It's been 12 nights that Skye is sleeping in the house with the door closed, and the bedtime is becoming a routine! Most of the time, Skye comes by herself in the house. She usually goes directly in the corner behind the chair in the living room, and then enjoys the lick mats. During that time, we close the door and deposit the highest value treats near it so she finds them later when she checks the door. When she doesn't come by herself, we've been able to ask her to go inside by telling her "bedtime" and pointing to the door. We can tell that she doesn't like it and is a bit stressed when we do that and I am not sure how to improve that, maybe just time? But it's much better than physically herding her inside or even having to put up the temporary fencing.
Most of the time, she sleeps soundly throughout the night. A few times, she barked as she must have heard/seen something and eventually settles down relatively quickly. If the barking is escalating and she starts pacing and whining, we go outside with her (we quickly put the fencing up first) and check out with her what's going on until she calms down.
We do that to show her that she is not trapped in the house and avoid another setback, but also to control the outing (no play, no chasing, no barking outside...).
She wakes up in the morning when the chickens do. She comes to our bedroom and excitedly asks us to open the door. She immediately goes in the yard and usually curls up somewhere while we prepare breakfast.
This morning, the chickens were particularly early, so we went back to bed after opening the door and she surprised us by coming in our bedroom and finishing her night in her nook with us.
She is also coming more often in the house to take a nap on her bed.
I really hope we are over the setback and on our way to a new routine.
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