My family has a 5 month old chihuahua/yorkie puppy who until roughly 2 weeks ago was sleeping quietly in the kitchen when you put her to bed at night. My mother started a pattern of behaviour with her during a windy night. She took the dog out the kitchen and slept on the couch with the dog (I didnt wake up during the night to hear her whining). Since then every single night the dog has been whining and barking until my mother (nobody else) picks her up and either puts her on her bed or sits on the couch with her. If I take her out of the kitchen and sit with her anywhere she will whine and run around to try to find my mom. She will continue to whine (the high pitched screeches) and attack the couch or flip out on something else until she shows up. One night I even found her climbing 3 feet up a floor rug that was rolled up against the wall. She cant be let out of the kitchen since we have a considerably larger 18 year old siamese cat which the 2 of them love to hate eachother. The dog will torment her all night and the cat will end up hurting her.

I will be moving soon and taking the dog with me. I cant have her being used to sleeping on beds due to allergies of mine. How can I break this habit? She will literally whine and bark for the entire night until my mom shows up to take her. We have tried ignoring her (I've stayed up with her well past 4AM yet she never slept and continued whining), I have tried taking her and calming her down... nothing seems to work.
-Trey

Hi,
I bet you're cross with your mother for starting this!

With luck when you move house the new surroundings (and absence of your mother!) will be enough of a change of situation to disrupt the routine. Other options include crating the pup at night, and letting her get on with it just as might do with a new puppy. It may take several sleepless nights, but sometimes it's the only way to break a bad habit like this.

Good luck.

The best way to break this sort of habit is to ignore it. Hard to do but once the dog realises that her behaviour is not going to work she will stop it. Buy everyone ear plugs and shut her up and ignore.

Every time your mum shows up and takes her , your dog is having her behaviour rewarded. She is ALSO getting rewarded every time you take her and try to calm her down. The only thing to do is , as the other psoters have said , ignore her. She may make a lot of noise for the whole of the first night ..but it WILL get less and less each night until eventually she stops :)

Melody :)

Thank you for replies so far :) I've since found out that this has been going on for far longer then the past little while. It has been happening since I first got the dog. I'm a deep sleeper and nothing can wake me up... apparently my puppy has been whining since I've gotten her. I would expect this for the first couple nights but not for 3+ months. My mom today told me she has been getting the dog out of the kitchen everytime it happens without fail. After trying to convince her for the past few days that she needs to leave her there I am at a loss. She refuses to listen to me (even though it is my dog...) saying that it is mean and abusive to leave her in the kitchen when she barks/cries. Lately theres been quite a few heated arguments over this issue even though I have shown it to her in some books and I showed her this thread.

Does anybody know of a very good book or website I can show to her to convince her that this is what needs to be done? The dog cant have free reign of the house at night because she still makes mistakes on the carpet sometimes, annoys the cat and will get hurt and is enjoying destroying anything she can get her teeth around (she is teething).

Maybe I should have called this thread "Mother Trouble" ;)