Startled barking middle of the night

[Cynthia Shoe]

Hi Folks, 

The past week my (almost) 10 month old pup has been waking up in the middle of the night with his startled/full protector bark and running around trying to find the source of the intruder, or whatever he hears. It is happening 1-3 times per night and then it takes forever to get him to settle back down and for my heart to settle back down for everyone to fall asleep again. I obviously have no idea how to prevent this, if I don't know what is causing it, and I don't know how to get him to settle down sooner. Or how I should react to this in the moment, when we are both mostly asleep. Has anyone else dealt with this? 

I did recently start giving him more reign at night, so he can now go between his exercise pen and crate to our bedroom. Could that be confusing his sense of security or desire to protect if he is sleeping ipart of the night n our room now?

Any help would be appreciated. This lack of sleep and waking up to that sound of terror multiple times a night is terrible. 

[Lori, Daphne, Lucy & Pippa]

My girls sleep in my bedroom with the door closed. This keeps them from hearing every little noise happening out in the house and they settle nicely and go to sleep. If I keep the door open, they hear everything and run out to bark At it.

[Texas Doodle Mom and Molly Rose]

My doodle sleeps in our room with the door closed as well, but if I left the door open, the culprit would be the ice maker in the fridge! It's loud and startling. Other ideas: a/c kicking on, sprinklers, etc. I know it's tough -- hope you find the source!

[Amy and Annabelle]

Annabelle also sleeps in my bedroom with the door closed. However we have a water softener and a sump pump. Those would startle her in the beginning, since they are in the basement, but it didn't take her long to adjust to the noise. The sump only goes off after a heavy rain, so she is not as used to it as the softener, but she seems ok with it now. I can hardly wait until school is out and the teen boys across the street are out playing basket ball until the wee hours of the morning. Thank goodness for air conditioning.

[Theresa Nieman]

Run a loud fan on high during the night in the room where he is.  It muffles all those weird unexpected sounds of the night.  Also, probably no real reason to have such a wide area to occupy during the night time hours?

[Gail and Bailey]

I agree with......sleep in the bedroom with the door closed! You have much better control.

[Cynthia Shoe]

It is confusing because he was sleeping in the kitchen, where there are a lot more noises happening and now that I have expanded the area to our bedroom, it should be quieter up there. I might block him off the next few nights and see if that changes anything... :/ 

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

When our guys bark at night we close them in the bedroom with us and that stops it - at least for us.

[Laura and Angus]

I agree with everyone else has said - perhaps it is too much freedom roaming around and it makes your pup more anxious than before? Whatever the reason, I'd take a step back and decrease the size of their nighttime space again. Our dog sleeps in the room with us with the door closed.

[Kamela & Beckett]

Like a lot of the other people, our dogs sleep in the bedroom with us and the door is closed. If our college age daughter is out and we know she'll be coming home after we've gone to bed, we run the bathroom fan (in addition to ceiling fan in bedroom) to create white noise so the dogs don't hear her come in and get riled up. You might try something like that.