We close our dog into the main bedroom with us at night (I'll explain more on that history below), and he goes to the bedroom door and loudly huffs at it until someone lets him outside. Once outside, he uses (maybe pretend to use, I can't see) the bathroom and then comes inside. He will then seem to settle down for 1-3 hours and then start the cycle all over again.
We got our dog as a 1 year old. He was an outside barn dog.
When we got our dog we were in an apartment, so we had a pee pad and he had full reign of the house at night. He picked up potty training on the pee pad quickly. He still didn't let us sleep, but it was because he barked at every noise in the hallway.
We moved into a house and started potty training to go outside. He did really well alerting us during the day by standing at the door and looking at us. He alerts us to go outside every 2-3 hours during the day, but can hold it up to 6 hours if we are gone. If we take too long to get to him he whines (rarely happens) but at night he didn't do any alerting that we could see/hear and it would lead to accidents all over the house.
We started closing him into the bedroom with us. The alerting started being more audible- huffing and whining. We will always get up, take him outside (no stopping at the food bowl or playing with toys) and bring him right back to bed.
Vet said everything looks good, and there's no physical reason he should be using the bathroom every 1-3 hours.
Trainer said that hes just a stubborn teenage dog and he will grow out of it. But he's 4 now and it's not helping.
I'm clearly missing something or not filling a need that he has, but I don't know what it is. This is my first dog and I'm still learning. Please help, the lack of sleep is really getting to me.
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