Graduating out of night time kennel

[LoveGuinness]

I am wondering what might be a sign that your puppy is ready to sleep in a bed rather than a kennel during the night...

Currently, we have our 11 week puppy in a small kennel next to our bed and he has been sleeping through the nights just fine. Sometimes he will wake us up whining before the alarm goes off if he has to go to the washroom and he has never had an accident during the night.

Ideally, I would like to eventually have him on his own bed in our room (with the bedroom door closed) but I don't think I quite trust him yet to let us know if he has to go to the washroom. The reason I am asking this now is because he will likely grow out of his current kennel in the next month or so and I am debating whether we will need another one... We have an extra large crate on the main level that he stays in while we're at work but it is a pain in the butt to bring upstairs every night.

 

[Jan]

I would not want him out of the crate until he is thoroughly housetrained, which will be around 6 months or so. I think you need to get him a new crate.

It's a good idea to have a crate that will fit his adult size anyway, as you never know when he might need to be crated.

 

[murphman]

I think you should try a bed. Our puppy very quickly outgrew his puppy crate. We bought him a dog bed which he immediately loved. At around 10 weeks, we started putting the dog bed next to our bed and he continued to sleep through the night. He gets up occasionally (he's 4 months old now) but luckily for us, he shakes his head and flops his ears around which wakes us up everytime He's never had a night time accident either. We were pleasantly surprised at how immediate he transitioned to a bed. You may be too!

 

[JWalkBoxers]

Ripley sleeps in his dog bed next to our bed. What I did was take a baby gate and put it up between the wall and the bed. I have been gradually moving it further back to give him more room. Right now, he has the whole area next to the bed. He's been doing great with that, but it will take a while before I will let him be loose in the entire bedroom. If you can set something up like that, it may help to gradually transition him to having more freedom.

 

[larrygs]

It might depend on how light of a sleeper YOU are. I am a very light sleeper, but travel a lot. On the other hand, my wife, ....I am looking for the right kind of words, let's just say she is not a light sleeper. We didn't have the confidence of noticing a young pup waking at 4 am and strolling off to do her business. So we invested in another crate as Jan suggests. It wasn't worth the back tracking on house training that could occur.

Layla now sleeps at night either on her bed or ours, and we have never had an accident.

BTW, you might be able to borrow a crate from someone. We did for awhile.

 

[LoveGuinness]

Thanks for all your replies!

As I mentioned, I think I have a month left for him to fit in his current crate so I will probably make my decision based on how often he needs to get up at night over the next month... If he seems to be sleeping through most of the nights I may try the baby gate idea; otherwise, we'll have to buy/borrow a new one. I usually wake up to his stirrings but if it's been a long week I may just sleep right through it!