Jake has always slept in a crate condo at night.  There are a few reasons for this.  At first it was to give some distance between the bed and his insanely loud snoring him.  More recently it has been because as his legs fail, his ability to ‘hold it’ is slipping away so I was trying to keep it all contained, especially since I don’t like him to have to wear a diaper at night.  His junk needs air!

The problem is… he is not very good at alerting me if he goes at night.  Let me rephrase that, he just moves over and goes back to sleep.  The only indication I’d have that something has happened is a break in the noise.  Silence is his alert.  If I get up in the middle of the night, I’ll check to see if there are any issues.  But that is not the best system, I can’t have  the little guy laying near grossness.

So… I have decided to try to train him to sleep on the dog bed sans a crate.  And I do mean stay on the beds.   I have pads between the cover and mattress of both his and Melvin’s bed.  If I can train Jake to stay on one of those two beds, I think we can continue to leave the diaper off (seriously people, everyone’s junk needs air!) and if he has an accident in the night, he can just move over to Melvin’s bed.  Melvin starts in his bed but always moves to the floor or my bed during the night so that vacancy is almost guaranteed.

We started this weekend.  I moved the condo to the loft, washed everyone’s bedding and used the command they both know ‘your bed’.   

That went well except I could tell that 1. Melvin noticed the lack of barrier in a negative way (What the F is this?) and Jake noticed it in a positive way (for him at least) (sweet freedom!) as he got into bed and then stepped back out of bed leaving one foot on base to be sure to meet the command criteria of ‘your bed’.

Jake tried to get up a few times but for the most part he went to sleep and stayed there all night (accident free I might add).  Melvin stayed in the new set-up all of 14 seconds.  He decided to sleep far away from a non-contained Jake.  

Night two has me thinking that Melvin may move out.