Bedtime

[reneebarnhart28]

Hi I have a 14 wk old puppy Golden doodle and we wld like him to sleep in bed with us- Right now he is in a crate in our bdrm because of course the potty training- when we put him in bed with us he wants to play- we ignore him after we give him loves we will say Good night- then he wants to jump off the bed to go play! How can we train him to stay in the bed with us?

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Greetings, and welcome the forums.

Sounds like your puppy is more in the mood for a pajama party than sleeping soundly in bed! Most likely this is because your puppy sees spending time close to you as something special to celebrate and this revs up his nervous system which conflicts with sleeping. Once he is in this happy, playful mode, he therefore won't be able to close his eyes to nap.

 

On top of this, puppies have some odd sleep/wake cycles if we don't happen to establish an evening routine. Here are some tips that may help, but there are good chances that you may have to wait a bit for your puppy to mature (and calm down a bit) to allow him to sleep calmly 8 hours straight in bed. We can't force him to sleep there, but we can try some things and see how they work out.

 

-Keep your pup busy in the evening. What you do with your pup in the evening can play a big role on his night-time sleep. If you allow your puppy to snooze a whole lot in the evening, then, once bed time is around the corner, he’ll feel refreshed by all the ZZZ's he's caught earlier, so most likely he'll be ready to rock and roll once you place him on the bed. So if you have the time and will, it helps to play with your puppy in the evening, let him spend time in the yard, do brain games, have relatives come to visit etc. so that when sleep time is around the corner, he'll be more likely to crash.

 

-Keep in mind though that even if he'll crash at bed time, that doesn't mean he'll sleep the whole night and stay glued in bed. Most likely, he will wake up either because he needs to potty or because he is attracted by movement (like you or your spouse turning, or even his tail moving) and he may go into play mode. He may also wake up early if he sees light coming in the room.

 

-Now, when a puppy is crated, because he doesn't have the choice to get out, he'll likely wake up several times at night and then just get bored and go back to sleep. With a puppy free to move, this isn't too likely to happen also because puppies are very easy to be overstimulated when young.

 

-Try a Sherpa Bag. One suggestion I make to those who wish to have their puppies in bed with them but their pups aren't completely potty trained yet is to use a Sherpa bag. A Sherpa bag is a soft-sided carrier (often used for traveling)which can be placed on the bed. You can wrap your arm around it at night to ensure it doesn't accidentally fall or find some way to secure it in some way in bed (like move the bed against a wall so that the carrier can't fall over). Once your puppy matures then and gets used to his routine, you can try weaning him off of it and see how it goes.

 

-Keep in mind that once your puppy is allowed on bed, he may be reluctant to go back to his crate and this may lead to whining and setbacks in crate training. The other way around though (letting him sleep in his crate until he's fully potty trained and calmer and then letting him sleep in bed) is much easier to accomplish, also because once a dog is older (if we have dog-proofed the home well) we can often trust him enough to get off the bed and spend time somewhere else without getting into major trouble (of course, there are exceptions to this, so caution is always needed with dogs who tend to chew things, ingest stuff when unsupervised).

Edited August 30, 2019 by Adrienne Farricelli