We need help getting our little dog to sleep soundly! This is a bit of a long post, but stick with me.
My spouse and I have a 13-month old small dog named Murphy. We got her at 9 months old. Before we got her, she was sleeping in bed with her previous owner. We don't want her to sleep in our bed. The problem with having her sleep outside of an enclosure in our bedroom is that she is constantly trying to jump up onto the bed. In the four months we've had her she's really struggled to sleep well. It has been a saga.
We started with a crate. We knew it would be a transition for her (new home, new people, new sleeping situation), so we toughed it out for about 3 weeks before she started sleeping quietly through the night. That lasted for about a week before she started regressing, HARD. She was panicking in the middle of the night and she was getting very little sleep. Unlike some dogs, she did not like being enclosed in the crate. She was panting and scratching and howling at the top of her lungs for most of the night.
We then switched her to a pen that we had in the living room. At her last home, she was kept in a pen and was very comfortable with it. We had a dog bed in her pen and after a brief transition, she was sleeping soundly. The problem is that the pen is too large for our bedroom space, making it not a sustainable solution. Plus, we had to haul it back and forth between our bedroom and the living room, which was a pain.
Sometime before Christmas I decided to buy a pop-up pen. It was a polyester and mesh material. I thought it might be better because it was a smaller size for our bedroom and it would be easier to travel with when visiting family. There were several issues with the pop-up pen. First, within 5 minutes of setting it up she chewed the zipper door, making it in usable. She wasn't even in the pen yet! 🫠 Thankfully I had a warranty and I got a second one, and we watched her closely with it. But the second issue with the pen was that it was too lightweight. She could push her body weight on the side and it would tip over. So we had to put weights in the bottom of it to keep it sturdy. But when she learned that she could tip it over and potentially get out the top of it, she was determined to do so. The weights prevented her from getting it tipped over, but she was scratching at the material so much that she made a hole in the mash and was able to escape. The pop-up pen had to be thrown into the trash and it was back to the metal pen we already had. During this time she would whine a lot and scratch at night until she would eventually give up and go to sleep, but sometimes she would also wake up in the middle of the night before settling.
Finally, we bought another metal pen that's a bit smaller, just for our bedroom. At first it seemed like it was going to be the ideal solution. It took her about a week and a half of transition time before we had TWO glorious nights of silence with no whining, scratching, or barking. It was incredible!
Now you're caught up to last night. Last night we went to visit a friend and took Murphy with us. We got back late at night and pretty much went straight to bed. Looking back on it now, I can see that she didn't really have much decompression time. Even though she did go to sleep quickly and silently, she woke up anxious in the middle of the night. She was whining, scratching, and howling. Unfortunately, she figured out that she could climb out of the new metal pen. It's actually the exact same height as our living room pen, but something about the design made it so that she could climb out.
The first time I heard her jump out, she jumped on our bed, and I got up and gently put her back into the pen. The second time she got out and then hid under our bed so that I couldn't grab her. I was able to get her out from under the bed and I put her back in the pen. The third time she jumped out of the pen she again went under our bed. This time I didn't bother trying to get her out. I just let her be. She slept under there or at least on the floor for about 3 hours. Then the jumping began. She jumped up onto our bed many times throughout the night. But because the pen wasn't working and I was too tired to bring in the other pen from the living room, I just calmly told her "off" and gently placed her off of our bed. In the times that she wasn't trying to actively jump onto the bed she was sleeping on a pile of clothes on the floor next to my spouse's side of the bed. The main difference between her sleeping in the pen versus last night's free roaming, was that when she was free roaming she didn't whine or cry. Even though she tried to get into bed with us she never got panicked or two overly anxious.
Our bedroom is kept edit decent temperature so I know it's not an issue with her being too cold. She's also a young and healthy dog and I don't believe there are any health issues going on here.
At this point I'm not really sure what I should do next. It feels like we've been constantly cycling through new sleeping arrangements for her. Again, having her sleep in our bed is not an option. I know that works for a lot of people, but that will not work for us. Should I continue trying to find the right pen or enclosure for her to stay in? Should I try to not have her sleep in an enclosure and instead work on her sleeping on the ground in her dog bed without a pen? How would we prevent her or teach her not to jump onto our bed?
Here are a few more details I will add about her general routine. She gets three walks a day (we get at least 7k steps), we spend time training her each day before meals and throughout the day, and she gets lots of pets and cuddles especially when we watch our shows at night. She is potty trained so it's not a concern about her going to the bathroom in our bedroom when she's not in an enclosure. Outside of this sleeping saga, she is an absolute delight of a dog. She's very smart and loves us as much as we love her.
I'd love any advice people have, especially those who have been through something similar.
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