# suddenly barking in crate at night



## Wendy523 (Sep 16, 2012)

Alice is a 7 month old Yorkie/Bichon mix. She's been in her crate overnight since we got her at 3-4 months old. After the first couple days there have been no problems. She always goes in her crate and we don't hear from her until morning. Two nights ago she barked a little at bedtime, we chalked it up the fact that only my husband was home and the routine was different (I was away for the night), she settled down within a few minutes though. Last night everything was normal until about 1am, she suddenly started barking and whining. I thought maybe something was wrong so went to check on her, all seemed fine, I took her out and she peed. she went back in her crate and I went back to bed, before I even reached my bedroom she started barking frantically again. We decided to let her "bark it out" since we didn't know what else to do and we don't believe in negative reinforcements. She never stopped for more than 15-20 minutes at a time until 5:30am when I finally got up, which is an hour before our normal time. Was this a separation issue? If it happens again tonight what do we do? Keep letting her bark? I'm afraid our neighbor is going to complain, we live in a townhouse and I know they can hear when she barks, I hope I don't run into them today! We are not ready to let her have house freedom, she isn't fully housebroken and she cannot get up and off the bed by herself. Plus she is having surgery for her luxating patella before long and I want her to still be used to her crate so we don't hurt her by accident sleeping in our bed. Help! I can't take many more nights like last night!


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## Amaryllis (Dec 28, 2011)

Is she in pain from the patellas? That could cause her to bark like that, wanting a distraction from the pain or wanting you to come comfort her. She could also have heard something you didn't which scared her.

At this point, she's crate trained. Even if the surgery weren't for another 6 months, if you stopped overnight crating her now, she'd still be okay with the crate after the surgery. I understand why you don't want her on the bed only to take it away from her, but what about moving the crate to the bedroom, or getting a bed for her, putting it next to yours and letting her sleep there? When Kabota was too weak to get on the bed himself, I would sleep with my arm hanging off the bed so as to touch him all night. He found that very comforting.


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## Wendy523 (Sep 16, 2012)

Thanks! I don't think her knees actually hurt her, atleast they never seemed to. She won't sleep in a doggy bed, tried that before, she wants on our bed if on our room. Our other dog sleeps up with us. she'll bark and bark til we pick her up (she is only 7lbs and can't jump high enough to get on herself). Problem mostly about her with us is still the housebreaking, last time we were snuggling on the bed with her she peed on it even though she'd just been out , I can't trust her out of the crate all night yet. It's never been a problem til the last couple days. Fingers crossed for a better night tonight.


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