No Crate at Night- When do you know?

[Pam & Trixie]

Trixie is one of the Pups that can not take the heat..And its not hot here at all yet!

The kennel we have in our bedroom is not a wire crate.  Nor is the one downstairs....but if we buy a wire crate- it will replace the downstairs crate- where she stays when we are not home.

 

She breathes so hard during the night & tosses & turns in her crate- because she is hot.  it was 55 last night with the window wide open & the ceiling fan on & She still was roasting.  She is keeping me up all night.

 

So we would like to try her out of the crate for sleeping.

How do we know shes ready?  She doesnt get into much trouble during the day (no chewing, etc)

She has not had an accident during the night & Has slept through for about 6 weeks now.

 

Any suggestions on this?  Do we just give her a dog bed & hope she will sleep there all night?  LOL

[J and Riley (and Luna)]

Luna gets the same :)  She asks to get up on the bed when she sees us brushing our teeth haha

[Pam & Trixie]

We let Trixie cuddle with us for awhile before we put her in her crate for the night.  She then goes right to sleep...until she wakes up int he middle of the night roasting.  it has been 45 here the last 2 nights- with the window open she has slept very good ( And so have I)

We did attempt to have her sleep out of her crate last night.  But all she did was wonder around the room for 25 minutes...laying down only a few times for a minute.  The crate door was open...

It appeared like she would wander around for a couple of hours!  So we gave up & put her in her crate...after all part of the reason we want her out of it is so its quite in our room & I can sleep.

 

I think we may try to let her roam for 20-30 minutes a night & then crate her...?

In hopes that while she roams each night she will get used to it & lay down & go to sleep eventually.

 

 

[Jena ~ Dublin]

I think puppy proofing your room and trying it.  Forsure check under your bed!  Dublin and Chetti sleep with us in our room not crated, we never crated at night with any of our dogs.  We bought a nice bed for them to sleep on and they are great.  We close our doors to the master bath, the closet and the main door out.  I would also suggest maybe shaving her belly.  That will help cool her off too.

[Sherri, Sophie, Winston, & Kitty]

About a month ago I started letting Sophie sleep outside of her crate on the bedroom floor at night, partly because she was crated most of the day when I'm and felt like it was too much time in the crate, and partly because I wanted to keep the crate in the living room so the dog walker didn't have to go into my bedroom during the day when I'm not there (I just felt weird about it). I puppy proofed my room and put the dog bed on the floor and give her a kong to chew on every night. That seemed to work for a while, she slept well. But recently she seems to be more resetless than before, and wanders more, and now that she knows how to jump up on the bed she is constantly wiggling around on the bed, crawling all over me in the middle of the night, and then off and on the bed all the time. Plus, since the bedroom door is closed she barks everytime she hears the kitty meowing on the other side. If I leave it open, Sophie will chase the kitty around. I can't win.

 

I'm thinking of going back to crating her at night but I'm pretty sure she is not going to be impressed by the loss of her freedom and will just make more noise in her crate. Sometimes I sleep through all the noise, sometimes not. I think it's just a matter of working through it. At least I don't have to wake up every two hours like my friends with newborns do! :-p

[Pam & Trixie]

I forgot to come back here & update.  We let Trixie sleep with the crate door open about 10 days ago.  She wandered about for a few minutes then went in her crate & slept with the door open.  She did that for about 3 nights.   Then it got really hot & she moved infront of the fan to sleep...Then on the AC vent.  We took the crate out of the room 4 days ago & she has done very good.  She is the 1st dog that we have had that sleeps on my side of the room...Thats where the Air vent is & also the window : )

[Emily]

I can't trust my 9 month old yet. She sleeps in her crate and likes it but doesn't seem hot.  When she had her spay done, she couldn't get in her crate with the big cone collar on her head. I couldn't remove it because she was really in a lot of pain and would lick etc. Anyway, we borrowed a puppy pen from a friend. It made a big circle on the floor. We just put her blankets down and she stayed there all night. In the morning we would just collapse the puppy pen and move it out of the way. It's was perfect. Maybe you could try that on some tile and then you could rest knowing you wouldn't wake to find your couch in a million pieces.