Originally Posted by
Alty
Rascal is still in his crate. He's almost 6 months old now, and does hold it for most of the night. At this point he needs one potty break at night, but can hold it for up to 8 hours. No, I don't ignore him, nor do I set an alarm. When he needs to go out he whines, and we let him out. We've had a few nights were he slept 8 hours without whining. Truthfully, when that happened the first time, and to be honest, every time since, I wake up in a panic thinking something is wrong.
I don't really like the idea of setting an alarm for a potty break. There's one reason for this. It's training. If you wake up at certain times to let your dog out, even though the dog hasn't asked to go out, you can actually condition the dog to wake up at those times, asking to go out even though he/she doesn't need to.
It's the same with a baby. When I had my son my doctor told me to wake him up every 3 hours to nurse. Well, Jared woke up every 4 hours. I didn't see a reason to wake him up if he wasn't hungry enough to ask to be fed. Because of that, he slept through the night at 2 months. Syd, not so much. For Syd I listened to the doctor, woke her up to nurse every 3 hours. She didn't sleep through the night until she was almost 2 years old. :(