We got a 4-month-old labradoodle type puppy in the hopes to train him to become my teen service dog. We've been doing all the right things, temperament testing, finding a trainer all that. He's been home a little over a week and last night he would not settle and kept barking and whining for like 2 hours. He's never done this in the week he's been here. My daughter has loss of consciousness events that we think might be seizures. They didn't catch anything on the 40 minute EEG but she's scheduled for a 4-day ambulatory EEG next month. Anyway back to the barking! Nothing would settle him, we tried everything, a walk, potty, toys, playing, distractions pets. He was even throwing his toys at her but didn't want to play which was new behavior. We were trying to get him to stop barking before the neighbor started complaining because he's real sensitive about noise. My daughter had one of her episodes and passed out last night. She hasn't had an episode in like a week so he's never seen one. Once he saw her passed out on the floor he sniffed her all over, looked at me and was like "you got this" and walked off and the barking/whining stopped and he was fine. When she was awake and back up off the floor and in bed he just cuddled in bed with her and was a happy camper. It was night and day behavior. I'm wondering in hindsight was he alerting to the oncoming seizure but he didn't know how to tell us. This was actually in our hopes that he could alert before she falls because the concussions are getting out of hand but we weren't sure if he would be able to.
u/FreakingBored123456
This is our first puppy and we got him a little over a week ago, and we're his third family, it sounds like he was from an oops litter and his second family got him at 8 weeks and was trying but the puppy was overwhelming for their ASD sons needs so they rehomed him to us after 2 months. He's supposedly a labradoodle creature with mom being Poodle/St Bernard and dad being a Lab but he definitely doesn't look like a doodle and has a longer wiry lab coat. We're getting the embark test done because we're curious. He is a super laid back puppy. We have had him temperament tested because the plan is for him to be a service dog and he passed with flying colors. Not much phases this dog and he recovers pretty much instantly when something does. We learned we actually have to watch what he sees other dogs do because he learns extremely fast. He saw another dog tuck under a chair weeks ago at a Petco puppy class with his previous family and he's been doing it ever since like he was trained to do it. We didn't know about that little trick until yesterday when he did it for us the first time we were in a chair out and about. I reached out to his previous owner with a photo and she explained what happened. Total case of monkey see, monkey do. Looking at him you would think he's a full grown adult dog because of his size. We took him to the vet who confirmed he's between 4 and 5 months old based on his teeth and his prior vet records show his birthday as December 2025. He actually lost a baby tooth yesterday. He's just going to be a BIG dog. He weighed 49 lb at the vet and has huge paws, he's probably going to be between 80 and 100 lb full grown. He can go all day with us running errands without issue. Yesterday was the first time I actually saw him fall asleep in the car. Outside of the teething thing he doesn't really act like a puppy imo as long as we keep him on a schedule/routine. He literally bounces off the walls if you don't. I keep seeing people say puppies should sleep like 18+ hours a day. He probably sleeps 1-3 hours a day plus bedtime. He goes to bed about 10:00 p.m. and wakes up between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. and goes out to potty twice during the night. We do our best to enforce nap time but he's just not a napper. The closest he gets to a nap would be I guess you would call them micronaps. He likes to follow us around the house and flop down on the floor wherever we're at but he's always listening it seems. We try to keep him on a routine and overall he's been doing great. I totally get we're probably still in the honeymoon phase but is him not napping normal? I mean like I know some toddlers aren't nappers but does that translate to dogs?
Now that I'm thinking about it I'm wondering maybe we need to try something different. At bedtime he's got definite preferences/demands. He came to us crate trained, at bedtime he wants his crate and 2 small milk bones. It has to be 2, not 1 or 3, 2🙄 it has to be complete blackout in his kennel with blankets and then you have to go to bed too. No TV, no noise, no lights. A human must be present in the room. I swear it's like having a toddler! Maybe we should try it at nap time? I didn't think about the fact that maybe he needs that pitch black to sleep. We just picked up a cover yesterday for his crate so we can stop using all the blankets. It's worth a try. We had no plans to crate train a dog but he came that way and he likes his crate. I've never been a fan of crates.