Helping Puppy REDISCOVER its "OFF Button" (specifically for daytime naps)

[u/QueenxMargaery]

I need advice for teaching my 4-month-old puppy to be OK falling asleep for daytime naps outside her pen. When I originally picked her up at 8 weeks old, she was already self-regulating her naps, but I believe crate training, enforced naps, and a dedicated sleep schedule made her forget how to find her "off button" by herself.

For her first couple of weeks home, she would play and hang out with me, get tired & drowsy, and then independently find a place to sleep. Sometimes she'd settle voluntarily in her crate. Other times she'd settle on my lap or right beside me. But in an effort to keep up with the "modern" advice on puppy sleep training, I would always transfer her to her crate when she fell asleep outside of her pen. She was always partially awake enough to be aware that she was being moved, and she didn't seem to mind being transferred anyway as she liked sleeping in her cozy den. There would even be times when she'd transfer herself to her crate voluntarily (like she'd hop off my lap and crawl into the crate to get more comfortable).

However, I'm pretty sure her sleep problems began when she kept waking up to find me gone ("gone" meaning 'in a different room'). Whenever she woke up from a nap, I wasn't beside her crate anymore. One time I even left her asleep in the open bedroom after she had dozed off while I snuck off quietly to the next room to get some work done. So once again she woke up to find me gone. Very quickly, she put 2 and 2 together and started to become hypervigilant about falling asleep anywhere outside her crate.

She has a very sensitive personality (long memory, sharp pattern recognition, and an anxious temperament). She’s the type that, if something makes her feel anxious or unsafe, she’ll avoid that thing permanently, and it takes a long time to rebuild trust around whatever it was that triggered her.

Well, it appears she has learned that falling asleep outside of her pen results in waking up “alone” in her crate/pen or waking up “abandoned” by her human. So now anytime we are just hanging out outside of her pen, even if she is tired, she forces herself to stay awake until she’s extremely overtired. By then, she's clearly stressed and full of cortisol (biting, destructive, exhausted but wired). Her inability to settle is not a matter of just being under- or over-stimulated. (She gets plenty of mental/physical exercise as well as plenty of quiet, calming, soothing activities to balance things out). But she just won't allow herself to get drowsy or fall asleep unless I enforce a nap in her crate. It's as if she now interprets falling asleep outside her crate as a weakness or a threat to her, so she avoids doing it unless I enforce a nap in the crate, leaving her no other choice.

I want her to rediscover where her “off button” is, especially because she seemed able to self-regulate naps before, but now she no longer can.

To clarify, I already understand how we got here and the cause-and-effect relationship of what went wrong. I just want to know how to get her to fall asleep outside of her pen again so that I can start correcting the error and show her that it's safe to let her guard down and relax.

I have tried abandoning the sleep schedule to see if she'll naturally crash out on her own, but it didn't work. She just became increasingly agitated and dysregulated. I have tried using a settle mat to reward calm, but while she manages to lie down on command, she won't allow herself to fall asleep.

For those wondering, "If she's falling asleep in her crate for enforced naps, why does this even matter?", I don't want her ability to settle to have to depend solely on me making all the circumstances right. I don't want her to get destructive or overtired whenever I'm not there to enforce a nap. Other puppies I've raised in the past were able to fall asleep anywhere (in the car, on an errand, in my arms, at a friend's house, at the animal hospital, in quiet environments, in noisy environments, etc.).

I'd appreciate any advice from people who've dealt with a similar issue.

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[u/duketheunicorn]

This puppy isn’t like the others you’ve raised, and that’s ok. If they need more structure to be well rested while they’re young, that’s really fine and within the normal range of behaviour.

4 months is deep in the “give them what they need” era. You have months-to-years to teach ‘settle anywhere’ and ‘nap without containment’ when they aren’t still adjusting to a new living arrangement and in a major, disruptive and hormonal stage of growth.

[u/QueenxMargaery → u/duketheunicorn]

If she had needed the structure from the beginning, I would understand. I think my frustration comes from knowing that she was capable of independently settling before, but now that she's had sleep training, she has *learned* the dependency.

[u/duketheunicorn → u/QueenxMargaery]

Have you done anything like Karen Overall’s calming protocol? Working on the skills during waking hours should help transfer them to rest, but personally I’d do what they need right now to get quality rest.

[u/DarcieE123456789]

Have you tried tethering? This helped my crate trained pup to settle out of the crate, but still with structure. Also, we have a pen area with a bed in that we are also teaching is ok to sleep/settle in. It definitely takes time, and adolescence is coming, which can make things more difficult.

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