Hi! First time grey- and dog-owner here, he's been with us just over a week and overall is a pretty confident and happy lad.
He's been sleeping soundly in our bedroom in his own bed from day 1 and has slept perfectly through the night. He has a bed in the living room and another in the bedroom. 2 nights ago he refused to come into the bedroom and stayed in his living room bed. He has had no issue getting up in our personal space so far lol, he's not a nervous boy and in fact is a bit velcro and prefers to be in the same room as us so I found it pretty odd. I slept out there with him on the couch just in case he was doing it because he didn't feel well or something, since his last poo of the night was on the loose side. However he was fine.
Last night he refused to come in again so I went back to our own bed and just left all the doors open so he could creep into our bedroom if he decided to, rather than end up whining at the door at some point, and again he stayed out all night. He'd even rather sleep on the hard floor in the hallway with no bed, than come into the bedroom.
It's the height of summer where I am, and we had moved a standing fan into the bedroom a couple of nights before he stopped going in. He slept fine with it for a couple of nights but did look at it a lot. My theory is he finds it spooky. I removed it from the room and also switched the beds around so that his favourite comfy living room bed was in the bedroom (the one we had in the bedroom before is a little smaller and less fluffy). With the fan gone and the beds switched, I managed to coax him in gently with treats, but only a couple of feet in, then he ran back out even though he looked at the spot where the fan used to stand and saw it was gone.
Is it weird that even with the spooky thing gone, he still won't go in? Any advice as to whether to desensitise/countercondition to the fan vs just put it away and not overwhelm him, since it's something we only need for maybe a month out of the year? I don't have any real concerns with him sleeping alone in the living room if it's not making him anxious out there - he's very good at asking to go out for P&P if he needs it and the room is very dogproof. But I would rather he come back to the bedroom just because I don't want him to be anxious about a whole part of the apartment, and I know it can be important for dogs to sleep near their "people".
Thanks for reading, I know this was a long post, typical scaredy first time dog mumma!!