We brought home a Labrador puppy on Saturday (so nearly 9 weeks old) who we love so much, but the last few days she seems to be constantly overtired and we haven’t cracked her naps yet.
We’re not using a crate but she has a pen with her bed in it. We’ve been settling her to sleep in the pen with us there, leaving her once she’s asleep and then separately practicing having her in locked there for periods when she’s awake and we’re cooking dinner/doing chores.
The problem is the last 3 days she’s been (seemingly) constantly overtired: only sleeping for an hour max, sometimes only 30 mins/taking a long time to settle/waking up with what we believe are overtired symptoms – bitey (us and herself), not really listening to us, zooming around etc.
Sometimes she takes over 30 mins to sleep and we can see her fighting the sleep as she’ll relax for 5 seconds then have another burst of energy to bite her bed/mat/us and be wired again. She sleeps for longer periods in the night (2 or 3 hours) but then the settling after toilet trip still takes forever.
When she’s awake we’ve tried to shorten wake windows to about 40 mins to try and catch up on sleep, but still keeping the structure of exercise > meal (if the right time) > training > chew or lick mat > trying to sleep. But then should we do all that if she’s only slept for 30 mins? We’ve been trying to resettle if she wakes up after such a short time but again she’s so wired it takes up to 30 mins to do.
Any help or advice would be amazing as we’re really not sure what to do differently and also worrying because she needs lots of sleep her age!
submitted by /u/murrayfo
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