There's an issue in the morning with Link and I can't come to grips with the best plan of action to achieve my goal. There are few options and I would like some advice on which one will get me to my goal the easiest.

Here's the deal.

Link sleeps soundly from 7-8 hours in his crate beside our bed every night. No issues at all. He knows "go to bed" and goes right into his crate unguided and curls up and he's out.

In the morning and then for the rest of the day/evening his crate is moved into our living room so that he can be with us and easily have access to it without be separated. He regularly naps in it on his own and we feed him in it for every meal and have reserved, high value "crate only" chew toys that he gets throughout the week.

There is only one day a week where both my partner and I need to be up super early for work, otherwise, one of us is always home in the morning with him and could potentially sleep in all day if we could.

7 days a week he is up at 6:30am to pee and poop. No big deal, we take him out quickly and let him do his business and then back inside. We try not to engage him or escalate his energy at all because we want to keep him in quiet time.

He eats his morning meal between 7:30-8:30. Our goal is to get him back into his crate and calmly rest or sleep until 8, so roughly 1.5 after his wake up pee/poop. However ,most of the time in the wake of his 6:30 business he is up and at 'em. 8/10 times he is not happy to go back into his crate. I have had some success recently with keeping a bag of treats on top of his crate and periodically giving him one when he remains quiet and calm, which he catches onto well. But in general we can't get him to settle down well enough. Our goal is 1.5 extra sleep after his 6:30 business. 6:30 is just too early for us to get up and be active and alert and our goal is 8am. We want him to relax and not scream and howl.

Here are some options as we see it:

-ride it out cause it's a puppy thing and he will eventually be able to do this easier??

-keep him in the crate in our bedroom and continue the treats? no treats??

-move the crate to the living room and separate him from us? (today I did this so that my partner could sleep more and I curled up on the floor on his bed beside his crate and the 3 of us slept until 8:15 which was great....but this is not the goal! I want to stay in bed).

Any more options or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks folks!

Ha, sounds like Kody! Ever since he was a puppy he's been waking up at 6am (he's going to be 3 in August). The only thing will get him to sleep until 8/830am is to feed him at 6am when he wakes up. I've tried not feeding him and he'll be up again by 7am without fail. I realized that he's hungry and wants his breakfast. It's a total pain to feed them at 6am, but at least he'll sleep for another 2hrs if I do so. The girls sleep until whenever. He's the issue. Boys

not sure i can offer any advice other then they run on routine! try pushing back that 6:30 wake up, maybe feed dinner later so he does not have to poo so early? when hubby is up at 5:30 they go out with him, if he is not up sometimes they let me sleep till my alarm goes off at 6am some days on one of us is up at 530 to let them go, ours just come back to bed and sleep longer, not so lucky on the weekends they have us up at 6am no matter what to pee and my weekend wake up is at 7am.... some times i lay back down others i just make use of my now extra hr on the weekend! don't remove him from your room it will make it worse. you could just make the most of the early morning wake up and just get up and do things you need to do, or have extra time to play/ walk link.....

Thanks for the tips. The later dinner is a good idea we might try, but I always assumed it was his bladder waking him up. I definitely agree about moving him outta the bedroom because that just heightens his stimulation.

I really wish I could function at 6:30 but beyond putting on Crocs and my clothes on backwards to take him out I'm pretty useless. Come on little bladder, you can do it. 1.5 more hours!

So Kody eats and sleeps right away?? That might work because it's obvious to us that once he's up he wants to eat, but I guess that doesn't need to mean he's not still sleepy......hmmm.

seattlesibe wrote:

So Kody eats and sleeps right away?? That might work because it's obvious to us that once he's up he wants to eat, but I guess that doesn't need to mean he's not still sleepy......hmmm.

Yep. If I feed him right after he potties at 6am then he'll come back to bed with me until 8:30am-ish. Sometimes even 9am on the weekends! If I don't fed him at 6am he'll lay back down, but for about 45min until he starts complaining again.

Oh, and he's not crated. He sleeps on the dog beds in our bedroom or at my feet. The crate at night just didn't work for him (even with it in our room). He wasn't destructive and didn't have any accidents at night so we just started leaving him loose in the bedroom.

I'm going to second the feeding at 6. Also he may improve some as he gets older. Saphire and I are up most mornings at 6:15 to walk, potty and eat before I leave for work. On the weekends, she goes potty, eats and lays back down for a couple hours and we walk when I wake up. That way I can sleep in a little.

Thanks folks I'm gonna give the early feeding a try.

MY girls are the ones that get Bourbon up at 8 am on wknds....They whine and whimper cause are starving by then. (dinner is at 6pm)They are closed in the bedroom but loose to roam within. He sleeps they whine he wakes up and bounces on the bed!. I get up But He goes out to pee and they will stand by their bowls and refuse to go out until brfst is feed. So it really could be a I am hungry daddy!
Watch when he wants to go after eating. My girls want to "go" with in mminutes of eating but Boubon wants to go" after 30 minutes.

However after sying this i will say i is also habit becuase I let them out during the week at 7 am and they do not get feed until the hub is functional at 9 to 930 am. They are fine for brfst at 9 on week but no sleping in on a wknd past 830am.

We had success today! Up at 6:20, out to pee/poop, fed him at 6:40, quietly back to bed till 8:40!

I always thought feeding him would rile him up but he did great. He also slept through my partner waking up and showering at 8:15. Thanks for the suggestion everybody.

Yay!

This is sort of a  bump.

Has anyone's Husky begun waking up earlier now that it is warmer out and the light is coming in a lot earlier?

All of the previous trends and updates in this thread are still holding true and the technique that you all have helped me with has continued to work, but now it has just begun an hour earlier right when the Sun starts to come in to our bedroom. 

Now the fun begins at 5:15-5:30 instead of 6....so...excited...about....that. 

Now we really feel helpless on how to improve this because once he is up we have learned how to deal with him and get him back to bed, but we don't feel like there is anything we can do to prolong his initial wake up time. 

Will this get better as he ages?  He is ~6 months old now, counted in weeks.

...

Thanks, I just thought to myself about covering our bedroom window to see if that helps.  His wake up time is so specific to sunlight, as though the order of operations for him is

Awake at sunrise::oh yeah, I gotta pee/poop::Oh yeah, now I'm hungry::then finally Oh yeah, time to go back to sleep.

Yeah, I know what you mean! I just kept telling myself, it was an age thing and that it would get better. Well a year and half later it really hasn't changed, he LOVES to be up early!

Grrr, Link is gonna have to get a job soon and take care of himself. 

Mishka's been waking me up at 5:30 on the weekends. o.o

I take him out and put him back to bed and if I'm lucky I can sleep until 7:30. I never get to sleep much later than that though. Maybe one day. -_-

My goal is simply 9, all I want is to sleep till 9!!!!

I've slept til 930 once since i brought my two home in january. It was only because I doped myself up on meds to kick a cold finally. I havent noticed any time change with min, Bella is still up sometime between 645 and 8 Jasper could sleep later but happily gets up up with us. And we try to go back to sleep til but it doesnt always work. We also do playtime with my sisters pup anywhere from 8 pm to usually midnight so i think that helps our sleeping.

Yeah, Link sleeps hard when he sleeps. He gets plenty of physical and mental stimulation every day and we are pretty quiet, mellow people at night and on most nights he is asleep deeply on his beanbag around 9pm. At this point the only thing that will get him up is a ruffle in his treat bag or his leash to go outside one last time to pee/poop. Then he comes in and on his own either goes to his crate or back to his beanbag and knocks out again. He is never alert and up past 10.

If I were you, I would keep him up later and make his last potty later, and then be proactive about his bladder waking him up, and causing a feeling of anxiety, by waking him up for a potty at 5am, and then going back in and crashing until wake up time, with him in his crate with a chew toy.

That's what it seems is needed, a wholesale shift in our routine forward an hour or...three. thanks Eric.

P.s. whoa, Hi Eric. Where've you been??

Leave it to the professional trainer, right? lol...

Hi, Kenmore. That place I hopped on was filled with a cancer of bad handlers.
Now Im in charge of training/educating all the handlers. We replaced 4 of them. It's now a place everyone is proud to work.

But yeah, as for Link, is it easier for you to snooze an alarm and go back to bed, or ignore a bad bowel issue and sleep on? It wakes him up more to have his own bladder wake him, than if you wake him, and make him  potty and lay back down

Agreed, so what about feeding him later?? He eats now at 7 and as I've said is usually out by 9, 9:30 and we always take him out when we go to sleep around 11:30, midnight when he pretty much always does both deeds.

How often does he eat?