How I taught my dog ​​to sleep later in the morning

When Lewis first arrived, he had just spent a critical 10 weeks of his childhood in a veterinary practice. He grew up keeping clinic hours. He was ready to get up in the morning between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Groan. Now, I’ve been both an early riser and a night owl, and sometimes, unfortunately, both. My current schedules lean more towards the night owl. But the switch to getting up early wasn’t the problem. The problem, and it was a big problem, was that in Lewis’ schedule, I was wasting my morning work time.

My normal schedule for the past few years has been to get up between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m. and then work in bed for a few hours before taking the dogs out and doing chores. And suddenly my morning work time, my prime time, was gone. Because when I first had Lewis, eight months, we definitely didn’t go back to bed after getting up.

There is a fix for that

I knew there was a solution to this problem; I had even recommended it to some of the desperate people who posted their morning woes on social media. “My dog ​​wakes me up at 5am!” or “My dog ​​gets up earlier and earlier!” But I had an immediate panic. What the hell? I couldn’t do my job?

Then I remembered the training plan and told Marge Rogers about it. It took every ounce of willpower I had, but I did it. I taught him to get up much later, and in general, to wait until I was ready to get up.

The Fix

This plan is for an adult or late teen dog who has no problem sleeping through the night without having to get up to relieve themselves. If you have a young puppy, you will be on his schedule for a while. In that case, don’t try this as I wrote. Lewis had already learned to sleep through the night, so we didn’t have to work on training at home at the same time.

The concept is simple: start by getting up earlier than your dog.

This seems counter-intuitive at first glance. It’s hard to convince yourself to get up earlier to achieve the goal of getting up later. But it makes sense in the long run. Here are the steps I followed, written as instructions.

1. For 3-5 days, note what time your dog gets up from you in the morning. Include business days and non-business days in your record keeping.
2. Using the information you have obtained, get up earlier than your dog, regularly, every day. If they got you up at 5:30, get up at 5:10. Whatever it takes to beat them.
3. Keep doing this for a week or more at this early hour. You teach them a new signal to get up or “the dogs are active now”. Lewis’ previous cue, I assume, was the arrival of staff at the vet clinic, and it was probably at a consistent time. He internalized this time of day as “time to get up”. I wanted his new cue to be me getting dressed. Not the weather he was used to before, and not just me fidgeting (details on that part in “My Personal Challenge” below).
4. Once they’ve learned the routine, write a plan to gradually and SLOWLY push the new ritual in later. First at 5 minute intervals, then at 10 minute intervals on some days. No more than that, and not every day. Keep some days the same, or even get up earlier again. You add duration, and just like when you train a stay, bounce back a bit. Don’t create a schedule that grows inexorably without interruption.
5. Now apply your program to change the time. Be prepared to adjust the schedule in case you changed the time too quickly. Again, it’s like teaching duration behavior.
6. If you mess up one morning and your dog gets up before you do, get up immediately. Don’t give them a chance to bother you. Also, don’t succumb to the temptation to take them back to bed. It probably won’t work. What will likely happen is that they’ll fidget and annoy you, and you’ll eventually give in and reinforce a long listening streak. Give in instantly and you won’t teach the duration behavior. If this happens, go back and get up earlier.
7. To be fair. This is for an adult dog, but don’t ask him to stay in bed for 12 hours. If you stay in bed in the morning, give them a chance to potty late at night. Or teach them, as part of this plan, to go out for a potty in the morning and go back to bed. And of course, if your dog is in distress, drop the schedule and get up with him.
8. Gradually adjust the program until you have one that works for you.

If you have ever reinforced your dog for nudging you, pushing you, running around the room, shaking something, barking at you, or any other behavior when getting up and starting your day, this will be a more difficult process. . I don’t make fun of anyone; I did everything. It’s a difficult cycle to escape. You can use the plan above as a starting point, but you’ll probably have to stretch it out over a longer period and change the time in smaller increments. I had the chance to start as soon as Lewis arrived, and that helped a lot.

Also, I wrote this as step-by-step instructions, but such a plan has no “if” branches for all the ways things can go wrong. There are many, and I can’t address (or even think of) all of the individual issues. For example, I haven’t explained in detail how to move the signal to something other than the human standing up, but I’ve described some of what I did below. Non-professional trainers like me might need to consult experts for help. But I hope this simple version will be useful for some people.

My personal challenge

My situation had a specific challenge. Because of my work habits, I needed to wake up but not get up. I needed the signal for the dogs to rise a few hours after I got up. So once I taught Lewis the initial predictors that it would be time to get up, I tweaked them. I taught him that I was going to stir a little, then go back to bed and work, and the dogs weren’t up yet.

Once I got it done staying in bed until about 8:00 a.m., I started off easy, with as little fuss as possible, getting my laptop out at 7:30 a.m. and working for half an hour before doing the ” we get up now.” “routine. I didn’t even turn on my light, which was probably bad for my eyes, staring at a backlit computer. But I needed to dissociate “Eileen wakes up and does stuff” from “we let’s all get up”. And I did it while keeping the time to get up stable. I only added more time after he got used to this addition.

He also learned that my alarm clock was not a signal for all of us to get up. He doesn’t even move when my alarm clock rings. And he learned that nothing interesting for the dogs happens while I’m in the shower, so this was another way to extend my morning activities before the dogs get up.

The difficult part

Keep in mind: Lewis’s arrival in my life diminished my ability to work to about an hour a day at first (if I was lucky). I was desperate to work, fall behind and starve for some focused time for myself. I absolutely had to force myself to stick to my pre-planned time to get up before him. It was so tempting, while I was working and he was sleeping soundly, to tell me that I could cheat a little and work longer. But I did not do it. There is this human tendency to push our luck until the dog does something “wrong”, then we can fix it. This sequence of events does not work here! This is an example of a situation where it is essential to minimize errors.

Despite the temptations, I kept my schedule. I knew I had to accept a reduction in work time in the morning to create a permanent change in his behavior. I played the long game and won.

This is another example of how I limited the choices for a young dog to give him more freedom in the long run. Clara loves our mornings in bed, but can also jump out of bed and watch me, and we’ll get up whenever she wants instead.

Science

What was the mechanism of this change in behavior? Did I punish Lewis’ behavior for getting up before me? Did I turn it off? I don’t think so either. I changed the background. I established stimulus control for getting out of bed in the morning. He got up anyway in response to an outside signal; I just taught him a new one.

Getting up in the morning is followed by a host of potential reinforcers. He still has access to it all and also seems to enjoy lounging in bed while I work.

Epilogue

The morning after writing most of this post, Lewis jumped out of bed at 7:30 a.m., at least two hours before dogs usually move now. I instantly turned on my light, prepared to get up, but also invited her to get back on the bed for a hug. He loves doing this after Clara, who has priority and seniority, gets off the bed. We huddled together, then I got up “the first”. He settled down and waited while I got up and got dressed (that’s exactly what he’s doing in the photo above). He’s practiced our system enough now that the occasional glitch doesn’t hurt. But most of the time he dozes off all morning waiting for me to start the day.

Copyright 2022 Eileen Anderson