# 14 week old still not sleeping!



## archietime (Sep 14, 2014)

We have had Archie now since he was 6 weeks old and we have been crate training him since we got him. Obviously when we first got him he was so tiny we didn't expect him to sleep very long but now he is 14 weeks old and he will still not sleep more than two hours at a time in his crate, at which point he whines to be taken out and he will pee or poop every time I take him out so I don't like to ignore it even if it is just for attention.

I have had to be sleeping on the sofa in the living room where his crate is because if not he won't sleep. That said, he will quite happily sleep for five hours straight if he is on the sofa with me. I would love to just leave him downstairs and let him cry it out but we have neighbours on both sides and so that is not an option.

I am starting to get very desperate, especially having read so many posts on here about other pups sleeping through the night from 10 weeks onwards (jealous!). I realise that every dog is different and understand he is still very young but I thought that by now he would at least be sleeping for slightly longer periods of time. We give him his last meal at around eight pm and then play with him until about ten when it is bed time, we also take up his water shortly after he has eaten. He gets taken on a walk every day and gets lots of playtime during the day so I don't think it is a question of too much energy. 

I haven't slept in the same place as my fiance for two months now and the sleep deprivation is starting to make me a little nuts. 

I'm guessing it is just a separation thing but I have no idea how to go about fixing it without exposing my neighbours to near constant howling and barking. 

Any tips/help would be greatly appreciated. 

I have also attached a photo of him, mainly cause he's so damned cute 
Thanks!


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## texasred (Jan 29, 2012)

First and foremost, Gosh Archie is so darn cute in that picture.

Just a couple of things I would try with him.
Move his dinner time to a little earlier in the evening. This may give him more time eliminate the last meal before bedtime. Cut down on his napping beside you during the day. I know that ones hard, because they are so sweet when sleeping next to you, but put him in the crate for his nap. Either trade out with who sleeps on the couch, or move the crate to the bedroom, and take turns taking him out. At least you and your fiancé will be sleeping in the same room. 

If your just so tired, you can't see straight, put a thick cover over the crate, and go to sleep. It helps muffle the noise.


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## archietime (Sep 14, 2014)

TexasRed said:


> First and foremost, Gosh Archie is so darn cute in that picture.
> 
> Just a couple of things I would try with him.
> Move his dinner time to a little earlier in the evening. This may give him more time eliminate the last meal before bedtime. Cut down on his napping beside you during the day. I know that ones hard, because they are so sweet when sleeping next to you, but put him in the crate for his nap. Either trade out with who sleeps on the couch, or move the crate to the bedroom, and take turns taking him out. At least you and your fiancé will be sleeping in the same room.
> ...


Thanks for the reply!

We started just this morning to put him in his crate when napping in the hopes it would help, so fingers crossed that will create some progress. My fiance does take over with puppy duty on the weekends but seeing as he works long hours during the week I take him on weeknights and moving him to the bedroom would mean we would both lose sleep as opposed to just one of us suffering! 
I will definitely move the dinnertime, that makes a lot of sense. maybe a last feeding at seven, for bedtime at ten?


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## harrigab (Aug 21, 2011)

I'm thinking you may be making a rod for your back, Have you tried speaking to your neighbours and explaining that you may have "to experiment" for a few nights and let him whinge it out? Ruby did it for 3 nights before she realised that we weren't getting up every time she wanted a bit of company. We did the same with the kids too,


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## archietime (Sep 14, 2014)

harrigab said:


> I'm thinking you may be making a rod for your back, Have you tried speaking to your neighbours and explaining that you may have "to experiment" for a few nights and let him whinge it out? Ruby did it for 3 nights before she realised that we weren't getting up every time she wanted a bit of company. We did the same with the kids too,


I'm resigning myself to that being the way it'll have to be done. I just worry about them making complaints to the council anyway. 

Out of curiosity, how old was Ruby when you did this with her? 

Thanks


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## harrigab (Aug 21, 2011)

9 weeks, from day one when she was brought home, however there is a sting in the tail on first night....I didn't crate Ruby, her place was in the kitchen on her comfy mat and that's how it was gonna be,,,the expected howling started as soon as we went to bed,, we knew she had access to water, had been out in the garden to do her business etc, she was in no danger of any sort, totally puppy-proofed her quarters except for one oversight, the catflap!! she'd actually managed to get out the catflap into the back garden and couldn't get back inside!, so maybe most of her howls were in fact distress,,aaaarghhh!, I got up at 5am as per usual for me and went into kitchen horrified to find no puppy, took all the kickboards off the base units to see if she'd somehow got underneath,,nope,,so went outside for a ciggy, went into outhouse where I keep my baccy and she was curled up, snoring, amongst some old camping groundsheets! needless to say the catflap got fettled that very same day


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## archietime (Sep 14, 2014)

harrigab said:


> 9 weeks, from day one when she was brought home, however there is a sting in the tail on first night....I didn't crate Ruby, her place was in the kitchen on her comfy mat and that's how it was gonna be,,,the expected howling started as soon as we went to bed,, we knew she had access to water, had been out in the garden to do her business etc, she was in no danger of any sort, totally puppy-proofed her quarters except for one oversight, the catflap!! she'd actually managed to get out the catflap into the back garden and couldn't get back inside!, so maybe most of her howls were in fact distress,,aaaarghhh!, I got up at 5am as per usual for me and went into kitchen horrified to find no puppy, took all the kickboards off the base units to see if she'd somehow got underneath,,nope,,so went outside for a ciggy, went into outhouse where I keep my baccy and she was curled up, snoring, amongst some old camping groundsheets! needless to say the catflap got fettled that very same day


Oh my goodness, you must have been so worried when you couldn't find her. Bless. 

Last night went not too badly. He barked solid for almost an hour before settling and we still went down every two hours to take him out which caused more barking but will start trying to stretch that out over the next week. Hopefully it will start to get easier!


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## Jem Hornby (Dec 15, 2014)

Hi architime 

I am certainly no expert in this but we have had our girl Amber for just over a week now, we got her at 7 weeks. Perhaps we are more selfish than you but we thought to **** with the neighbours, it's not forever... they'll just have to put up with it for a bit lol. 

For the first few night Amber cried all night and got herself into a right state, we let her cry it out and only went to her at 3am and then 6am obviously making sure we didn't let her out of the crate while crying (it was ****!). A week and a bit later she only cries for about 10mins (more of a wimper than a full on howling fit) after the 3am toilet trip. 

We put her in her crate over the weekend for a few of her naps and she actually wanted to stay in her crate a few times when we went to wake her up, she looked up sat up slightly then sulked back down as if to say go away can't you see i'm sleeping here lol.

Good luck with it and stick to it


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## killmodell (Nov 10, 2014)

He sure is cute. Now we know why God made them so darn adorable looking. It's a survival thing... 

We have somehow managed to miss this whole crate training nightmare from the beginning... but I would suggest
1) put the crate in your bedroom if possible or
2) leave a fan / radio on for him
3) Use a blanket to cover the crate so it stays dark

I sure wish you luck... You'll get there !


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## hotmischief (Mar 11, 2012)

Hi Archietime, I can really sympathise with you as we have had the same problem as you with our now 12 wk old wirehaired pup. He came home at 7 wks and has been a delight except for the nights - he screams and screams. He has a crate in the kitchen but we don't close the door so he has access to paper and pads to pee and poo on. We put a radio on, sprayed Adaptil around his crate, filled a konk with paste, etc By keeping him up playing for the two hours before we went to bed we did get him to go down ok but then he would scream every two hours. Fortunately we have triple glazing and our neighbours are not that close so we let him howl, but he just became more and more stressed. By week four we were at our wits end. He was clean during the day within 5 days of coming home, and I was not concerned about the nights - that will come with age. We have now solved the problem by putting our 3yr old boy in with him - peace at last. That obviously doesn't help you. Have you thought about a puppy pen to go around the crate so you could leave the crate open and he can pee & poo without you having to let him out. Now Flynn is not stressed at night he is has had one puddle in the last 5 day so is nearly going through the night. He still gets very stressed if we have to leave him on his own with out the older dog - but that is tough, he will have to get used to that. One thing I think really helped him was putting a hot water bottle in the crate with him, with a fury cover which he could snuggle up to. I do feel for you - if it hadn't been an 8 hr drive I might have returned our pup to the breeder as we were that desperate for sleep. Keep him busy before bed time. Also get a book called Brain games - on Amazon. Training games to wear them out. Thinking of you


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## JussieFruit (Oct 6, 2014)

Lots of good suggestions on here already but wanted to add one that we used with our girl starting about 12 weeks that worked for us. We used a technique from thehousebreakingbible.com, basically we would set our alarm to wake us up 10-15 minutes before the pup would wake up, and bring her out potty, then put her back to bed. We added 30 minutes to our wake up time every 2-4 days depending on how she was doing. This got her sleeping through the night for the most part by 16 weeks. I definitely felt like she was better at going back into her crate if we were the ones doing the waking. And I think it helped her to realize that we are there. 

Some background notes: At the time that we started this scheduled wake up technique, her crate was set up right outside our bedroom, covered, with white noise on (used an app called Relax Melodies which was awesome and relaxing for us too). She became a good sleeper after about a week after we brought her home (by good I mean sleeping for 3 hours to start, and not having melt downs) - but I credit this mostly to starting with her crate in our room and moving it to just outside the room gradually. I think you'd want to start with other recommendations in this thread, like move the crate to your room, cover it, use white noise, and THEN figure out his wake up patters and work at eliminating them. 

Also, it may be worth getting him checked at the vet if he really can't make it more than a few hours once you've tried many thIngs. It may be a health issue. Our girl had a bad yeast infection and couldn't make it overnight right after we phased her out of waking up through the night. At first we thought she was just resisting the idea of sleeping through the night and getting lonely but it turned out she was sick. A few days on antibiotics and she was sleeping way better. She's 5 1/2 months now and happily sleeps through the night, well, for a good 6-7 hours at once anyway! 

These puppy days can be tough, just remember that it will get easier even though it may not feel that way right now. Best of luck!!


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## Copperboy426 (Sep 7, 2014)

You've got lots of good advice here, but I just wanted to say that it will all get easier! I promise! I know with a Vizsla pup it always helps to hear that.


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## archietime (Sep 14, 2014)

First of all, thank you all so much for the great advice. A quick update on progress: we decided we would take advantage of the Xmas period and bite the bullet. We went and spoke to the neighbours (bearing bars of chocolate as bribes) and explained that there may be some barking at night for a while and please bear with us. We covered his crate with blankets and left the news on the tv all night. It has now been 10 days and he no longer howls. (Insert victory dance here) He still doesn't seem to manage more than two hours or so without waking up but we are pretty sure now that it's a separation thing as opposed to a needing to go out thing. So we are working on that by slowly lengthening times between outings and trying to be the ones to wake him as opposed to him waking us with barking. Time will tell how that goes but at least I feel like we have made some progress and I now get to sleep every night in a bed! Amazing how much the little things make a difference. 

Happy new year!


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## fullmanfamily (Oct 17, 2014)

What you're going through is completely normal! I think by nature Vizsla's have a little more separation anxiety than other breeds because they want to be with us all the time!

We got our puppy when she was 8 weeks old and had a hard time at first deciding whether it was better to let her cry it out ( and possibly soil her crate) or wake up with her when she cried. We went by the rule of thumb that they can hold is 1 hour + their age. So we knew at 8 weeks, she could only hold it for three hours. We had an idea when we went to bed when we should be waking up and tried to stick to that routine. 

We also put blankets around her crate to make it more den like and played music. The exessive crying stopped after about 3-4 days, but she didn't start sleeping through the night until probably 12-13 weeks. She is now about 4.5 months ( maybe close to 19 weeks) and she'll sleep without a peep from about 10-5:30am. 

It's definitely tough at first! When they're really little we also felt like the cold weather made her less capable of holding it for long. We recently got her a crate pad and put a nice dog bed inside ( now that she's a bit more potty trained). It made a world of a difference. She now enjoys going in there and walks in on her own. Sometimes if it's really cold we'll put an extra blanket in her crate to and put it around her.

We were totally sleep deprieved as well. We took turns for a while, but my husband is more of a morning person so he now does the am routine at 5:30 and I stay up with her to put her to bed.


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## archietime (Sep 14, 2014)

fullmanfamily said:


> What you're going through is completely normal! I think by nature Vizsla's have a little more separation anxiety than other breeds because they want to be with us all the time!
> 
> We got our puppy when she was 8 weeks old and had a hard time at first deciding whether it was better to let her cry it out ( and possibly soil her crate) or wake up with her when she cried. We went by the rule of thumb that they can hold is 1 hour + their age. So we knew at 8 weeks, she could only hold it for three hours. We had an idea when we went to bed when we should be waking up and tried to stick to that routine.
> 
> ...


It's so reassuring to know it's not just me. I think eventually we will get there, he just needs to get his head round the fact that mummy and daddy can't be around 24/7!


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