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

I have the same problem with my Jacks, they are now "conditioned" into getting up at the same time each day, and they do not know my "work rota". The only way i can overcome this is just to let them out for a pee then i go back to bed. There body clock is used to functioning at the set time as when we house train them they follow a strict routine and it is this that has "conditioned them into the routine". sorry if this does not help you with you problem.

Hi. I agree with the above comments about their routines. My dogs wake the same time every day. However because I have them sleeping on the floor in our room I make them go back to bed.