Hey everybody, welcome to shape by dog.

I am Susan Garrett.

Today's topic comes from one of you.

Yeah, actually I've gotten two requests for this topic and that is, how do I get my puppy to

stop waking me up earlier and earlier in the morning? Common, common problem.

Actually, it is more than likely one of three reasons, but the most common is that you, my friend,

have been shaped by dog. I tell you a story. I had a student who was a dog trainer who,

this is another little pet peeve of mine, dog trainers who call themselves behaviorists.

We'll not get into that, But she was a dog trainer.

I would help her with her own dog training and I would also help her with some of her clients' problems.

Anyway, she had a young border collie. It was six months old. During one of our sessions, she says,

listen, this whole session I want to dedicate to getting my dog to sleep through the night

because it's not, number one, it could to sleep through the night because it's not,

number one, it could be a medical condition. So, she said, I've been to the veterinarian,

we've had all kinds of tests run. There's physically nothing wrong with the dog. But she

won't sleep through the night. And I find this fascinating because personally, my puppies

almost never wake me up ever. I have a rule.

Don't wake the mama. I'll tell you more about that later. However, I get a brand new puppy seven

weeks old. They might wake me up the first night I have them and they never wake me up again.

Right? You're going to get that too. So let's get back to the student of mine. I said, all right, just tell me your routine because I'm going to refer to episode 16 in this

podcast a lot, the thing before the thing. And so if you have a problem, if you have a problem

with the thing, I want to know what's the thing before the thing. That's going to tell me how to fix it. She said, well, I go to bed, you know, I make sure that I play some games with the dog,

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