New Puppy Sleep Problems (And Solutions)

Fear waking

Many new puppies will be wakeful at night if expected to sleep alone. The chances are your puppy has never slept alone before you brought them into your home.

And if you expect the puppy to sleep alone, when they are also in very unfamiliar surroundings, they are likely to stay awake in order to cry and to attempt to attract your attention. This isn’t naughtiness, they are really scared.

The solution is to have a ‘settling in period’ where the puppy sleeps near to their humans. And transition to sleeping alone a few days later.

The settling in period

The simplest way to get a good nights sleep with a new puppy in the house, is to have the puppy sleep right next to you for the first few nights.

If you place a travel crate on a chair next to your bed, and pop the puppy inside when you tuck yourself in, your puppy may well sleep right through until morning. And if they do need to pee, you’ll hear them start to move around and be able to take them outside for a few minutes with minimal disturbance to your sleep.

Some puppy parents prefer to sleep downstairs next to their puppy for the first few nights instead. Which also works.

If you decide to let the puppy cry it out alone in your kitchen downstairs, you may be in for a week or more of disturbed nights. If you wait until the puppy is over their initial homesickness before making them sleep alone, you’ll find they settle in downstairs much more quickly.

Waking to pee

The smaller and younger your puppy is, the more likely they are to wake at night because they need to pee.

Small breeds may wake at night for longer than large ones. And dogs of all sizes get better at holding on, as they mature.

How long before they sleep all night?

So while its impossible to be exact, many medium to large sized dogs will be able to last 7-8 hours overnight without waking you by the time they are ten weeks old.

Some smaller dogs need longer than this. But almost all puppies are capable of an eight hour night by about three months old.

You can help this process by taking up your puppy’s water a couple of hours before your bedtime, and giving them their last meal at least four hours before you want to turn in. But you are dependent to a large extent on the puppy’s own maturity and development.

Not wanting to go to sleep

Sometimes a puppy will not settle at bed time because they are over-excited. People tend to think that a puppy will more sleepy if they wear them out.

So they spend an hour or so playing with the puppy before bed, in an attempt to make them sleep more at night.

This generally does not work.

I have found that on the contrary, a puppy that has a settled evening, maybe sleeping on someone’s lap with lights dimmed, while they watch TV, actually sleeps better at night.

A bedtime routine

So if you puppy is brimming with energy at just the point when you want to drop off to sleep, try changing to a calmer evening routine.

Keep the lights low, and encourage the puppy to snuggle up in a crate or on your lap for a couple of hours before bed.

I find the lap cuddles work well for the first week or two, then the puppy gets too fidgety so I switch to crate time for the last hour or two of the evening.

Wake the puppy when you are ready to go to bed and take them out for a last pee, keeping everything calm and quiet, and you’ll find the puppy then settles back down to sleep quite readily.

Sleep Matters

Sleep is very important. And not just for your puppy. Being sleep deprived is, in my view, a greatly underestimated hazard. It makes us more prone to accidents, more likely to make mistakes, and less likely to make good decisions.

Helping your puppy to get into a good sleep and nap time routine will make everything seem better so it’s worth putting some thought and effort into this.

Meanwhile, hang on in there, this is a passing phase, and your puppy should soon be sleeping soundly through the night, and thinking up new ways to keep you on your toes!