Helping Your Puppy Sleep Through the Night: A Guide for New Dog Owners
- Rachael Henson
- Nov 27, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 7
You’ve finally brought home your long-awaited puppy! They’ve spent the day exploring your house, bonding with you, and getting to know their new family. Everything's been going well. You’ve had successful toilet visits, they’re playing well, and they’ve even done a few sits!
However, bedtime comes, and you pop your puppy in their crate. You turn off the lights, and all hell breaks loose. They’re screaming, crying, howling, and trying to escape the crate. You’re panicking. You’ve heard you shouldn’t let them out while they’re crying, but you have neighbours, and it’s 11 PM!
Well, fear not! In this blog, we’ll help you get to grips with sleeping through the night so both you, your puppy, and your neighbours can sleep soundly!
How Do I Stop My Puppy Whining at Night?
The fastest way to stop your puppy crying at night is to look at where they are currently sleeping. Bring them into your bedroom, in their crate, and place their crate right next to your bed. Your puppy should be able to see you, and you should be able to reach down and put your fingers through the crate to reassure them if they wake up.
This way, if your puppy wakes up frightened, they can immediately be reassured by your presence without needing to start crying. If they do wake needing the toilet, they can alert you quickly, and you can take them out swiftly before any accidents happen. Dogs are social creatures, and we have specifically bred them to love human company! Asking a puppy who’s just left its breeder and the rest of its litter to sleep downstairs in a dark and strange utility room on their own is too big of an ask. This can lead to lasting problems.
Do You Leave a Puppy Crying at Night?
No. It’s never okay to leave a puppy to “cry it out” at night. Puppies are infants. Their brains are still developing, and they are not yet mature enough to be alone. If you leave your puppy alone at night, they will almost definitely cry as an instinct to being left alone, which in the wild could be very dangerous for a young pup.
Leaving your puppy to cry it out at night does absolutely nothing to benefit their development. Contrary to old-fashioned beliefs, it does not build a more resilient dog or one who can cope alone. In fact, the opposite is true. Puppies that are left to cry it out are more likely to develop separation anxiety and can also face a host of other problems, including:
Increased fear of novel objects and experiences
More likelihood to startle at stimuli
Less ability to adapt to change
Increased chance of aggression
Reduced social ability
Reduced ability to learn
If you want a confident, resilient, and robust adult dog, do not leave your puppy to cry it out at night. It’s also perfectly okay to comfort your puppy if they are crying in their crate. Reassuring puppies when they’re scared does not make them more likely to be scared in the future.
If you were scared of a spider and I comforted you, would that make you more likely to be scared of spiders in the future? Of course not! Reassurance does not reinforce fear. What does make fear more likely is continued exposure to the fear at too high an intensity—i.e., continuing to leave your puppy scared and alone.
At What Age Do Puppies Stop Crying at Night?
If you’ve set yourself up for success, your puppy shouldn’t be crying at night at all because they are sleeping soundly next to you in their crate. If your desired goal is for your puppy to sleep somewhere else eventually, you can gradually start moving their crate further away from you over time. However, your puppy's confidence and development will determine how quickly this can happen.
If you move it too far and your puppy begins to cry, move it a bit closer again and try again in a few more nights. Remember that confidence ebbs and flows during development, and this will not be linear. One day, your puppy may feel very brave, and the next day, they may feel a little unsure. That’s perfectly normal, and it’s okay to take a few steps back now and again.
Typically, once puppies hit adolescence at between 6-12 months (depending on breed and size), they begin to feel more confident moving away from their caregivers and exploring alone. This is evolutionary. Before this age, there would be a risk to puppies being alone. Once they begin to mature, they naturally start to move away from the den and begin exploring the world more independently. At this age, your puppy will likely have the confidence to spend periods of time alone. Always bear in mind that this will ebb and flow, so be prepared to take it nice and slow.
Do Puppies Grow Out of Whining?
As your puppy develops, they should gain confidence and, therefore, whine less as a form of communication with you. Young puppies whine frequently to communicate their needs to caregivers, just like babies cry. As they mature and move into adolescence at between 6-12 months, the whining will decrease as they require less assistance from us and learn new communication tools.
It’s worth noting that leaving a puppy to “cry it out” will eventually result in your puppy stopping whining. However, beware of a puppy that gives up crying. This is a puppy that has learned that crying does nothing. Their body can no longer handle the level of stress they are experiencing, and they go into “shut down,” where they shut down all emotion and simply accept their fate. This is seriously neurologically damaging for puppies and can lead to many problems in adult dogs.
How to Punish a Puppy for Whining?
You don’t need to punish your puppy for whining. It’s simply a communication tool and an infant's way of asking for help. If your puppy is whining, go to them, comfort them, and teach them that when they are worried, you’ve got their back. If they need you, you’re around to support them. This is what builds a confident adult dog who is less dependent on you as they grow.
Verbally or physically punishing a puppy for whining would be like punishing a baby for crying. We need to support them as they grow. Silencing them does not resolve the reason why they are crying. Yes, they will likely be quiet, but they will still feel the emotions that caused the crying initially.
Shouldn’t I Start as I Mean to Go On with My Puppy?
The old school advice used to be to start as you mean to go on. Put your puppy in their crate downstairs and leave them to it. After a while, they’ll get used to it, right? Well, as we’ve discussed, this can have disastrous effects on your puppy's development.
You spent a lot of time choosing your puppy, researching, and gaining knowledge on how to raise them properly in the hopes of having a well-rounded and happy adult dog. Don’t let that go to waste by exposing them to high levels of brain-altering stress early on in their development. Start with your puppy in your bedroom with you, or sleep next to them downstairs. Provide comfort if they need it, and over time, gradually move them to the desired area.
We don’t send kids to university as soon as they hit school age, do we? We start them off in reception, and they learn gradually over a period of years. Puppies are no different, except they develop far quicker than children. So, start them off in reception (your room) and then gradually progress them through to university (the utility room).
Final Thoughts
If you need more support in your puppy journey, join us for our 6-week Puppy Life Skills course. We cover everything from socialisation to loose lead walking, recall, puppy biting, and more! We’ll set you and your puppy up for success with fun and engaging exercises each week alongside access to all of our training guides through our private Facebook group. Click on the link below to sign up!
If you’re struggling to settle your puppy at night or during the day, then get in touch!
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