Category: Top Dog

Sorry if this is worded odd. I'm furious and scatterbrained. I'm watching my aunt’s dog for a few days. He's a large breed, 8 weeks old.

He went to sleep at 11pm. Woke up at 2am. We went potty. He's been a few times. Pee and poo. It's 4:20 and won't go back to sleep. He will ONLY settle OUTSIDE right now. He sleeps inside during the day just fine!!!. It's cold out here. my two cousins share a room. It's the only option for me to stay in there with its crate.

He won't stop randomly barking when inside. Won't settle back in his crate again. Ignores toys to bark and bite me. I know he wants to play. But I can't do the thing where I leave the room when he bites (instead of punishment) because he will wine and bark and people are sleeping!!!

The NOISE is driving me completely insane. My legs are bruised because I cannot help but to hit them out of frustration. My tongue is sore from biting it.

I'm not usually so short tempered. It's just children and puppies. Which is why I don't have a child or puppy myself and probably never will.

I have 3 more nights of this. What do I do:(

Edit: he's also aggressive when I touch around his shoulders or have my hand around him when eating (I know because he was trying to eat something he wasn't supposed to, I took it away, and he snarled and bit me)

We got our Whippet x Poodle female puppy nearly 4 weeks ago and she is a few days off turning 14 weeks old. Overall she's doing really well – pretty quick to learn, more or less toilet trained and is now sleeping from ~10pm through until 5/6am with no toilet breaks which is a god send! We have crate-trained her and during the day she follows a rough schedule of ~1 hour wake window, then a nap for 1-2 hours, rinse and repeat until bedtime.

At the moment is that she is waking up for a pee anywhere between 5am-6am – we take her out of her crate, out to the garden and back into her crate with no fuss – we are treating it like it is still nighttime and not time for her to get up! We are trying to aim for a 7-7:30 'official' wake up time and treat any wakes before that as still night-time.

Our issue is that from 6am she really struggles to settle back down and have another sleep before 7-7:30am. We will have intermittent whining all the way up to constant whining – sometimes she'll doze off for 10 mins or so but doesn't properly get asleep again. She is visibly still sleepy during this period – we know her sleepy face plus she is zoomy, bitey and full of morning energy despite not being fully ready for the day. We will usually set up camp next to her crate from 6am, hoping that our presence will soothe her back into sleep but this doesn't really work. We usually give in around 7/7:15am, take her outside for toilet, give her breakfast, and then she will usually have a bit of a play until she is sat on our laps chewing and will be back in her crate for a nap around 7:45am.

Any advice? Lying by her crate from 6-7am isn't really sustainable for us in the long-run, plus doesn't seem to have much of the desired effect of soothing her! We would love for the following to happen: ~5-6am toilet wake, back into crate, sleep until ~7/7:30am. How do we make this happen, or at least create the conditions where it might happen?!

She is still a baby but I'm concerned we might unintentionally be teaching her a bad early morning routine. Help!