[shellybelly]

I was hoping some one could help me out with some advice. We have been crate training Toby and we put him in the crate at night to sleep. The crate is located in the bedroom across the hall from our room, no one else is in there.

Most of the time he is good about sleeping in there, but he will wake up with the birds. First it was 6:20, then 6:05, and now he's started at 5:30. When I say started, I mean whining at first and if no response he then begins barking.

I made the mistake of waking up with him and taking him out (not the mistake) but then I am still very tired so I want to go back to sleep, so I let him in the bed with us. He will try to play for about a half hour or so, then lay down and sleep.

So that is problem #1, which isn't a huge deal compared to problem 2.

If I have to get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom (say last night around 2), then he wakes up and expects me to take him out (which I did) but he didn't want to go back to sleep quietly. He continued to whine and bark until I would have let him out. We ended up having to move his crate to another area where if he barked continuously, he would not bother us.

I don't want to have to feel like I need to tip toe around all the time, does any one have any suggestions on what to do for either problem? Waking up earlier and earlier, and also waking up and understanding he needs to lay back down and go to bed?

P.S. some background: Toby is 5 months old and we just got him about 3 weeks ago. I know this sort of stems back also to the previous owner because she told me she would go get him if he started whining and barking in the night.

Please let me know if there is anything else I left out that would be helpful to know to help with these problems.

Thanks so much!