October 14, 2025 • 14 mins
This episode answers a question about puppies who just can’t settle down in the evening: "What are your best tips for “witching hour”? We have an 11.5 week Spinone Italiano that we brought home just over two weeks ago. He settles down for naps during the day after some play and training, but after his early evening nap, some play, dinner, potty, he gets over aroused and overtired and we cannot for the life of us redirect his mouthing to a toy or chew and he cries in his X-pen and jumps at the sides. We are trying to establish a routine with a licky mat, Kong or other soothing activity to transition him and bring down his arousal. But it is a nightly struggle!"
In this episode I talk about:
- Why it’s natural for puppies to be restless and difficult in the early evening
- Tips for dealing with a puppy who can’t control himself
- Management and bedtime routine suggestions
Visit our website madcapradio.com for further reading.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.
And this is a Puppy CulturePotluck podcast.
You bring the topics,
we bring the conversation.
Today's question comes from our puppy
(00:23):
owner, a discussion groupfrom our puppy owner course.
And it's about whatwe call the arsenic hour.
And here's the question.
What are your best tips
for, quote, witching hour, unquote.
We have an 11.5 weeks Spinone Italiano
(00:43):
that we brought homejust over two weeks ago.
He settles down for naps during the dayafter some play and training.
But after his early evening nap,
some play, dinner, potty,
he gets over aroused and overtired.
And we cannot, for the life of us,redirect
(01:04):
his mouthing to a toy or chew
and he cries in hisX pen and jumps at the sides.
We are
trying to establish a routinewith a licking mat, Kong,
or other soothing activity to transit himand bring down his arousal,
but it is a nightly struggle.
(01:26):
Wow. Yeah, I feel you.
It's what we call the arsenic hour.
You don't know whether to give itor to take it,
but somebody is going to die.
And I just want to say this is true.
Not just of puppies.
Although it's worse with puppies,of course, because they're worse.
(01:49):
But it's true of adult dogs as well.
Frequently my adult dogs will become just
restless and annoyingand just unable to settle.
Right around that 7 p.m.
hour.
It is often tied
to that timejust on the cusp of day and night.
(02:11):
Okay, so it's just maybe just past dusk.
I think that part
of the vigilanceand the hyperactivity that we see around
that time is a natural responseto the changing of the guard, so to speak,
because what you have is your daytimeanimals are all going to sleep
(02:32):
and your crepuscular animalsare coming out.
Those animals that come out right arounddusk, things like deer, rabbits,
skunks, coyotes, bears,
bobcats, foxes, and even bats.
These are a lot of the naturalpredators of wild canids,
(02:52):
so it's not surprising
that this sort of transitionfrom day into night, when these animals
all become active,can be a time of sort of hyper
arousal for dogs in general.
It doesn't make itany more pleasant for us,
but maybe it makes ita little bit easier to bear
(03:13):
just knowing that there is possiblyan evolutionary basis for this.
Okay,so what can what can we do about her,
how can we help this woman with the 11.5
week old Spinone?
First of all,
your puppy needs to learn cues
for when their opportunityfor interaction is open or closed.
(03:39):
For me, 7:30pm at night
I've already played with my puppy.
I've fed my puppy.
I pottyed my puppy.
I'm going to startgetting that puppy into a routine where
at that time they're going into bedbecause she is correct
that they do become overaroused at that hour,
(04:02):
but they're kind of buildingon all their insanity
of the day, and by the end they justthey got nothing left.
And again, we talk about thisin the course with self-regulation
that they gota tiny little prefrontal cortex
just dangling out therenot connected to the back of their brain,
and they don'treally have a lot of self-control.
(04:23):
And they probably use it up in the first15 minutes of their day.
By the time you get to the end of the day,they've got zero self-control.
They're not going to be ableto self-regulate.
They are going to bite you.
So at best,you're in a management situation.
For me,
I want to start getting my puppyinto a routine at night.
By this time where you're goingto get a bone, you're going to go to bed.
(04:46):
No matter what you do.
I am not taking you out. You're done.
Your day is over.
Now again, I can't really do this
topic justice herebecause I it's what the course is about.
You do have to make surethat you've been fair to your dog
that you've met all their needs, thatthey've had enough time out, etc., etc.
(05:10):
but assuming that the puppy legitimatelyhas had a good day
and it's time to go to bed, it'stime to go to bed.
The end of story.
Okay,so we're going to start teaching the puppy
that we're going to ignore themif they really mug to get out,
when you've given them a chew toyand they've had enough time out
and it's time to go to bed.
(05:32):
It's difficult for me to
answer this in a vacuum also,but I'm assuming that
they didn't just get home at 7:30pmand then the puppy's out of control.
I'm assuming they've been home eitherall day or for a while,
and this is the end of, again,a good day for this puppy.
So that's my first piece of advice,is that you do have to develop
(05:56):
a non-negotiable bedtimeroutine for your puppy.
Now, some people wrote
in with great adviceabout managing this behavior
because honestly,
sometimes you are going to be sort ofworking in that hot zone with your puppy.
Sometimes it's really not time
for your puppy to go to bed,and it is the arsenic hour
(06:17):
or close to it,or the puppy is just over aroused.
So, one
woman wrote in,which was a great observation
that she sits on the floorand plays with long toys.
So not toys where you're holding it
in your hand, where the puppy couldpotentially grab your hand.
So like a flirt poleor a long octopus toy or something
(06:42):
like that, just to have the puppies mouthaway from you as you're playing with him.
The other thing that people
mentionedabout the crying in the X-pen in the area
P, as we call it, is that sometimesdistance can be an issue.
In other words,if you have your puppy with you,
(07:03):
you'reprobably should be with you, close to you.
And if you have your puppy in their X-pen,it can be difficult.
If they're in their X-penand they can see you
and they want to get to you,and it's not so much
see you with their eyes as see you likeyou're within ten feet of them.
(07:25):
And they're like, hey, you know,I really I have a shot at this.
This is something I wrote an articleon this called Attention Monsters
that we hope that breeders have worked on,because it is
one of the three kinds of alonethat we want to teach our puppies.
We want to teach our puppies to be alone.
Alone, like in another room.
We want to teach our puppies to be alonewith you
(07:47):
just sitting there and them in an X penright near to them.
And then we want to teach the puppiesto be alone, like with you
doing stuff in the roomand the puppy in the X pen.
But it sounds like this puppymight not know those three kinds of alone.
So yes, you you should teach thosethree kinds of alone.
But right now, for expediency,you might try just moving the X pen
(08:13):
to a place where the puppy can't see you,
because this woman said that she didhave it set up so the puppy could see her.
Probably not seeing you would help.
I also just want to draw up herethat I'm not throwing
the breeder under the busand saying that the breeder didn't
teach the three kinds of alone,because it is possible
(08:33):
that the breeder taughtthose three kinds of alone,
because puppiesare very opportunistic creatures
and even if they've learned,
basic separation conditioning
when they get to their new homes,it does not take them long
to figure outthat their owners are a soft touch.
(08:54):
Okay.
So they'll get in there, they'll whimper,they'll cry once they're going
to get the attention, and they're like,hey, you know, I'm off to the races.
I know how to work this game.
I just want to clarifythat I'm not giving you
a blanket edictto let your puppy cry it out.
I think you have to do a balancing act.
(09:16):
You have to talk to your breederabout how much crate
and confinement conditioningthe puppy has had.
So you know what your baseline is.
Again, this is stuffwe all talk about in the course.
But for this woman, right now,what she's telling me,
I think maybe just moving that
enclosure further away
from where she isso the puppy can't see her,
(09:36):
and letting the puppy
work it out with thewith the chew bone or something over there
where the puppy doesnot feel like they have
an immediate opportunityto be let out by the owner,
I think that's going to bethe best course of action here.
So Rebecca, one of our moderators,said, you're on the right track.
(09:58):
The witching hour is due to fatigue.
I put mine away a bitbefore the time they start witching
and give them high value chew projectsor food puzzles to do and self-soothe.
But there's likely to be protestingearly on.
Yeah, this is a great point,which is what is your antecedent?
(10:18):
It's predictable.
If you start tracking it,it's very predictable.
When your puppy'sgoing to start getting out of control.
So you want to just get ahead of that.
And if you know, it's always,you know, right after it gets dark,
you know, maybe they just eat dinnera little bit earlier
and maybe they go injust 15 minutes before it gets dark.
(10:41):
Then one of the other
puppy owners in the group wrote this in,and I thought it was really sweet.
She said (10:46):
Hi Lisa, we're in a similar spot.
When Willy gets that way, usually
at about the exact timewe're trying to wind down for the day.
We put him in his area,which happens to also
be my home officeand is adjacent to the living room.
At firsthe really didn't like being separated,
but we always made it a good thingand gave him a Kong, bully stick
(11:09):
or something similar to distract himfrom the stress of being separated.
Now we just say somethinglike “time for a timeout”,
and he usually goes running for the officefor his special treat.
I just put him in therea couple minutes ago and he was asleep
in less than five minutes.
I struggledwith it at first because I'm a huge softy,
(11:32):
but it's worked out best for all of usnow that I've accepted
that he just can't settle sometimeswithout the separation.
Wow. You know, that's just thatreally warms my heart to hear that kind
of personal growth in a puppy owner that,you know, that realization that
it's a knife in your heart.
(11:53):
You feel bad when they cry,but sometimes they just need a nap.
So I liked this assortment of suggestionsbecause again,
we got some management suggestionsabout how to play with a puppy that maybe
is in a little bit of over arousalbecause you really
you're not going to manageor train out the puppy.
(12:14):
They're going to be puppiesto some extent,
and there is going to be some overarousal, especially as the day goes on
and you're going to have to worka little bit in that hot zone, right?
I mean, I think a lot of puppy ownersthink that with the right
training methods, they're never going tohave to experience a puppy.
So those management things
(12:36):
for when the puppy is beinga real full on puppy are great.
A bigger toy, a longer toy, avoiding
getting getting bittenby the way that you play with the puppy.
These are all great suggestions.
If your puppy is food motivated enough,
what I will dois give them a very high value bone
(13:00):
so that they'llthey'll be in the room with me.
But self-soothing by chewing.
So if I feel like I still really wantto have that puppy out with me
longer and also be shaping calm behaviors,be sort of conditioning the puppy
to have a feeling of calmness in the housewhen they're with me.
(13:21):
I will then sometimes give them that high
value chew that I might have otherwisegiven them in the pen.
I'll give thatto them in the room with me.
So I hope that those
are some good selectionsthat will help you listeners
when you're dealing with a puppyat the arsenic hour.
(13:41):
If you liked this podcast,you'll love our puppy owner bundles.
We have bundles with courses,books, and films.
Check them all out at puppyculture.com.
Well, that's it for this time.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.
And this is a Puppy CulturePotluck podcast.
You bring the topics,
we bring the conversation.
Today's question comes from our puppy
(00:23):
owner, a discussion groupfrom our puppy owner course.
And it's about whatwe call the arsenic hour.
And here's the question.
What are your best tips
for, quote, witching hour, unquote.
We have an 11.5 weeks Spinone Italiano
(00:43):
that we brought homejust over two weeks ago.
He settles down for naps during the dayafter some play and training.
But after his early evening nap,
some play, dinner, potty,
he gets over aroused and overtired.
And we cannot, for the life of us,redirect
(01:04):
his mouthing to a toy or chew
and he cries in hisX pen and jumps at the sides.
We are
trying to establish a routinewith a licking mat, Kong,
or other soothing activity to transit himand bring down his arousal,
but it is a nightly struggle.
(01:26):
Wow. Yeah, I feel you.
It's what we call the arsenic hour.
You don't know whether to give itor to take it,
but somebody is going to die.
And I just want to say this is true.
Not just of puppies.
Although it's worse with puppies,of course, because they're worse.
(01:49):
But it's true of adult dogs as well.
Frequently my adult dogs will become just
restless and annoyingand just unable to settle.
Right around that 7 p.m.
hour.
It is often tied
to that timejust on the cusp of day and night.
(02:11):
Okay, so it's just maybe just past dusk.
I think that part
of the vigilanceand the hyperactivity that we see around
that time is a natural responseto the changing of the guard, so to speak,
because what you have is your daytimeanimals are all going to sleep
(02:32):
and your crepuscular animalsare coming out.
Those animals that come out right arounddusk, things like deer, rabbits,
skunks, coyotes, bears,
bobcats, foxes, and even bats.
These are a lot of the naturalpredators of wild canids,
(02:52):
so it's not surprising
that this sort of transitionfrom day into night, when these animals
all become active,can be a time of sort of hyper
arousal for dogs in general.
It doesn't make itany more pleasant for us,
but maybe it makes ita little bit easier to bear
(03:13):
just knowing that there is possiblyan evolutionary basis for this.
Okay,so what can what can we do about her,
how can we help this woman with the 11.5
week old Spinone?
First of all,
your puppy needs to learn cues
for when their opportunityfor interaction is open or closed.
(03:39):
For me, 7:30pm at night
I've already played with my puppy.
I've fed my puppy.
I pottyed my puppy.
I'm going to startgetting that puppy into a routine where
at that time they're going into bedbecause she is correct
that they do become overaroused at that hour,
(04:02):
but they're kind of buildingon all their insanity
of the day, and by the end they justthey got nothing left.
And again, we talk about thisin the course with self-regulation
that they gota tiny little prefrontal cortex
just dangling out therenot connected to the back of their brain,
and they don'treally have a lot of self-control.
(04:23):
And they probably use it up in the first15 minutes of their day.
By the time you get to the end of the day,they've got zero self-control.
They're not going to be ableto self-regulate.
They are going to bite you.
So at best,you're in a management situation.
For me,
I want to start getting my puppyinto a routine at night.
By this time where you're goingto get a bone, you're going to go to bed.
(04:46):
No matter what you do.
I am not taking you out. You're done.
Your day is over.
Now again, I can't really do this
topic justice herebecause I it's what the course is about.
You do have to make surethat you've been fair to your dog
that you've met all their needs, thatthey've had enough time out, etc., etc.
(05:10):
but assuming that the puppy legitimatelyhas had a good day
and it's time to go to bed, it'stime to go to bed.
The end of story.
Okay,so we're going to start teaching the puppy
that we're going to ignore themif they really mug to get out,
when you've given them a chew toyand they've had enough time out
and it's time to go to bed.
(05:32):
It's difficult for me to
answer this in a vacuum also,but I'm assuming that
they didn't just get home at 7:30pmand then the puppy's out of control.
I'm assuming they've been home eitherall day or for a while,
and this is the end of, again,a good day for this puppy.
So that's my first piece of advice,is that you do have to develop
(05:56):
a non-negotiable bedtimeroutine for your puppy.
Now, some people wrote
in with great adviceabout managing this behavior
because honestly,
sometimes you are going to be sort ofworking in that hot zone with your puppy.
Sometimes it's really not time
for your puppy to go to bed,and it is the arsenic hour
(06:17):
or close to it,or the puppy is just over aroused.
So, one
woman wrote in,which was a great observation
that she sits on the floorand plays with long toys.
So not toys where you're holding it
in your hand, where the puppy couldpotentially grab your hand.
So like a flirt poleor a long octopus toy or something
(06:42):
like that, just to have the puppies mouthaway from you as you're playing with him.
The other thing that people
mentionedabout the crying in the X-pen in the area
P, as we call it, is that sometimesdistance can be an issue.
In other words,if you have your puppy with you,
(07:03):
you'reprobably should be with you, close to you.
And if you have your puppy in their X-pen,it can be difficult.
If they're in their X-penand they can see you
and they want to get to you,and it's not so much
see you with their eyes as see you likeyou're within ten feet of them.
(07:25):
And they're like, hey, you know,I really I have a shot at this.
This is something I wrote an articleon this called Attention Monsters
that we hope that breeders have worked on,because it is
one of the three kinds of alonethat we want to teach our puppies.
We want to teach our puppies to be alone.
Alone, like in another room.
We want to teach our puppies to be alonewith you
(07:47):
just sitting there and them in an X penright near to them.
And then we want to teach the puppiesto be alone, like with you
doing stuff in the roomand the puppy in the X pen.
But it sounds like this puppymight not know those three kinds of alone.
So yes, you you should teach thosethree kinds of alone.
But right now, for expediency,you might try just moving the X pen
(08:13):
to a place where the puppy can't see you,
because this woman said that she didhave it set up so the puppy could see her.
Probably not seeing you would help.
I also just want to draw up herethat I'm not throwing
the breeder under the busand saying that the breeder didn't
teach the three kinds of alone,because it is possible
(08:33):
that the breeder taughtthose three kinds of alone,
because puppiesare very opportunistic creatures
and even if they've learned,
basic separation conditioning
when they get to their new homes,it does not take them long
to figure outthat their owners are a soft touch.
(08:54):
Okay.
So they'll get in there, they'll whimper,they'll cry once they're going
to get the attention, and they're like,hey, you know, I'm off to the races.
I know how to work this game.
I just want to clarifythat I'm not giving you
a blanket edictto let your puppy cry it out.
I think you have to do a balancing act.
(09:16):
You have to talk to your breederabout how much crate
and confinement conditioningthe puppy has had.
So you know what your baseline is.
Again, this is stuffwe all talk about in the course.
But for this woman, right now,what she's telling me,
I think maybe just moving that
enclosure further away
from where she isso the puppy can't see her,
(09:36):
and letting the puppy
work it out with thewith the chew bone or something over there
where the puppy doesnot feel like they have
an immediate opportunityto be let out by the owner,
I think that's going to bethe best course of action here.
So Rebecca, one of our moderators,said, you're on the right track.
(09:58):
The witching hour is due to fatigue.
I put mine away a bitbefore the time they start witching
and give them high value chew projectsor food puzzles to do and self-soothe.
But there's likely to be protestingearly on.
Yeah, this is a great point,which is what is your antecedent?
(10:18):
It's predictable.
If you start tracking it,it's very predictable.
When your puppy'sgoing to start getting out of control.
So you want to just get ahead of that.
And if you know, it's always,you know, right after it gets dark,
you know, maybe they just eat dinnera little bit earlier
and maybe they go injust 15 minutes before it gets dark.
(10:41):
Then one of the other
puppy owners in the group wrote this in,and I thought it was really sweet.
She said (10:46):
Hi Lisa, we're in a similar spot.
When Willy gets that way, usually
at about the exact timewe're trying to wind down for the day.
We put him in his area,which happens to also
be my home officeand is adjacent to the living room.
At firsthe really didn't like being separated,
but we always made it a good thingand gave him a Kong, bully stick
(11:09):
or something similar to distract himfrom the stress of being separated.
Now we just say somethinglike “time for a timeout”,
and he usually goes running for the officefor his special treat.
I just put him in therea couple minutes ago and he was asleep
in less than five minutes.
I struggledwith it at first because I'm a huge softy,
(11:32):
but it's worked out best for all of usnow that I've accepted
that he just can't settle sometimeswithout the separation.
Wow. You know, that's just thatreally warms my heart to hear that kind
of personal growth in a puppy owner that,you know, that realization that
it's a knife in your heart.
(11:53):
You feel bad when they cry,but sometimes they just need a nap.
So I liked this assortment of suggestionsbecause again,
we got some management suggestionsabout how to play with a puppy that maybe
is in a little bit of over arousalbecause you really
you're not going to manageor train out the puppy.
(12:14):
They're going to be puppiesto some extent,
and there is going to be some overarousal, especially as the day goes on
and you're going to have to worka little bit in that hot zone, right?
I mean, I think a lot of puppy ownersthink that with the right
training methods, they're never going tohave to experience a puppy.
So those management things
(12:36):
for when the puppy is beinga real full on puppy are great.
A bigger toy, a longer toy, avoiding
getting getting bittenby the way that you play with the puppy.
These are all great suggestions.
If your puppy is food motivated enough,
what I will dois give them a very high value bone
(13:00):
so that they'llthey'll be in the room with me.
But self-soothing by chewing.
So if I feel like I still really wantto have that puppy out with me
longer and also be shaping calm behaviors,be sort of conditioning the puppy
to have a feeling of calmness in the housewhen they're with me.
(13:21):
I will then sometimes give them that high
value chew that I might have otherwisegiven them in the pen.
I'll give thatto them in the room with me.
So I hope that those
are some good selectionsthat will help you listeners
when you're dealing with a puppyat the arsenic hour.
(13:41):
If you liked this podcast,you'll love our puppy owner bundles.
We have bundles with courses,books, and films.
Check them all out at puppyculture.com.
Well, that's it for this time.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
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