Episode 4 - Puppies Who Wake Up Too Early

12/19/2023

Today’s question comes from a viewer who has a puppy that wakes up at 5AM and screams her head off.

They’ve been ignoring the screaming but it’s not going away... what should she do?

This is a common problem that both puppy owners and breeders regularly write in about.
In this episode I cover:

Why puppies scream at seemingly odd hours of the morning
What you should do to stop “early risers” from screaming
How to effectively look at the total picture to see why your puppy is screaming and if it’s an “I want” or an “I need.”

Listen wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe so you never miss an episode!

To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

EPISODE 4 - TRANSCRIPT

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist and this is a Puppy Culture Potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

Today's question came to us through the With Open Arms discussion group, and that's the discussion group for our puppy course. And it is a puppy owner question, but it's something that breeders also struggle with. So I'm going to address the question from the puppy owners point of view and then also give some breeder tips at the end. So here's how the question goes.

I would love to pick your brains. Ten week old puppy. She gets put into her pen with an open crate for the night in our lounge, food, water and treats to keep her entertained, should she wake. But 5 a.m., she started barking, howling the house down to get out of her pen. How do I stop it?

So far we've just been ignoring the behavior. And don't go down there or let her out till she's quiet. But I just don't think she's learning not to. Do we just persevere with ignoring the undesirable behavior?

So there's a lot to unpack here. But I want to put one thing on the table that in follow up discussions, we've established that the this puppy is okay with confinement in general.

So the Area P meaning to say her playpen area is a comfortable place for her. So this is not a general confinement issue. It's not a training issue for confinement. It's the waking up at what seems like an odd hour in the morning and howling her head off that that is the issue. So there are two questions that we're going to approach here.

And the top level question is the question of the puppy waking up at an ungodly hour and then, you know, the more profound question that underlies it is helping puppy owners approach any kind of behavior issue like this. So what I'm going to say, what I love about this post, what I love about this post, is that I believe that the puppy owner is doing a good job of trying to establish whether this is an “I want” or an “I need” something.

Okay. This is something we talk a lot about in all of our courses is establishing when the puppy is is being demanding, kind of displaying these behaviors. Does the puppy have some kind of unfulfilled need that you really need to address, or is the puppy just saying, yeah, I would really just actually prefer to be a different way.

And you know she said I've, I've, she's established that the puppy is comfortable in the pen. She's given the puppy food, water and treats. So she feels like, hey, you know, the puppies needs are met. So I'm going to lean on the side of this being an “I want” and not an “I need”. And so, you know, she's given this good recitation of the steps she's taken and she's again, the puppy is comfortable in the pen.

So she's well within reason to think maybe we should just put this on extinction. So I want to compliment her on her going down the punch list this way. It's so happens in this case, that is not the answer. This is probably not something that is an “I want” it's probably more of an “I need” at this point and/or not a behavioral problem that you have to solve.

So let me talk about this. Let me break this down. First of all, I'm going to cut to the chase and tell you it is very normal for puppies to wake up very early in the morning and not want to be alone, especially a ten week old puppy that has not, by all assumptions, been in their house, their new home for very long.

It's a developmental thing and it will pass if you gently support the puppy through this. So let me break this down further. First, I'm going to explain why your puppy does this, because it is a thing. Then I'm going to address what you should do about it. And as I said, I'm going to address the puppy owners angle first and then I'm going to talk about considerations for breeders with litters.

So the reason puppies get up out of sync with the rest of the household or what we think should be in sync with the rest of the household is that they do not have an established circadian rhythm. And I'm going to step back on that and explain to you exactly what a circadian rhythm is.

A circadian rhythm is the body's internal clock that tells us when we should sleep and when we should be awake. All mammals have this. A healthy and mature circadian rhythm is aligned with the cycles of day and night.

So we feel awake when the sun comes up and then we start getting sleepy when the sun goes down. Same thing for dogs. We're tied to that sun cycle.

Now just to dig down into a little, a little bit more, the circadian rhythm is controlled by specialized collections of neurons in the hypothalamus, and the hypothalamus is a gland within the mammalian brain. So that gland, when it's when the puppy's born, it is not programed yet. It actually has to learn how to sync itself up with day and night.

When the puppy is in utero or any mammal, a baby in utero, it gets input, it gets maternal input about sinking up day and night. I mean, believe it or not, the whelps as they're in the uterus are already learning to sync up day to night by the rhythm of the dam. Then once they're born, they get input from the milk that they nurse on. The milk quality and content actually changes over the cycle of the day to give the puppies input about when they should be awake and when they should be sleeping.

The milk is actually different morning and night, but once those puppies are weaned and then taken away from their littermates once again they're sort of on their own right. They have to establish their own circadian rhythm. So whatever routine rhythm they got in utero, and then from the milk and then just sort of being with their other littermates, they don't have that anymore.

Okay, So now they're in their new home and they have to establish their own circadian rhythm. Now, this has not been studied a lot in dogs other than to establish that puppies don't have a circadian rhythm. But the two things that we know about puppies that have been studied are that puppies have a shorter sleep cycle than adult dogs.

So, again, you know, the fact that maybe you're putting them to bed at at 11, 10-11 and they're getting up at 4 or 5 a.m., that's normal. They have a shorter sleep cycle. Also, puppies become active about 2 hours earlier in response to first light than adult dogs. So that sun comes up. Puppies actually are coming alive, sort of 2 hours earlier in response to the sun than your adult dogs are.

So again, this is just a way of saying that these puppies are coming by this honestly. Okay. This is a developmental process. And this is absolutely right that they would be awake at 5 a.m.. Four or 5 a.m. very normal. Just as an aside, that circadian rhythm, it takes about a year, okay. That first year that the puppies of the puppies life, the circadian rhythm takes about that full first year to establish to something approaching an adult circadian rhythm.

That being said, it actually the circadian rhythm evolves continually through life. Okay. And then there are profound changes again at the end of life as as the animal reaches geriatric stage. So in this puppy hood to juvenile stage up to a year, there's kind of a dramatic change in circadian rhythm. And then also there's a dramatic change when they reach the geriatric stage.

But what this all boils down to for you, okay, is particularly in this early juvenile stage, in this puppy hood stage, this is a developmental phase. It's not a problem you have to solve. You just gently are going to support the circadian rhythm and then the problem's going to go away. So what does that look like?

If she wakes up at 5 a.m., number one, you're not, you can go in and let her out, okay? She's within her rights. It's normal for her to be awake at that time. Wake her, wake up yourself, Let her outside to void. Let her toddle around a little, give her a snack, put her back to bed. If the puppy is not freaked out, okay, if the puppy's been established in your house for a couple of weeks and you know the puppy's comfortable in their Area P, and this is just really a like ...

Hey, I'm awake. Wouldn't it be great if we did some stuff? You want to make this a business trip, what we call a business trip, meaning to say you're not mad, but you're dispassionate, You're not going to, you know, make this a woo-hoo, really fun time for the puppy. But it's just like, yeah, you can get up, you can walk, stretch your legs, go outside, void, have a snack, go back to bed.

That's all it's going to take. Okay, then that puppy's going to go back to sleep. And eventually that waking up bubble at 5 a.m., it's just going to smooth out. It's just going to smooth out and it's going to go away. You don't have to worry about it. Now, if the puppy is truly freaked out, if the puppy wakes up and is scared or you know not hasn't been in your house for that long, we're going to error on the side of caution with that and we're going to go ahead and comfort that puppy.

Now, I also want to mention and we'll talk more about this when we talk about what some of the other members of the discussion group said. I mean, as a rule, I just find it easier to have the puppy in my room with me. I think that being in there with you, hearing your breathing, that your own circadian rhythm is going to start to help that puppy establish a sort of a circadian rhythm.

Okay. So I am always all for a set up next to my bed at night. That way also you can get up early and let them out before they wake up. Or if they do wake up at 5 a.m., it's just super easy to get up. Just let them out, let them, you know, get them a snack and put them away.

I do think generally speaking, a set up next to my bed is is always going to be my preferred way to go with this. So that is a suggestion. Also, I would not really expect a puppy at this age to sleep more than 5 hours at a time. I mean, that that would be about, you know, 5 to 6 hours is what you're going to get.

And even then you may have random wake ups at two, three in the morning, although usually by the time they're ten weeks old, that that has sort of passed. That's more of a thing that breeders deal with because, you know, the puppies are even less established in their circadian rhythm when the breeders have them. But again, I think that interpreting it, how can I say as an I want and not an I need at 5 o’clock in the morning, waking up, being alone ten weeks old, you know, I'm going to say it's okay to error on the side of caution and say this might be an “I need”.

Again, I like the way the the querent was going through the punch list and trying to figure this out and saying, okay, I'm going to guess this. I thought that showed commend-ability in this situation and, you know, trying to extrapolate the circumstances, it was good. But I'm just going to say that for me, I think I would error more on the side of caution and call this a need and move that puppy into my room and go ahead and just let the puppy be with me at night.

You know, another thing that a viewer wrote in that I think is a very good consideration. At ten weeks old, her puppy, she says, would always prefer to go outside rather than use the inside litter area. Now I'm just going to sidebar here in our With Open Arms puppy course, we have a whole house training protocol with behavioral markers.

Okay, so as you reach each behavioral marker you moved, you sort of move down the list of set ups. But what I'm going to say, I'm just going to pull this one piece out is one of the key behavioral markers we have in there is that once the puppy is showing you a definite preference for going outside, you should always be trying to honor that. Okay.

So again, this club, this discussion group member said, you know, my puppy prefers to go outside. So I always am listening for her. In fact, I try and get up before she wakes up and get her outside. So this is going to become very important for you and it's going to really facilitate that house training process. So again, an argument for moving the puppy next to you so you can hear them as soon as they start stirring and get them out so they can go to the bathroom outside.

So I would say on the whole, the people that wrote in, you know, the suggestions that they had, I would say four or five people wrote in and some of them are very experienced breeders. And everyone said, Move the puppy into your bedroom, get up before they get up if you can. Or as soon as they get up, let let the puppy out.

Now, if you're afraid that you're going to be reinforcing the behavior of getting up early and screaming to be let out, don't worry about that. It's a developmental phase and it will pass. And, you know, if you just look at the number of people, some of them very experienced breeders, literally, who have done this scores of times will tell you it it if you just smooth this bump over with just a little, you know, get up food, walk around, go outside, piddle, go back to bed, the puppy's going to go back to bed and it's going to pass.

Now, I just want to revisit the very beginning of this conversation. When I said that this puppy owner was making a decent guess that this is something that could be put on extinction. But as it turns out, it wasn't the right answer. And I realize that that's sort of not a very satisfactory thing to hear from an experienced person because like, how the heck do you know the difference?

And, you know, we talk about some differences, but I think there is something very specific that she mentioned that can be a metric for whether extinction is an appropriate approach under the circumstances. And here it is. This is the line that I think gives us some important information.

So far we have just been ignoring the behavior and don't go down or let her out till she's quiet. But I just don't think she's learning not to.

So here's the thing about this. It is a mantra of positive dog training that we ignore undesirable behaviors, right? And we put them on extinction. But I always think you have to look at the dashboard of circumstances surrounding the behavior and the dashboard of circumstances surrounding this behavior with a ten week old puppy, the puppy is newly transitioned into their home.

They can't, you know, I would assume, not been in that home for more than a couple of weeks and probably shorter than that if it's a Puppy Culture breeder. They just are an age where they're really not meant to be alone. I mean, no ten week old puppy is ever meant to be alone. And when I say never meant to be alone, what I mean is from an evolutionary point of view, everything in that puppies evolutionary DNA says I have to stay with the pack to stay safe.

We do teach crate and confinement training starting at this age and younger. But, you know, again, you have to understand it's foundational at this point. Okay. The bottom line is that everything, every fiber of that puppy's body is saying, I need to stay with the pack to stay alive. So, you know, there has to be some significant training that goes into making the puppy comfortable alone.

It's not a natural thing, I guess, is what I'm really trying to say. And they are naturally going to be awake at that hour. So when you have that dashboard of circumstances and also you've put it on extinction and it has not gone away in two trials, maximum three meaning to say you've ignored it three times, haven't gone in and reinforced it, otherwise ignored it three times and it doesn't go away.

I mean, I'm going to say there is a deep emotional need that has not been met here. Okay. There's something else maintaining that behavior. And again, with the dashboard of circumstances here, I think it's it's very dispositive that it's not being extinguished. And I really give this puppy owner kudos for sort of doing what she has learned and thinks is right.

But sort of also reading that, is something's not really working here. I just want to say in contrast, okay, there are times in situations where it's a different dashboard of circumstances with this same exact behavior where it will extinguish quickly. If you go to Madcap University, we have an article there, I wrote an article called Attention Monsters and I have a video up there, five week old litter of puppies.

I went in the first time, I went into their room and ignored them. Oh my gosh. I mean, you'd think I was sawing their legs off. And the outrage, the screaming, the howling every time previous to that, I had gone in there and paid attention to them. The second time I went in there the next day and ignored them, they barely whined, they whimpered a little and just went back to sleep.

Now there's a lot of antecedents to that in the sense of I set it up for success. But my point here is that if it's truly just a habit or an “I want”, it's going to extinguish quickly at this age in puppy hood. But the dashboard of circumstances those five week old puppies is they were still in their litter.

They were still in their familiar pen. They you know, nothing was changed except me ignoring them for this puppy at ten weeks old, newly transitioned to a new home alone, 5 o’clock in the morning. It's a different dashboard, okay. So I think when you add to that again the fact that it doesn't extinguish quickly, that's your tell as a puppy owner, that this is an “I need” and you need to go in there and do something for this puppy.

By the way, one thing that puppy owners commonly think is, you know, on that dashboard as a very telling factor, but in fact is not is the sheer drama of the puppy. Right. I mean, puppies can sound literally like their legs are being sawed off. I mean, they can wail. It's part of it, it's part of their evolutionary act.

Okay. They know how to get our attention. The loudness of the puppy is not necessarily related or relative to the emotional need of the situation. That is something very much that can be a learned behavior. Exactly how loud that puppy is screaming. Again, everything is relative. Okay? So it's not like we completely ignore how loud or hysterical the puppy is.

But oh, all I'm saying is that generally speaking, that is not a very reliable indicator of, of how distressed the puppy is. You really have to look at the totality of the surrounding circumstances and whether you've gone down that checklist of meeting the puppies needs to know whether that vocalization is something that needs to be responded to or put on extinction.

But the actual loudness of the vocalization is not the most important clue when you're trying to determine how to deal with it.

Now, I'm going to talk a little bit more about the earlier parts of the puppies lives, probably more at the age where breeders have the puppies. Breeders see exactly this behavior, but we tend to see it more in the true wee hours of the morning.

So 1, 2, 3 a.m., 4 a.m. in the morning. And again, it's just it's totally normal. The puppies just have not established a circadian rhythm. And we do get the question a lot on the Puppy Culture discussion group and almost always it's in that five week old range that is by far the most common age. And if you think about it, it makes sense because what happens with most puppies at around five weeks, their mothers are just about done with them, so they're not nursing regularly.

They're not getting that input from the milk that we talked about. Remember how we talked about that? The milk itself is sort of programing the puppies circadian rhythm. It's giving them cues and it's sending them messages about when to be awake and when to be asleep. So when they're weaned, they've lost that. And again, they have to stand on their own with their circadian rhythms.

And it's not it's not a pretty picture at first, but what can you do? Well, number one, if, if your bitch will tolerate it, if you can get a feeding in as late as possible before they go to bed, that can be very helpful. Again, putting some food in with them so that if they wake up, they have a snack sometimes that will pacify them.

But you know, saving that if it doesn't work, there's really you know, you can ignore it and that's fine because they're in their litter. It's not like it's not like they have they're afraid or they're miserable. They're just awake and having a party. If it's just really loud and you can't take it, you can put in a food puzzle or a new toy and that should pacify them and put them back to sleep.

Or if you want to go in and just let them out for a minute, that can expedite the process. You just can go in, pay a little attention to them, let them out, put them back in, they'll go back to sleep. Again, you need not worry that you're going to train them to wake up in the middle of the night.

I mean, they're going to start sleeping as their circadian rhythms start evening out. So those are my extra tips for breeders.

So for everyone, breeders and puppy owners alike, the bottom line is let's not try and solve problems that we don't have. And your puppy waking up in the middle of the night or early in the morning is not a problem. It's a developmental period that's going to go away if you just gently support it.

If you have a question for me or a topic you'd like me to talk about on air, head over to the Puppy Culture discussion group on Facebook and drop your question there or reach out to us through one of our websites; madcapuniversity.com, madcapradio.com or puppyculture.com.

If you're interested in learning more about the puppy course, you can check it out at madcapuniversity.com. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.