Hey long time lurker first time poster. Long post sorry. My 9 month old maltese/yorkie puppy Mortimer has one nagging issue that my girlfriend and I can't seem to solve.
He wakes up every night around 2am and has a crazy witching hour until about 4 am. He literally loses his mind during those hours every night, demand barking for hours and nipping/biting us to play. After a couple hours he lets out a huge sigh and just passes out, and then sleeps ALOT during the day, pretty much constant napping from 7am-4pm (I am working from home with him at that time). I'm looking for some advice on how to reign this in. Please see below for more details.
Backstory: We got the dog as a re-home at 5 months old. The previous owner said he slept in his crate. When we brought him home, he was great for about 3 weeks and then after that it seemed like his real personality came out, with demand barking, biting and waking up at night. It's hard to say if it was because he got used to us or because adolescence set in, both I think. Basically after the first month, he started to develop demand barking and a bad witching hour from 6-9pm. When we put him to sleep in the create, he would wake up in the middle of the night and we would take him to go potty and then put him back in the crate. He would keep barking endlessly after that for hours until my girlfriend got up for work (sometimes at 5am, her schedule has now changed to 7am). We live in a very small apartment and we have had a noise complaint in the past and our neighbours are not particularly friendly, so it is very difficult for us to just ignore him and let him bark it out. I'm certain we screwed up here and let him out or tried to soothe him too often in the middle of the night, but we absolutely could not tolerate the barking unfortunately.
After about 3 months of crate training in the day but no real improvement, we decided we would give up on sleeping in the crate overnight and let him sleep in our room. Around the same time, we also increased our walking routines and walk him for an hour from 4:30-5:30 and 8:30-9:30. With some additional training, we have pretty much gotten rid of his evening witching hour and have improved the demand barking, however it all seems to have shifted later to 2-4am now. Once he gets into his zone at 2am, we cannot seem to calm him down at all and like I said earlier, letting him bark until he stops is just not an option for us. We do regular Relaxation Protocol work and Capturing calm, and he is amazing 90% of the time and very obedient and smart, except during this insane 2am witching hour. He also just got neutered 3 weeks ago but no improvement after that, if anything it got worse because we could not walk him as much in the day.
I have brought this up with my vet but he said he will not prescribe any medication unless we see his recommended behaviourist first, and I don't think I have the money for that. They are wildly expensive here.
Now that he has fully recovered from the neuter, here is my plan to try and improve the situation:
a) We are signed up for a beginners training class. This is mostly for socialization and an outlet for energy as we do alot of training on our own.
b) Begin walking him more in the day time. Starting today, I will be walking him from at 12:30pm on my lunch break and then once that becomes routine I will try incorporate an 8:30am walk as well. This is to also get rid of excess energy and prevent him over napping in the day.
c) Set an alarm right before he normally wakes up ~1:30am and do not get up until the alarm goes off, slowly push the alarm later and later until it is around 6 or 7am.
d) consider doggy day care during the week to get out excess energy
Does anything else have any other ideas or thoughts on if this will also subside with age?
Thanks and obligatory tax:
He wakes up every night around 2am and has a crazy witching hour until about 4 am. He literally loses his mind during those hours every night, demand barking for hours and nipping/biting us to play. After a couple hours he lets out a huge sigh and just passes out, and then sleeps ALOT during the day, pretty much constant napping from 7am-4pm (I am working from home with him at that time). I'm looking for some advice on how to reign this in. Please see below for more details.
Backstory: We got the dog as a re-home at 5 months old. The previous owner said he slept in his crate. When we brought him home, he was great for about 3 weeks and then after that it seemed like his real personality came out, with demand barking, biting and waking up at night. It's hard to say if it was because he got used to us or because adolescence set in, both I think. Basically after the first month, he started to develop demand barking and a bad witching hour from 6-9pm. When we put him to sleep in the create, he would wake up in the middle of the night and we would take him to go potty and then put him back in the crate. He would keep barking endlessly after that for hours until my girlfriend got up for work (sometimes at 5am, her schedule has now changed to 7am). We live in a very small apartment and we have had a noise complaint in the past and our neighbours are not particularly friendly, so it is very difficult for us to just ignore him and let him bark it out. I'm certain we screwed up here and let him out or tried to soothe him too often in the middle of the night, but we absolutely could not tolerate the barking unfortunately.
After about 3 months of crate training in the day but no real improvement, we decided we would give up on sleeping in the crate overnight and let him sleep in our room. Around the same time, we also increased our walking routines and walk him for an hour from 4:30-5:30 and 8:30-9:30. With some additional training, we have pretty much gotten rid of his evening witching hour and have improved the demand barking, however it all seems to have shifted later to 2-4am now. Once he gets into his zone at 2am, we cannot seem to calm him down at all and like I said earlier, letting him bark until he stops is just not an option for us. We do regular Relaxation Protocol work and Capturing calm, and he is amazing 90% of the time and very obedient and smart, except during this insane 2am witching hour. He also just got neutered 3 weeks ago but no improvement after that, if anything it got worse because we could not walk him as much in the day.
I have brought this up with my vet but he said he will not prescribe any medication unless we see his recommended behaviourist first, and I don't think I have the money for that. They are wildly expensive here.
Now that he has fully recovered from the neuter, here is my plan to try and improve the situation:
a) We are signed up for a beginners training class. This is mostly for socialization and an outlet for energy as we do alot of training on our own.
b) Begin walking him more in the day time. Starting today, I will be walking him from at 12:30pm on my lunch break and then once that becomes routine I will try incorporate an 8:30am walk as well. This is to also get rid of excess energy and prevent him over napping in the day.
c) Set an alarm right before he normally wakes up ~1:30am and do not get up until the alarm goes off, slowly push the alarm later and later until it is around 6 or 7am.
d) consider doggy day care during the week to get out excess energy
Does anything else have any other ideas or thoughts on if this will also subside with age?
Thanks and obligatory tax: