We have a Golden Retriever bitch aged about 18 months and she has gotten into the habit of waking up very early. She sleeps in a crate downstairs while we sleep upstairs. Until recently she has slept until about 6.30am and then she begins whining, but for the last two months she has been waking up at about 5am. It isnt anything to do with the heating coming on as this wasnt coming on until 6am and we have sinced changed that to 5am to see if she was cold. She isnt desperate to go to the toilet when we take her out. We have tried ignoring her, tiring her out the night before, taking her to the toilet more often, coming down and telling her to be quiet but nothing works. The only way to stop her whining is to go down to her and sleep the last hour and a half on the sofa.No neighbours are waking her as nobody else is up. Please help, I want to sleep again!!

You are going to have to grit your teeth and ignore it because at the minute you are teaching her that when she whines you come down. Is her crate locked? What size is the crate?

By coming down and interacting with her you are rewarding her behaviour, so it's now going to be doubly hard to teach her that no matter how hard she tries, nobodies going to come :(

Could she perhaps be hearing something like the milkman going past?  Have you thought about leaving a radio on to mask outside noises?

One of my Labradors was like that guest. Take heart, it did get better. It just took 14 years! :d

Sorry for that but it's one of the possible joys of dog ownership. She was the only one of mine. Others would happily sleep for as long as we want. Going down is the worst thing you can do. As others have said, the ONLY chance is to ignore it. Trouble now is that because she has achieved some sucess she will be trying all the harder for a while.

Regards, John

I was the guest that originally posted this query but I have since registered. As regards to the crate size it is the second biggest one available, the biggest was for dogs like great danes and yes it is locked. When we come down we dont interact with her, we dont even let her out of her crate, we just go down and lay straight down on the sofa. The milkman comes a lot earlier than she is waking up. She has always whined in the morning but as I said before she used to do it only about 10 -20 min before we would get up so we would ignore it and only go down once the alarm had gone off to try her to associate the alarm with us going down. We have tried ignoring her now but it seems as though she is quite happy to whine for an hour and a half until we come down!

Hi and welcome to Champdogs.

Both of our labs sleep upstairs now, but the younger one was always an early riser and would create merry hell from about 6.00am.

She was crated at the time, and I put a duvet cover over the crate, to keep it dark, and moved the crate to an area that did not get the first rays of morning light, and she could not hear outside noise. This worked to a certain degree.

Our girl has hearing that you would not believe, and the bakery, situated across the road from the back entrance of our house, used to wake her up ay 4.00am!!!! - hence she now sleeps with my daughter and sleeps until the alarm goes off. Is there anything else going on in your neighbourhood that might wake her???

A house a quite a few doors away has a couple of young children and there is a security light that one of the houses has that is very bright but that goes on and off all night long. I might try putting a duvet over but I think this might scare her as she has never had it before.

I'd use a cover or a sheet, duvet itself might be a bit hot and restrict airflow. Start by introducing it during the day when she is sleeping in her crate.

I know the kind of light you mean, the lights and the noise from the bakery used to drive my dog nuts, not to mention the smell I guess.

Hope you find a solution.

Thank you all so much for you help it is very much appreciated.