Hi Aidan:

I'm writing with an update on Raisin. You helped me tremendously several months ago when we were having problems with Raisin not sleeping through the night. Per your suggestion, we started having Raisin sleep in her ex-pen to curb all the late night roaming she was doing back then. We also gradually tapered off taking her out for late-night potties, and within a couple weeks stopped completely. We also got into the habit of setting an alarm for the same time every morning, including weekends. Very quickly she learned that it was the alarm that meant it was time to get up, not her desire to wake us up. We even realized that she wouldn't stand until one of us sat up in bed!

After Raisin turned 1 we slowly started giving her more liberties around the house, provided she could handle them. Several weeks ago, we decided to stop putting her in her ex-pen at night just to see what would happen. To our surprise, Raisin started putting herself to sleep in her bed in our room, and still adheres to the schedule perfectly! Even though she is free to roam, she rarely leaves her bed, sleeps through the night and stays put until she hears that alarm go off in the morning! We also taught her how to ring a bell when she needs to go out to potty, which she does perfectly every morning and during the day when nature calls or when she's ready for her walk.

In addition to wanting to thank you, I also thought that my experience might be helpful to other readers. We got Raisin as a puppy (9 weeks old) and the first year was really demanding. But we stuck with our training, we are consistent with the "rules", we give her lots of exercise and socialization and suddenly one day things became incredibly easy. I'm glad to say that Raisin is truly my "dream dog"!!

Thanks again,
Nicole