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How Good Is Your Dog's Internal Clock?


Roova
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I'm normally an early riser, as in 5.30am or before most mornings. Any time I'm really tired and sleep in I get a paw banging at the bedroom door at 6am or slightly past. How in the ?

It's darker earlier in the morning now so how is it always 6am?!

Once I'm awake I might as well get up but I try not to reward the rude awakening by opening the door straight away. I give myself a while to lie there cursing the dog first.

I was wondering what other people's dogs regularly do and how accurate their clock is?

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Minders, who we were minding for a year, was spot on for dinner time! Unfortunately dinner time is varied in this house, but always follows my shower so around 7-:30-8pm, she used to get fed at 5pm. She'd sit on the bathmat whinging at me to feed her LOL

A lot of the dogs I mind are clearly on early morning routines - especially those with babies at home, but there is one dog I mind from some DINKS and I've said to them 'you must wake up at 6am' and they are baffled because they don't, but that's the time their dog wakes me up.

Our dog knows when ~6pm is, which is when I usually get home and walk them so on weekends he will hang around and whinge and beg (the begging trick - flapping his arms around) for walkies.

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630 am Kaos comes into my room to go outside. Even if I let her out at 6 for a wee.

If I leave her out at 6 she barks, let her out at 630 and she snuggles in her kennel, doesn't matter what the weather is !

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Scottie was like clock work when we got him but he's mellowed now. Even if he'd had a walk during the day or we'd been out all day 5pm - walk time.

He's still pretty reliable for AM and PM walks. Very routine driven.

Night times - he sends him self out for a wee then gets into (people) bed about 8.30pm ... old man. Gets quite huffy if Hubs has gone to bed earlier and shut the bedroom door.

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Our 2 are scally wags in the morning, they carry on for breaky from 4am these days grrrr. Sometimes we give in and sometimes we don't. Renae used to be really bad and i think she's passed on those traits to Miah now!

I do make them wait for tea which is around 5pm, which is easier now than when Renae was around as she would get very demanding from 3pm (but then she wasn't well either)

We recently dog sat 2 Cavaliers for almost 2 weeks and it was really hard to stop them getting into a habit of having their breaky early like ours because their owner doesn't feed them until later in the morning. But you can't do two separate routines when you are looking after someone elses dogs especially if they are all indoor ones !

Edited by julesluvscavs
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I used to get up at 4am and take them for there walk so Jesse would start getting antsy around then, nowadays she starts performing for 6am breakfast and both of them start giving me attention from about 4pm as dinner is normally around 5. Jesse is starting to get very insistent and sits there wriggling and whining. Trying to break her of that particular one.

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Bloody cat will jump on me half an hour before the alarm rings, just so I know. If I don't get up at breakfast time she jumps on and off me repeatedly, purring and meowing away. Then, she will enlist the help of the dog who will try several methods in order of least annoying to most annoying until one works. First is licking my face. The next step is digging at me or burrowing under the blanket. After that comes the play bows and little wuffs while pouncing on me. And the last resort is pulling the blankets off me.

Dinner is usually 7.30 or 8, the dog has a very varied dinner routine with training and activities so she doesn't really make a fuss but good lord the cat! Half an hour prior she will just sit at my feet and stare at me, just to remind me dinner is soon, and if I am late then the meowing and whinging starts!

When daylight savings starts/ends they all get very confused when I yell at them and ignore them for an hour LOL.

Disclaimer: my dog generally isn't a nuisance in the morning, in fact she always just cuddles up and sleeps for as long as I'd like, but that got too lovely I ended up being late to work almost all the time LOL so I trained her to be a nuisance and wake me with those methods! :rofl: Sometimes I regret it. :laugh: But my boss is very happy about it. :laugh:

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Tempeh is a perfect time keeper! She knows when it is getting closer to 7am and 5pm (her self chosen meal times). If you are engrossed in something she gets increasingly antsy in the lead up to her meal times to make sure you hop to it and get that food happening!

She's very much a go to bed when the sun sets and get up when the sun rises kind of dog. If I am working I get up at 6.30am and if I am not it is 7am. Thursday night I went to bed and forgot to set my alarm but somehow she seemed to know it was a work day and she woke me at 6.20. I don't put out clothes or my work bag the night before and I still stay up late watching tv but somehow she knew it wasn't a sleep in day.

She also seems to know when she is due for a worm. I've noticed she gets late night hangries the closer it is to worming time. Last night she was uber whiney and I checked and she is due to be wormed in 2 days!

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With 5 dogs they all have the same routine however Hugo is the time keeper.

They usually get breakfast around 7:30-8:00am if they are not fed by then Hugo will scratch on the cupboard door until he's fed.

Dinner is around 5:30 generally around 5:00 he will start to flick the dog bowls around the kitchen so the metal inserts crash on the tiles.

Bedtime is 10:00-10:30 if it gets past that time Hugo will scratch the front door and dig at the blind, he has taken the paint off my newly painted front door so now it's got a huge patch of just bare timber, and my custom made blind is partially shredded.

He also knows when I make their jerky he paces in front of the oven and has even grabbed its handle.

Edited by Rascalmyshadow
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Love these three dogs...we are on a road triiiiiip to the Agility Nationals in SA....stayed last night at our dog friendly B&B and I decided a sleep in this morning would be nice. At home they have the option of a quick trip outside at 6am when the cats get fed. Not a peep out of any of them and it's 7.30am. They will bounce up quickly enough when I move though...

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We deliberately change the routine daily so they don't expect things at particular times. As soon as we had a baby on the way we started to adjust them to no routine in case it was hard to stick to with a newborn.

Our amstaff girl will occasionally stay in bed until 1pm in winter. I'm sure most of her body is taken up by her bladder.

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For my Sarah bedtime is 9.30 pm on the dot. And watch out if I haven't retired by then. She will appear, as if standing with her hands on her hips and bark that short sharp attention bark as if to say ' Well.... are you coming to bed'? It's quite uncanny.

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Guest crazydoglady99

A few years ago I had a dog that woke at 4am for his morning (10km) run.. If I didn't jump out of bed immediately I would soon be met with the sound of my beautiful heals (shoes) being ripped apart. For 18mnths I never missed a single day running no matter what!

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