I have a 13 week old male golden retriever. We currently keep him in a crate that is open into a playpen. We tried just the crate for a couple weeks but he would never settle at night time so the playpen helped with that. My puppy will bark at my older dog while they’re playing, which I know is normal rough housing. He will bark while I’m getting his food ready at meal times. If we put him down for a nap, he will bark when he wakes up until you get him out of the playpen. He barks in the morning when he’s ready to get up for the day even if it’s not time to get up. For example, I don’t get up for work until 6:30am but he will bark at 5am. There are times I ignore him and he’ll go back to sleep or with the naps he’ll settle back down. But then I’ll look over and he peed on the floor. On the other hand, there are times I’ll take him out at 5 or whatever time it is, to go pee outside and he just walks around sniffing and doesn’t use the bathroom. So I know he just barked to get out of the playpen. It’s hard trying to decide when the bark means “hey I’m ready for you to get me out” vs “I need to go potty”. As soon as my alarm goes off he’ll start barking until I get him out of the playpen. The current night time routine is that he goes out at 1030pm for the last potty break and we all go to bed. Then I wake up at 230 to take him out to potty. Then we all get up at 630am. It’s so exhausting with him barking at 5, getting up to take him out and then sometimes he’ll settle for an hour and start barking again at 6. I’m thinking some of it is FOMO because my older dog does sleep with me in my room and the puppy is in the living room. I don’t want to reinforce the barking but I don’t want him peeing on the floor. This tired dog mom needs advice..
submitted by /u/latchel
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