This is a story about how I unknowingly taught my dog to wake me up ten times a night, and how a uniquely designed dog bed gave back my uninterrupted sleep in an instant.
I Created a Blanket Monster
As humans, we unintentionally shape our dog’s behavior all the time. Our own behavior can prompt our dogs to do certain things. If I head upstairs my dogs will follow me very reliably. And our responses to their behavior can reinforce or discourage that behavior. If my dog puts her head in my lap I very reliably will scratch it. This is a sort of communication.
It didn’t take me long to figure out this was why my dog Ruby was waking me up ten or more times a night. She didn’t need to go out to potty. Wasn’t sick. Didn’t want to play or burn off energy. She wanted me to put her blanket back on her.
Yep. She has to be fully covered to sleep, often including her head. I think this is a somewhat common thing for dogs that have very short coats and naked undersides. So when she would shift around in the night, the blanket would move and she couldn’t get comfortable unless she was covered again. Before we moved to the Midwest, she didn’t care about blankets. But after moving to a cold climate, she
NEEDED the blankie.
Wake Up Call
Since she sleeps next to our bed on my side, I was the lucky recipient of a cold, wet nose prodding me repeatedly in the middle of the night. I would wake up enough to stand up and put her blanket back on her. But in the moment, I wasn’t really aware that I was training her to wake me up. Every time I responded to her snout punches by covering her up, I was reinforcing the behavior. In my half-asleep state, I just wanted her to stop poking me so I obliged.
At first it was only a couple times a night and I wanted her to be comfy and warm, so even though it was annoying, it wasn’t that bad. The nose poking quickly increased until she was waking me up ten or more times in one night. At this point, my sleep was very disrupted and I knew I needed to do something to change her behavior.
Ignore the Wet Nose
My first plan of attack was to quit rewarding the nose pokes with covering her up. I would just ignore her prodding and eventually she would stop; this process is called extinction. This seemed like the easiest solution to the problem.
I went to bed with this new plan in mind, however my resolve to ignore her wavered. Sometimes I ignored her, but other times I was so annoyed and just wanted her to stop so I could fall back asleep. I would get up and put the blanket on her. This only made her behavior stronger because she learned that is she persisted, I would eventually get up. The times I gave into her poking in were sabotaging the times I successfully ignored her, and thus training her to be more persistent.
Why Ignoring Can Be Challenging in Behavior Modification
In order for ignoring to be effective in diminishing the behavior, it has to be consistent. If the dog gets rewarded sometimes, you’ve only strengthened the likelihood of that behavior happening. And in the real world, it is very hard for a dog to be ignored 100% of the time they do an undesirable behavior. Additionally, it’s very challenging for humans to put up with frustrating behavior from their dog for the amount of time it takes for them to give up.
I do think that ignoring her behavior COULD work, but it required me putting up with minutes of nose poking at a time. And when you’re tired and groggy, it’s really hard to have the resolve to stick with the plan. So I needed a different method.
Reevaluating My Plan
Because the undesirable behavior was happening at night when I wanted to be sleeping, it didn’t really feel like training an incompatible behavior was realistic. There was no way I was going to be up rewarding her for doing a more desirable behavior, such as laying on her bed, in the middle of the night. This is a great strategy for a lot of behavior issues, such as training a dog to settle on a rug while you cook to prevent counter surfing, but in this case, it wasn’t a good solution.
Even though I know Ruby is capable of sleeping without a blanket, in her mind, being fully covered by the blanket is a need. She was coming to me to get her need met. But what if she could meet her own need? Then she would get what she needs to feel comfortable and I would get the sleep I need.
Helping My Dog Meet Her Own Needs
Enter the Cozy Cave Bed. This dog bed solved all my problems in one night.
It’s a round bed with what is essentially a blanket attached to the top, forming a sort of pocket for the dog to snuggle in. It was a bit more than I had paid for dog beds in the past, but it seemed worth it to regain the quality of my sleep.
I recall taking the bed out of the box and zipping the cover on. I put it down on the ground and called Ruby over. She immediately got inside the bed and looked very pleased with herself. I imagine her thinking, “You finally got the bed I’ve been wanting.” I was prepared to do a little training to help her learn how to get inside the bed, but it really wasn’t needed. She instinctively knew how to use the bed. I put it upstairs beside my bed and when it was time to go to sleep, she went got in all by herself.
Occasionally, she will get too hot and go lay stretched out on the floor. The great thing is that she tuck herself back into bed all by herself! The cozy cave bed is worth every dang penny.
She gets to be covered and I get to sleep – a win win for both of us!
This is the same idea behind a doggy door. The dog can meet their own need without the help of a human. This strategy will not work for every annoying behavior. Sometimes our dogs just can’t have what they want when they want it. But because it is such a simple solution, it’s worth considering if we can empower our dogs to meet their own needs.
What annoying behaviors have you accidentally trained your dog? And have you been able to successfully fix it?
This Post Has 17 Comments
My boys love their cozy cave beds- a great solution for you!
My boys are terrible counter surfers after a couple of unfortunate successes- they never forget do they!
I wish I had known about the cozy cave a LONG time ago! All sighthound people need a cozy cave 😉 Oh yea – counter surfing can be hugely rewarding. And like you said, most dogs never forget once they’ve gotten something tasty off the counter.
Where did you get that exact bed please!! I made a blanket whiner as well and I’m getting no sleep lol that looks perfect for him!
I accidentally trained our puppy to look for contraband in order to “trade” it for a treat!
LOL! Sorry, that one made me laugh! That “trade” training worked a little *too* well 😉
Smart idea and sometimes spending a bit more in the end pays off. Layla wakes me up at about 5 every morning to get under the covers with me, once settled she goes back to sleep and I normally do too. It did bug me in the beginning but now I love those morning cuddles LOL
Awww! I love a snuggly dog. I’m sure Layla loves her cuddle time with her mom. We used to let Ruby sleep in our bed, but she started taking up too much space. I do miss it though 🙂
I REALLY enjoyed looking at your dog under blankets and in his new bed! Thanks for sharing!!
Thank you! She really really loves being cozy 🙂
I’ve been looking at these cave type beds! Perfect timing – so I will check this one out, as I too have created a blanket monster!
Ps – your blanket monster is an absolute cutie!
Aw, thanks 🙂 I have to agree, she’s pretty cute! Blanket monster creators UNITE! The only thing I regret about the cozy cave bed is not finding it much sooner. I hope your pup loves it as much as mine.
You are not alone when it comes to teaching your dog an unwanted behavior. We did it too. We reinforced our dog jumping on people for a head scratch. She is much lower to the ground that our previous pup. We were used to being able to just reach down a little to pet her. But our current pup is way lower so we were perfectly happy with her reaching up to us. That is until she started jumping on our guest.
It’s nice to have a social dog, but yeah, sometimes we don’t want them jumping up on guests. It can be hard for our dogs to understand those rules, but with some training I’m sure she can get it 🙂
Oh my gosh! I love these… I might steal them from the dogs! 🙂
LOL! I may have crawled inside it once or twice 😉 They are very spacious!
HAHA! My goodness do I relate to this. Hahaha. My little foster boy Elliott… I accidentally trained him to climb on my lab (he is 60+ pounds now) to be let outside to potty. It was how he told me as a puppy, and now I’m having to completely redo it! Ugh! Kind of funny to look back on. 🙂
When I had a full-time, soul-sucking marketing job, I was up at 5 a.m. to make sure Bella got a walk and I had my coffee and morning run. Now that I have a part-time night shift and would very much like to sleep in some mornings, Bella still likes to be up at 5 a.m. She comes to my side of the bed and gives a high-pitched “hum” and pushes her back into the mattress or breathes in my face until I get up. She’s relentless.