel comfortable giving him freedom overnight as he’s so little.

We walk him in the evening and let him sniff, do some training with him to use his brain, and scatter feed in the garden, all to try to tire him enough. We tried a chew in the evening but it wakes him up.

We really struggling. Has anybody else dealt with this? Is there anything people can suggest please? We are desperate to get back to good sleeping again!

[zeta1454]

It sounds as though he is either lonely or something has spooked him while he was downstairs which has made him anxious about being left in the crate. Dogs go through stages of development just like children and adolescence is a time when their hormones are surging and they can develop anxieties which they didn’t show previously.

If he will sleep downstairs out of the crate then I would section off an area where he will be safe and just let him sleep on the floor. The other option which may solve the problem quicker is to have him in the crate or in a bed in your bedroom. There is a topic here where there was a discussion about crate placement on the Forum a few years ago. Although the original question was regarding a puppy when it first came into the family home, you will notice that the replies show that a dog is always happier with his/her human family close by

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[schnauzer]

My boy who will be 6.5 yrs in November, still sleeps in his crate at bedtime, definitely his choice, the crate has been in our bedroom, since the day we brought him home at 8weeks. On his first night with us he slept in our room all night without doing the toilet, so from day one he never needed the toilet during the night we could not believe how lucky we were with him then I had him house trained within a couple of weeks.

Our last girl just wouldn't take to a crate but then we left her in the kitchen from the day she we brought her home & she barked & cried all night for weeks. With the experience with her I said that our boy would be in our bedroom from the day we brought him home & it certainly paid off as they do like to be close to their humans.

[Murray]

Thank you both so much. Definitely have options should we need them in the future.

We decided to continue to try with the crate, so we moved it from the dining room to an alcove in our hallway, and tried to make it as cosy as possible. At night we close the doors to the other rooms, so it’s a more enclosed space. Also, when we leave him alone in the house for a couple of hours, he chooses to sleep in the hall so it made sense.

Touch wood, he has been much happier and we’ve even had to wake him up in the morning! We have cameras set up so we can make sure he’s okay when we do pop out, and he’s even been choosing to go to his crate to nap in the daytime, which he has never done before.

Obviously this may all change, but we are taking all the positives!!