In the past three days I haven’t had a good night’s sleep. Leela has started whimpering to go out at four in the morning. The previous two days, Bridget had insisted that she had simply consumed water too late in the evening. My worry is that any flexibility on our part (in when she is allowed to leave her crate) will lead to unwanted conditioning. The solution to breaking her of this habit is to ignore her.
Being pulled from REM sleep in the middle of the night by a pathetic whimper is not pleasant. My brain tells me that the solution is to ignore her, but following through is incredibly difficult. When I’m wide awake, I can use the ignore method for upwards of an hour. I do it to real people all the time ;). However, when you are asleep, awake, and then you want desperately to be asleep again, 10 minutes turns into an eternity.
This morning’s solution was to take her downstairs to pee and then leave her in the crate in the kitchen. Until I can come up with a solution for this, she might be sleeping downstairs.