No Sleep Due to Barking - Losing Patience - Please Help!

[Jon_Zaremba]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and am hoping that someone here can offer me some advice. I have a 6-month-old golden retriever. He's a great dog and i love him but am losing my patience with the 7:00AM barking.

Dougal has been crate trained from the start and he doesn't mind going into his crate and sleeping. It's just that he wakes up every morning at 7AM and begins barking endlessly until i let him out to go pee. It's not that he can't hold it. He will hold it for 10 hours while i'm at work.

He only barks when he knows that i'm in the house with him. If i crate him, then leave and sneak back to the house hours later, he's quiet in his crate. If i try to put him back in his crate after letting him out in the mornings, he knows that i'm still in the house with him and continues barking. This prevents me from ever going back to sleep.

Normally, i wouldn't mind...except that with my work schedule, i don't ever get to sleep before 2 or 3 AM. This means that i rarely get more than 4 hours of sleep a day. It's becoming such a problem that it is effecting my work and social life... I can never take a nap in the day if he knows that i'm in the house... And i live alone so i don't have anyone to help with Dougal while i'm trying to sleep.

He's still a puppy and i want to correct this before he gets older. The other problem is that he barks so loud that he's heard at my neighbor's next door. I tried sleeping with earplugs...and that worked a little bit for me...but is not correcting the problem and is disturbing my neighbors.

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated. Sorry for the long first post, but i wanted to be sure to explain the situation as best i can...

Thanks in Advance,
Jon Zaremba
Ogden, UT

[Sparklecoon]

By letting him out when he barks your playing into it. He has you trained lol. Mine do too on somethings. One great thing I found for my Mum's goldens incessant barking is to fill a can with a handful of pennies, close it up.

Whenever Dougal barks give the can one firm shake. It'll catch his attention and stop the behavior. When he's quiet praise and reward him. It takes a little leg work initially but a few sleepless mornings is worth a life time of companionship.

[Willow Oak]

By letting him out when he barks your playing into it. He has you trained lol. Mine do too on somethings. One great thing I found for my Mum's goldens incessant barking is to fill a can with a handful of pennies, close it up.

Whenever Dougal barks give the can one firm shake. It'll catch his attention and stop the behavior. When he's quiet praise and reward him. It takes a little leg work initially but a few sleepless mornings is worth a life time of companionship.

My problem basically went away when I started letting my dogs sleep with me. Of course, there are drawbacks. Whereas before I was quite the womanizer, now I can't get any attention from the ladies. Oh, well. I do get enough sleep at night, though.