My fiancé and I have a chocolate Labrador, Dexter; he’s around 10 months old. We have had him since he was 7 weeks.

He sleeps in the kitchen at night; we have a doggy gate across the door. Since he was about 2 months old, he has cried when wakes up, unfortunately this is usually around 5:00 - 5:30. Normally we would ignore bad behaviour like this (it has worked with other things like nibbling etc...) but I usually get up for work around this time, so he thinks I’m getting up because he is crying, not because I have to get up. We are running into problems when we are off work or not on early shifts.

Does anyone have any suggestions? As we are at our wits end with it!!!

cheers
jamie & claire