Begging for advice here!
Our puppy is 9 months old, a German shepherd/Rottweiler mutt. He is a very smart boy who picked up on training crazy fast, and even passed grade 1 training class (he skipped the two levels before that because he knew it all) at 7.5 months old. He’s generally pretty calm for a puppy, not at all hyperactive. He gets two or three 30+ minute walks per day, mostly two as three can wipe him out. We play, train, and do games, on a daily basis. He has a very clear, consistent daily routine that we maintain every day, even on weekends. He sleeps on the floor of our bedroom at night, and during the day he is allowed go roam the top two floors of our house (with almost all room doors closed though, and no basement access). He’s been fully potty trained since 4 months old, and can calmly let us know if he needs to go potty.
Our house is two stories plus a basement, and it’s set up in a way that it kinda wraps around our garage in an L shape. This means there’s a front living room with a window facing our (extremely quiet) street, and a family room that’s sort of tucked away behind our street-facing garage, with windows facing our backyard.
At about 8 months old he started barking in the evenings once it got dark outside, and his barks seem to be directed to the front living room. We can be sitting watching TV in the family room, and he just bolts up and runs to the front living room, barking all the way and not stopping for a solid 3-5 minutes. Even when we’re upstairs in bed, lights off, ready for sleep, he’ll have some barking sessions in the hallway at the top of the stairs.
We close all blinds, we close all curtains. We bought two noise machines, one for the front living room and one for our bedroom. We maintain a clear, consistent daily routine. Even if we give him more or less stimulation or exercise in a day, this doesn’t change his barking at night. He gets plenty of attention. He does not have to go potty. We live on a super quiet street with only local traffic, few kids, few dogs, and literally everyone works 9-5 and is very quiet. We have completely ignored him, he still barks. We have firmly said things like “no” and “quiet”, he still barks. We have silently guided him back to the family room, he still goes back to the closed living room windows and barks. We have given him treats, toys, chew items etc while he’s quiet, he still bolts up and barks.
The only time he is 110% calm when it’s dark out, is if we’re in the basement watching TV, so we practically live down there now.
Does anyone have any insight on this? We’re going slowly insane as he is an almost 90lb dog so his barks are BIG, and we basically can’t use the main floor anymore while it’s dark out, because he just loses his mind. We cannot see or hear a single thing outside that he may be hearing. Are we missing something?! Will he grow out of this?? Again, this was very sudden as he never barked until about 3-4 weeks ago.
Please do not suggest crating- he stopped crating a few months ago and it is physically impossible to get him to do so anymore. He has his own bedroom, but can now easily break out of the baby gate for it- enclosing him to any room (except our bedroom while we’re in it with him) is physically impossible.