Sleeping has been a little bit of a problem in the Banghart household.
When we got Ella she began to wake up at 3:00 P.M. At this time she was sleeping in the crate with her door shut. She'd start whining. We first took her ourt because we thought she needed tt go to the bathroom. Once or twice she did but most of the time she did not. We would put her back in the crate and then a short time later she would begin whining again. This continued all night long until we got up. The first time it happened we thought she needed to pee again so we got up and tried to let her out. She did not want to pee. She was just awake and wanted to do something.
So we tried to ignore her, after the we took her out for the 3AM nature call, in the hopes we would ignore the behavior away. At some point we began trying to let her sleep with the crate door open. She began to learn to sleep on the couch She would get up and walk int othe bedroom at 3:00 AM or maybe 3:30 and try to eat something . We'd try to take her out and most of the time she'd retreat into her crate. We'd lock her in and she would whine until finally at 5:30 AM we'd get up. Needless to say there were two grumpy adults at this house. I was finding hard to think of anything to say on the blog and was resorting to ripping and reading from Kathy Steele.
One night after the 3AM wake up call, I went to take her out and again she just walked in the crate, so I decided to leave the crate door open and sit on the couch to see if she would fall asleep. She did and so did I (sitting up). She kept quiet until 4:30 or 5:00 AM. We thought this might encourage her to get our attention so we did not repeat it again. However after another week of lack of sleep we tried something new. At the 3 AM wake up call, I would go out and sleep on the couch. She'd sleep on the couch with me or in her crate with the door open. After one week or so of this, her wake up time kept coming later and later. This morning she got up at 5:30 aM. Woohoo. Sleep, marvelous sleep!
3 AM, in chinese medicine, the magic hour for liver problems. If you have liver dysfunction, you will wake up at 3 AM because this is when the blood gets the major daily filtration through the liver (1-3AM). Just a thought
ReplyDeleteI know the feeling...my female dog wakes me up without fail usually in the middle of the night.
ReplyDeleteShe was spayed young and I have heard that it can cause incontinence.
It's the price I pay for having a beautiful baby girl dog.
My boy doesn't ever wake me up, complain about anything, or cause any problems..
Hmmmmm....