My black lab is a little over 9 months old and he is driving me crazy. I knew his teenage phase would be tough, but this particular struggle is killing me. During the day he displays an expected level of rebellion, but once the clock strikes midnight it's like my puppy has been replaced by a demon. During the day he has regressed on his manners and overall obedience which I knew was going to happen, have prepared for, and patiently correct when appropriate, but I am at a total loss for how to handle him at night. His crate training is completely fine during daylight hours. We follow the same routine every day so I'm well aware of what it takes to meet his needs, which includes a chunk of playtime right before bedtime which has consistently gotten puppy tuckered out and ready to calmly sleep through the night in the past. In other words, this burst of energy isn't him needing attention because he's thirsty and needs water, has to go potty, etc – it's purely an attention play.
The real problem is that my roommates have a 2 year old child who gets woken if I try and wait for him to quit barking. When puppy starts making noise at these godforsaken hours I have no choice but to give in and pacify him immediately, which I understand is reinforcing his unwanted behavior by rewarding him with attention, but again, I don't have an alternative. He will stubbornly keep making noise for over an hour, and while my roommates are willing to wear earplugs to block out the puppy noise, it's completely unreasonable for me to expect them to put the baby to sleep multiple times every single night.
It doesn't seem to matter how much playtime and attention my puppy recieves once I acquiesce and let him out of the crate, he just never tires. I can play fetch and tug of war and pet him and walk him and run him around for literally hours, but once he goes back in the crate, it's mere seconds before he's making a racket again. Leaving the crate is also the only thing that satisfies him; he's not trying to sleep in my bed. He will ignore bully sticks, treats and chew toys that he typically enjoys because all he wants to do is get out and play, play, play. If I pull an all nighter and stay up until our morning schedule starts, his behavior returns to 'normal' after breakfast/our morning walk but like clockwork, the next night at midnight he's back at it again.
Some info about him is that he's 60 lbs, gets about 3 1/2 – 4 cups of kibble per day, gets around 90 minutes of high intensity exercise by going on walks or visits to the dog park, another hour of low intensity playtime/enrichment/training split up over the course of the day and several more hours of cuddles, belly rubs and lovey dovey attention spread throughout the day. He probably spends about 8 hours in the crate on an average day, and is well behaved during that time by comparison.
The solution I'm looking at right now is to move his crate to the garage with a baby monitor and let him bark it out away from where anyone can hear. I'm hesitant to do this because he's been sleeping right next to my bed since the day I got him and I am open to other solutions, but frankly st this point I'm at my wits end.
Raising this puppy has had its highs and lows, at times its literally been enough to make this grown man cry, but until now I've never thought "I'm not sure I can keep doing this". I have a vet appointment scheduled just to confirm there's no genuine medical issue, but that's over a week out which feels like an eternity away.
I'm not sure if I'm looking for advice as much as reassurance. I'm genuinely starting to dread going to sleep at night because I know it's going to be more of this awfulness. It's clearly a hormonal thing that I logically know he's going to grow out of over time, but emotionally every single night is a brutal slog. Am I being dramatic by hesitating to move him away from my bedside? Is it that simple? I could really use some help on how to handle this
submitted by /u/Avalonicious
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