We have really good luck with our little 9 week old at night now (wish I could say that about daytime)…
He falls asleep on one of our laps typically around 9:30pm (usually my fiance' is watching tv) and then we wake him back up once he is good and asleep and WARM, and take him outside to pee, this way he does it very fast and wants to go back to sleep, so then we put him in his dog bed. After he is asleep we move the whole dog bed into his small crate in our bedroom.
Mind you we won't use the crate once we can TRUST HIM. Our bedroom has brand new carpet and new paint and all new very expensive furniture (basically we did that right before we decided to get a Basenji :P)
So then if he wakes up and whines, I get up and rush right to him and immediately take him outside on the leash, he goes immediately, then I give him half a treat and he lays next to me on the bed to fall asleep (he will NOT go back to sleep if I put him in the crate and my fiance' can't handle the screaming (she needs her sleep as she commutes a LONG drive every day)) so then if he falls asleep before I do, I move him back to the crate.
Obviously the downfall to this is that sometimes I fall asleep first and then he gets to sleep in my bed... but he always wakes me up if he has to go (I keep my arm around him).
But we started this method about a week and a half ago and only had an incident in our bed the first night, since then its been better and better every night!
Now he only has to get up one time per night, which is usually around 3:30am now, it used to be 2, then 2:30, etc... so he is getting better.
However I have learned to give up on the idea of getting him to fall back asleep after my fiance' gets up for work, he will just fight me the whole time.
I sure wish I had the ability to be home all day to not have to crate my dog, but it is not an option, people have to work. So a lot of dogs will have to be crated for long periods of time. Hopefully eventually they get used to it. 🙂
