Hi all,
Our family (my husband and I and our 9 month old son) have a 5 year old mastiff x ridgeback. She is a gentle giant. When she was a puppy, she slept in our bed. We hadn't done our research before adopting her (adopted her quickly from bad circumstances she was living in) and didn't know about crate training, so of course she cried in the laundry at night and ended up in our bed. She quickly grew too big for our bed and we successfully transitioned her to sleep on a dog bed that is right next to ours and she has been there ever since.
But now her being in our bedroom is becoming troublesome. She is very noisy. She snores, barks in her sleep, sleeps right up against our bed which moves our bed frame because she is so big and wakes us up (if you move her bed further away she'll just sleep on the carpet right next to the bed), paces around the room at night etc etc. Our son ended up being moved to his nursery earlier than I would have liked when he was an infant because the dog disrupts his sleep too. Now, the dog seriously disrupts my sleep. I am up at all hours of the night still with our son and having the dog also keeping me up is just exhausting.
I understand dogs are social animals, but this just isn't working anymore. She has another dog bed downstairs in our lounge room and we would like her to sleep there. Last night she was sleeping there but then got up and continually scratched on the doors to come upstairs and at midnight I caved and let her up. We are planning on selling our home soon and need to get it ready for viewing, and now there are dog scratch marks on the doors and our carpets upstairs are becoming ruined from her sleeping on them (again, she has a bed there but will sleep on the carpet instead!).
I love our dog and I hope I don't seem callous but she simply can't be in our bedroom any longer. How can I go about transitioning her out of there?
Thanks all!
