Night #1 Here we go!!!!

[Wasseem Sidhom]

and the crying started.

[Aaron Brown]

That is pretty much what we did. Just take the pup out when you are woken by whines, no funny business just peeing and back in the crate. Sometimes our Molly would whine when we put her back in after peeing. A firm "No!" and she stopped. After about a week she only woke us up about once per night. Now after a month, as long as we limit her water about 3hrs before bed time she can sleep through then night- 8 hours.

[Mari Bezanson]

And?  How did it go?

[Wasseem Sidhom]

The good news is that he cried for 5-10 minutes...but didn't hear from him until I was the one to wake up worried about him at 4AM.

He still didn't cry but was doing 'something' in the crate, so I gave him until 5 then I went and got him out of the crate to take him for a walk..what can i say, I'm a softie.

We left him alone for a couple of hours today in the crate and he seems to have done ok.  But I do need to set up a confinment area with a gate.  I'm constantly worried about peeing in the house, but that's for another post.

[Melissa Bissell]

We keep our kitchen gated off and our puppy "lives" in there.  We also have our den gated and now at 4 months we will often let him roam from kitchen to den.  But he is totally potty trained, and we do supervise him as he wanders.  He loves the kitchen but his crate and other dog bed are in the den, so he now thinks of both kitchen and den as his "dens" and does not potty in either.  Gates are your friend!!!  Just like having a baby!  Congrats and have fun!

[Julie, Eloise & Beasley]

For sure, baby gates are a good investment.  And tether the puppy to you whenever you are not be able to gate or confine him.  That's so much easier to catch them before a potty accident can happen (or chewing, or getting into something they shouldn't.)

Glad to hear night #1 went well!

[John Wang]

Three things made my life easier. (Use DK's amazon affiliate link to go to amazon to search for them!)

1- IRIS 4-piece fence - This fence has saved our lives. You can use it to block rooms, garages, make into pens (or half pens if against a wall). What we did was attach it to the entrance of his crate, so he had a huge area to wander around. Each piece can individually be used to block a doorway as well. Cheaper than buying a bunch of baby gates. We still use this all the time for our puppy, he's close to 6 months old now and hasn't tried to jump it. We use it to pen him at night in our room too, he has plenty of space and we rarely have him crated at all.

2- Vinyl flooring - You can buy a 6x8' area for $40 from Home Depot. Put it under the crate and area you will keep the puppy penned. Don't let them have access to any edges, they will chew it up, and if any liquid gets under it your vinyl is compromised. But it makes messes SO much easier to clean up, and once they're adults, any residual pee stains will get taken away with the vinyl when you throw it out!

3- Bungie cables. We use these to attach the fence to the crate quickly and easily, or hold all the fence pieces together when we load the fence into the car.

[Texas Doodle Mom and Molly Rose]

We just had night #1 as well...I'm here to commiserate :).

[Pam Thomas]

If they are crying at night and you are supposed to take the out, do you just ignore it, and take them when they stop crying-do you wake them up to go. I am confused

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

I would never wake up a puppy. If the puppy is fussing in the middle of the night, he probably has to go to the bathroom. They really can't hold it all night in the beginning. I always took them out, made as little fuss as possible, and returned them to the crate. I had the crate right next to my side of the bed and often just putting my fingers in the crate was enough to soothe them back to sleep.

[John Wang]

We did stages to facilitate his learning.

Times are approximate, +/- a few days on each.

Week 1 - ANY time he cried, we took him out. Also at 1AM, 3AM, 5AM we would take him out.

Week 2 - We now ignore his crying. Take him out at 1AM, 3AM, 5AM. 

Week 3 - He doesn't cry anymore. Take him out at 3AM. When he does cry, we go down and tap the crate to 'rattle' it slightly. Spooks him and he stops crying.

Week 4+ He's now able to go the whole night without going. We open his crate and give him a TINY bit of penned area overnight. This gradually increases as he consistently doesn't potty overnight.

I know it really gets confusing with the whole, "Ignore them when they bark" and "Take them to go pee if they bark". For us, we finally decided to switch him to set times to go potty, and that if he barked saying he had to go potty, that was too bad. Else as an adult he would be at risk for barking any time he had to go, instead of following bell training.

So each time he barked we would just rattle his crate. This got him to stop almost immediately.

[Rosemary (Ro) and Enzo]

LOL...have you never heard the term : " let sleeping dogs lie" ? I would never ever wake a sleeping pup in the middle of the night.
Actually , we never got up for Enzo! She had one accident the first night and after that, her crate was dry in each am. Picking water up at around 7-7:30pm is very helpful.

[Wasseem Sidhom]

At this point, (and we're on day 5) he cries for 30 - 45 minutes once I put him in his crate. after all, we let my kids cry it out in their crib. He's then quite for the rest of the night with no whining/barking and no accidents. I do hope that the whining periods will start decreasing soon.

My issue now is that he's very clingy.  I cannot move 3 steps without him following me.  If he's in a deep sleep, he'd perk right up and follow me 3 steps. If I try to put him in a long term confinement area with a zillion toys, he just cries and cries.  I feel like he just wants to be around humans around the clock. We tried leaving him home alone in a confinement area one day, when we got home 3 hours later he was out of it...not quite sure how. but the house was clean and no accidents.  I adjusted the gate and today, put him in there and he went nuts for a solid 35 - 40 minutes until i gave him attention and took him out of it. I know it was my fault for caving, but I had to get on a conference call and I couldn't have him raise hell int he background.

Sorry guys, but I'm going to post this message on the top thread again to get other advice about the clinginess.