In this article we will provide you with more tips and tricks you will need as a new puppy parent to train your dog to go to sleep. It is essential to train a new puppy to sleeping through the night so it will be more active throughout the day, and it won’t disturb you at night. Let’s “roof” towards the article:
Tips for Helping Your Puppy Sleep at Night:
Training a puppy to get to sleep is easier as compared to teaching a four-year-old kid. You need to start at a basic level. This means if your puppy is a few weeks old, you begin establishing its daily routine following its night routine.
1. An Active Puppy Leads to a Sleepy Puppy:
The first and most important rule when to train your puppy to sleep is to get a lot of playtime during the day, challenging exercises or even simple ball fetching sessions are enough to do the job. The main goal is to keep your puppy occupied and running throughout the day so that it gets tired and instantly goes to sleep at night.
2. Maintain a Proper Routine:
The most crucial step for getting a puppy to sleep well every night is to get it trained for it, and how do you do that? Simply by co-ordinating its routine according to your owns. For example, if you’re an office person and have to wake up early, you wake the puppy early and train it to sleep early at night. This way, you will both spend more time with your puppy and you get the same daily routines.
3. Less Daytime Naps:
The next step is to reduce nap time from the puppy’s daytime routine. Skipping nap time may sound cruel that you don’t let a tied puppy enjoy nap time, but it is necessary to get it asleep properly at night. If you allow your puppy to nap during the day, there are more chances of staying up late and not sleeping comfortably. Plus, the puppy will sleep more peacefully and continuously if it hasn’t been napping during the day.
4. Early Dinner:
For a comfortable night, you should fix the puppy’s dinner time according to its sleeping hour. Just like you take your dinner at least 2 hours before going to sleep, the puppy should also be fed at least 3 hours before sleeping so that the food in its tummy gets digested. You can give the puppy a biscuit as a treat before going to bed. This way, it won’t be hungry and will sleep better. Secondly, it won’t cause stomach issues since eating right before sleeping can cause disturbance during the night.
5. Limit Water Consumption Before Bed:
Like the previous step, you need to limit your puppy’s liquid consumption at least two hours before bed. The reason for this is water takes less time to get digested, and if the bladder is full, it will increase the risk of your puppy needs to go out and pee in the middle of the night. Remember, if the puppy wakes up, it’s really hard to get it to go back to sleep afterwards. So you have to take care of its water supply at night.
6. Last Minute Playing Session:
Remember when we told you to exhaust the poor puppy to sleep? Well, we did take it pretty seriously. This trick is about playing with your puppy at the end of the day, right before creating the ‘Sleep Environment.’ Professionals recommend that you engage the puppy in mind activities before bed rather than physical. Some popular puppy mind games include; hide and seek, nose work games, obstacle toy games, and lastly (our favorite) the puzzle bowl game. These games are a vital part of puppy development since they will prevent your puppy from excessive chewing and barking and improve brain health.
7. Create a Bed or Crate:
Another trick to get your puppy sleeping is to create a proper bed for the puppy that is comfortable to snug. But by comfortable, we don’t mean that you add all the pillows that you can get your hands on. The perfectly comfortable bed for a puppy is one with a light, soft and thin mattress with not more than one baby-sized short fur blanket (only if it’s cold). And nothing else at all. Puppies like all the room get in the bed/crate and don’t like to share it with stuffed toys or excessive cloth.
8. Put on the Diffuser:
One of our era’s most go-to or viral nighttime bedroom trends is the essential oil plus diffuser combo. The lavender scent is usually known for its calming properties. And it does wonders, not just for humans but for puppies as well. To get your puppy comfortable and relaxed in bed, put on the diffuser with a few drops of lavender essential oil and witness the magic happening. Your puppy will instantly become calm and is sure to fall asleep in that crate within minutes.
9. Turn off the Lights:
The world is divided into two types of people: one who switches off the lights before sleeping and the other who switches on the lights before sleeping. Puppies, however, prefer ‘lights out’ before sleeping. Not like they have a choice o anything, but it is recommended that you switch off the lights while your puppy is trying to sleep. Since putting the lights out boosts the Melatonin (sleep hormone) production and gets the puppy fast asleep.
10. No Lights Mean “No Lights”:
Puppies can get distracted pretty much by anything and everything, even when the lights are out. The red glow of the TV or the blinking AC light are some of such minor distractions. A genius way to solve this problem is either covering the crate with a cloth or, in the case of a bed, try adding a DIY tent over it. The tent look will add up to the face of the puppy’s sleeping corner as well.
11. Dual Poop Breaks:
As discussed earlier, the puppy needs to go for a walk after dinner and before bedtime. For this, you should fix a five-minute poop break two hours after dinner and the last moment before bedtime poop break that should be atleast 10 minutes before bed. These breaks are necessary for the puppy since they will excrete all the waste and sleep without going to the litter tray again.
Conclusion:
Now that you know the above tips and tricks, you can get that pup of yours to sleep. These tricks will not only help you to put your puppy to sleep, but it will also provide you with the basis to get the puppy trained and will help you create a well-disciplined nighttime routine for your puppy that will be in favor of both you and the pup. But then again, you cannot get a 100% result in the first week of training, so bear it and have patience.
