My dog Eevee is 6 years old and has been crate trained since she was a puppy (I’ve had her since she was 10 weeks old). She always slept in her cage at night when she was a puppy, but as she got older and was completely potty trained, I started letting her sleep with me. I now have two other dogs that are 2 and almost 1 y/o who are both also crate trained. All three are large breed dogs and they are too big to all sleep on the bed together now.
When we got our 1 y/o puppy almost a year ago, we started crating everyone. Eevee is completely fine and doesn’t whine at all if crated during the day if we leave. She also doesn’t whine at all at night when crated and readily walks into her crate and falls asleep. But, every morning when she wakes up (which is a different time every day) she starts to whine excessively. Both of my younger dogs are completely silent and do not whine at all in their crates, so she is up and whining alone waking the whole family. It’s as if she wakes up and decides she doesn’t feel like being in the crate anymore, and she will continue to whine for hours (and I mean hours).
We have tried everything. I thought maybe she needed to use the bathroom, so after a bit, I would take her. She would do her business, I’d put her back in her crate, and she continues to whine. I did almost retraining for the crate and gave her treats for going in and being quiet and all that. We tried just ignoring her, but after 3 hours of listening to her whining at 7am, enough is enough. We put blankets over her crate so she couldn’t see me or the light from the window. We gave her a bone or toy. We tried spraying her with a water bottle. We tried a vibrating and beeping electric collar (she stopped whining but instead started stress panting so hard the entire crate would shake and clink together which was just as annoying and I didn’t want her to feel that stress.) We moved her crate out of our bedroom. I do use an alarm to wake up on weekdays, but some days she’ll whine hours before the alarm is ever set to go off. Without an alarm, she may start whining hours after the normal alarm. If she is let out of her crate (once she is quiet after being told to be quiet) she comes out and goes to sleep. So it’s not that shes wide awake. It’s literally just that she woke up for one reason or another and has decided she doesn’t want to be in the crate anymore. All she wants is so be let out so she can go back to sleep, but this is causing us to lose sleep.
I am at a loss as to what to do. Yes, we could just let her out of her crate, but if one dog is released, they all are released. And that doesn’t stop us from being woken up. If scolded with a firm “no” or “quiet”, she lays down and cowards almost because she is entirely aware she is doing something wrong and she stays quiet for a few minutes if we’re lucky. I know that was a lot of information, but has anyone else had this issue or have anything else we could try? It gets to the point that after her whining has started at 3/4 am a few nights in a row, we have to let them all stay out of the crates just so we can sleep (even though its a broken sleep while 3 large dogs are trying to fit on a queen bed with two humans). If all of them were whining, it would be a different story, but both younger dogs are silent, even after she has woken them and they are sitting awake as well. Any advice at all?
When we got our 1 y/o puppy almost a year ago, we started crating everyone. Eevee is completely fine and doesn’t whine at all if crated during the day if we leave. She also doesn’t whine at all at night when crated and readily walks into her crate and falls asleep. But, every morning when she wakes up (which is a different time every day) she starts to whine excessively. Both of my younger dogs are completely silent and do not whine at all in their crates, so she is up and whining alone waking the whole family. It’s as if she wakes up and decides she doesn’t feel like being in the crate anymore, and she will continue to whine for hours (and I mean hours).
We have tried everything. I thought maybe she needed to use the bathroom, so after a bit, I would take her. She would do her business, I’d put her back in her crate, and she continues to whine. I did almost retraining for the crate and gave her treats for going in and being quiet and all that. We tried just ignoring her, but after 3 hours of listening to her whining at 7am, enough is enough. We put blankets over her crate so she couldn’t see me or the light from the window. We gave her a bone or toy. We tried spraying her with a water bottle. We tried a vibrating and beeping electric collar (she stopped whining but instead started stress panting so hard the entire crate would shake and clink together which was just as annoying and I didn’t want her to feel that stress.) We moved her crate out of our bedroom. I do use an alarm to wake up on weekdays, but some days she’ll whine hours before the alarm is ever set to go off. Without an alarm, she may start whining hours after the normal alarm. If she is let out of her crate (once she is quiet after being told to be quiet) she comes out and goes to sleep. So it’s not that shes wide awake. It’s literally just that she woke up for one reason or another and has decided she doesn’t want to be in the crate anymore. All she wants is so be let out so she can go back to sleep, but this is causing us to lose sleep.
I am at a loss as to what to do. Yes, we could just let her out of her crate, but if one dog is released, they all are released. And that doesn’t stop us from being woken up. If scolded with a firm “no” or “quiet”, she lays down and cowards almost because she is entirely aware she is doing something wrong and she stays quiet for a few minutes if we’re lucky. I know that was a lot of information, but has anyone else had this issue or have anything else we could try? It gets to the point that after her whining has started at 3/4 am a few nights in a row, we have to let them all stay out of the crates just so we can sleep (even though its a broken sleep while 3 large dogs are trying to fit on a queen bed with two humans). If all of them were whining, it would be a different story, but both younger dogs are silent, even after she has woken them and they are sitting awake as well. Any advice at all?