Overnight Routines and Rules:

1) Create an evening routine to exercise (physically and mentally) your puppy before bedtime.  Nothing is more frustrating for everyone than waking a puppy up from a 3 hour nap to put it to bed.  Between dinner and bedtime your puppy should have opportunities for exploratory sniff walks,  very few short exciting games like fetch, flirt, or tug, a training session or a review session, and dinner from a food puzzle or pacifier.  The idea is not to exhaust the puppy, overly tired puppies can actually have a hard time sleeping, instead simply meet the puppy’s need for exercise and enrichment in the evening a couple hours before bedtime.

 Here is a sample routine we use.

5:00 Puppy Dinner from a pacifier or puzzle plus a high value chew so the puppy is crated with dinner and a chew while we eat dinner.

5:30 Potty break and gated in the kitchen with whomever cleans up dishes.

6:00 Outside walk, play, sniff session. This is the latest we would play an exciting high energy game. 

7:00 Back inside, puppy is gated in the living room with the family for indoor play and exercise time.  During this time we may also have a training session, using no more than 10 to 20 treats/kibbles and taking no longer than 5 minutes.

7:30 to 8:00 potty break is offered, after potty a exploration session outside.

8:30 Back inside, to living room, for more calm play and etc.

9:00 Susanne and Rebecca go to bed, puppy is placed in the x pen, a pacifier is placed in the crate, and the door is CLOSED.  Water is taken up.

11:00 Larry rouses puppy, offers a potty break, and crates puppy for the night.

Morning routine starts at 6:00 am for the first week, we then move wake up time back 15 minutes for each week the puppy sleeps through the night.