How do I get my puppy on a sleep schedule?

Picking a wake up time and a bedtime and sticking to them within 30 minutes, even on weekends, gives a puppy's internal clock something to work with. Meals and the last toilet trip of the evening at consistent times reinforce the same pattern.

Rather than waiting for a puppy to crash from exhaustion, put it in its crate or pen for a nap after every 45 to 90 minutes of play, even if it seems reluctant at first. Puppies that never get scheduled downtime often become overtired and harder to settle come nighttime.

A workable pattern for an 8 to 10 week old puppy looks roughly like this: wake and toilet trip at 7am, breakfast at 7:15, play and training until 8, nap until 10, toilet and a short walk or garden time, another nap around 11, lunch at midday, and repeating that rhythm through the afternoon before a calmer wind down from around 7pm and a final toilet trip just before bed. The exact clock times matter far less than keeping the same order and rough spacing every day.

Write the actual times down for the first week rather than relying on memory, since it is easy to lose track of how long a puppy has been awake during a busy day, and a written log also makes it much easier to spot what is and is not working.

Weekends often derail a new schedule fastest, since the household is home and playing more, so treat weekend consistency as seriously as weekday consistency for at least the first two weeks. A puppy that gets a completely different rhythm on Saturday and Sunday tends to take longer to settle into the schedule overall.