Need Help With New Night Time Behavior

[Guest Greylover3803]

We adopted Greycie the end of April. She has had a hard time adjusting as she is very shy and easily frightened. Initially she would sleep through the night and in fact we would have trouble getting her up and out in the morning to go out as her bed is one of her few "safe" places in the house. She has dinner between 5 and 6 each evening and goes out just before going to bed around 10-11pm. Most nights she will both pee and poop before bedtime. The last 3 weeks or so she has been getting up and needing to go out anytime between 1:30 and 2;30 am. If I tell her to go back to bed she will and then get right back up and bark until I take her out. When I do finally give in she does usually pee and poop which leads me to believe she really does need to go out. I should add that her normal morning routine is to go out at 5:30 AM before I leave for work. During the day she can easily go 8-10 hours without going out if we would let her. It is almost like she has her days and nights mixed up. Anyone out there have any ideas on how I can get her back to being able to wait the 7 hours from bedtime to morning. I would accept this as normal if she hadn't started off by going all night without any problems. Nothing else in her routine has really changed.

[grey14me]

Is she still peeing and pooping at 10-11 pm?

[greysmom]

She's had time now to settle in to a new routine and become accustomed to a new schedule and being in a home environment. She may not be getting out for potties enough now.

 

It's hard to tell from your post when her normal potty times are. Is she really only going out for potties twice a day? That's probably not often enough. She might now need to go out after dinner to P/P where she didn't before. It's also possible she is getting cold and wakes up, or wakes up for some other reason, and then she has to go out because she's awake.

 

My four are pretty regular, and I make sure we keep on track every day. That way, if somebody's off or sick, I know right away when their poop started to head toward diarrhea. Everybody poops once in the morning and once at night, with another one sometime during the day. One is usually in the morning after getting up. One is usually before we go to bed (last outs). The third one will either be during playtime midday or right after dinner. But we go out about every 3-4 hours, and always right after eating.

[Guest Greylover3803]

Thanks both for your responses. Her normal schedule is 5:30 am, 10:00am, sometimes in the afternoon sometimes not, 6pm, then 10pm. This is her normal schedule on a normal day and then recently another time in the middle of the night. She will pee anytime she goes out but will poop probably only 2 or 3 of those times. In all the time we have had her she has only had 1 accident in the house and that was because the 10 am was more like 11 so our fault not hers.

[greysmom]

Does the sometimes/sometimes not afternoon out seem to make any difference in the nighttime waking? Does she *always* go at 10pm?

 

Dogs (and all mammals I think, certainly humans) secrete a hormone to stop the "urge" to go potty when they are asleep. I'm still thinking she is somehow getting awoken, and then really has to go. But it might be worth a vet trip, or at least to take in a stool sample to rule out parasites. They can also increase the urgency to go at odd times.

 

Another idea is to look at the total amount of food that goes in (and thus, comes out) as she may need some adjusting. Is she holding steady at a good weight? Gaining? Losing? How active is she during a normal day, and does it make a difference in the night if she's more or less?

 

Do you keep your bedroom cool or have the AC on at night? Round about 1-2am is when I usually have to turn our AC off as it's too cold. Maybe she needs a blanket or jimjams to keep her warm and asleep.

 

Just throwing some things out there to think about and troubleshoot.

[grey14me]

When does she get exercise? Exercise will generally get them pooping. If feeding and exercise stay routine, pooping generally does as well. And I agree with Chris about being woken up by something else (cold?), then that will often trigger the need to go potty. It's pretty much the first thing I do when I wake up!

[Guest Greylover3803]

Almost made it last night as she didn't get up until 4am. I hadn't thought about changes in temperature but there is a vent in the walk in closet where she generally chooses to sleep. I will try closing that vent as it really isn't necessary to keep the bedroom cool and see if that helps. Thanks again for you replies.