My lab pup was sleeping through the night perfectly right up till around 7 months old. Last toilet break is around 10:30/11:00 and morning time is 7:15/7:30. She sleeps in a 4×4 pen with a fuzzy blanket and a dog bed and has legal chew toys for in flight entertainment.
From the time she was around 4 months old till 7 months, she slept all the way through the night.
I remove access to water at 8:30 and she doesn't have any more to eat after around 7:30. I use her kibble for training and food toys so she never gets any big meal in a bowl. Her biggest 'meal' is in the morning.
She gets plenty of exercise (1.5-2 hours minimum a day off leash meadow exploring), enrichment (cardboard mayhem, hunting for hidden kibble around the house, toy swapping, play with humans) and brain enrichment (training). My trainers say she is not lacking for anything.
I give her plenty of time to fully eliminate before bed and she will often give me both a pee and a poop.
Yet… she is waking me up in the middle of the night around 50% of all nights for toilet breaks. 😵💫
Going out in the middle of the night is a very boring ordeal for her. I don't say a word, just putting my dressing down on, leash her up and quietly go to her toilet spot and then back to bed again. She goes straight back to sleep without a peep afterwards. She really does need to go.
The vet thinks this is adolescent shenanigans, ie. she's experimenting with what happens when she tries different things (turns out it's the same thing as when you were 8 weeks old, babes).
Has anyone else had this happen? We're going into week three of this and as a chronic insomniac to begin with, I'm coming undone. If you came out the other side of this kind of sleep change in an adolescent, how long did it take? Did you have to do anything to stop the nighttime toilet breaks?
submitted by /u/rememberthatcake
[link] [comments]