Nighttime Crazies

[Sandy]

Today was really, really great. Toby was well behaved, and is learning not to jump up. The mouthiness is slowly dissipating. But.....the evenings are murder. Toby gets so busy, and jumpy, and nippy, and uncontrollable. My son just held him for ten minutes to calm him down. I took him for a walk, but it didn't help. What do you guys do for the nighttime crazies???

[Jessica]

Do you have a treadmill by any chance - ha!

[Sandy]

When we put Toby to bed, he went right to sleep, and I woke him this morning at 7 when I got up. So I KNOW he was tired. Perhaps overtired. Was it an orangey/red ball? If so, I've seen those. That might help in teaching him to chase a ball. So far he hasn't caught onto that.

[sbis0oszc95r]

My puppy does the same thing, especially if we're watching TV and not paying attention to him.....we give him 3 strikes.....

if he misbehaves 3 times, he goes in the kitchen with the baby gates up for the rest of the night until bedtime.....he's learning to NOT push us to that level.....

last night, he went to grab a magazine off the coffee table and I stood up (3rd strike) and he decided on a toy instead.....they really are smart. :)

[Louise and Toby]

We had the same problem, the PM crazies, when our Toby was a young one (say 5-8 months). Especially infuriating was when he would jump up and grab at the leash at our hands! Solved that with a metal chain type leash!
This will pass I promise!
For exercise - Toby loves more than anything to get chased. You might try that. He's still not much at playing ball. We can't get the concept into his brain that he must give it back so we can throw it again.

[Sandy]

You have a Toby too....maybe it goes with the name! My hope is - no two nights are the same, and tonight can't possibly be as bad as last night. I got some new treats, and I'm going to try to freeze his Kong with some p.b. and treats in it. Except I guess then he'll get our carpet dirty. Hmmm.

[2m42srv7vi6sq]

Cealeach get the PM crazies, but luckily burns it off by annoying Bella. We don't allow roughhousing in any room, but the family room and they play chase a lot outdoors, so Cealeach gets her nipping out by nipping the Mastiff (who has her own methods of teaching the Doodle Dog. LOL)

Also, my husband chases Cealeach a lot and gets her revved up, during the day. By the time 8PM rolls around both dogs are usually tuckered out.

However, we had a board meeting last night that lasted until 11pm and got home late. The pm crazies struck both dogs at 2am! Needless to say, we weren't very happy about that! Luckily, it only lasted about 10 minutes and both dogs were back off to sleep.

We have found that taking Cealeach for many short, brisk walk, during the day, seems to keep the pm crazies at bay also.