How do I break the pattern?

My almost six-month puppy wakes me up every morning between 5 and 6 a.m. to go wee-wee. I wake up at seven....so I am pretty grumpy every morning when I can't get that extra hour's sleep. I walk him every night before I got to bed around eleven..sometimes it's later than that but it doesn't seem to change the time he wakes me. Should I take his water away after a certain hour in the evenings? I tried that and he wouldn't go to sleep until he had some water. So what do I do? This can't go on forever.... I hate seeing the sun rise every morning?
Peanuts mom

• Heres a suggestion. Might work and might not. Maybe the sun coming up in the morning is awakening your maltese. Try pulling a blind or something that he won't know if its light outside or not. You said your tired of watching the sun come up and maybe this is what is waking up the little maltese!?
  Kelly

• If you get any good suggestions on this, please pass them on. Lucy sleeps in my bed. Every morning I get kissed awake somewhere between 4:30 and 5 AM. Before the time "fell back" she was up between 5:30 and 6 (and I used to get up at 6, so this was OK) but her body clock never fell back along with the time change this winter (our first together). She sometimes can be coaxed to sleep just a little longer, but usually she just keeps kissing and whining at me until I get up and take her out. Often, though she will go back to bed after her walk and sleep for another hour or so. Personally, I just started going to bed an hour or so earlier to keep up with her. Hopefully when the time comes to "spring ahead" she will begin getting up at 6 again. I will be watching to see what responses you get to this "problem." Maybe we can all benefit. In the meantime though, I just follow Lucy's schedule since I figure that if she has to go and wakes me up to tell me, I have to do my end of the bargain and take her out and be thankful that she wouldn't dream of using the house for a bathroom!
  Cathy Brown

• While we are all pretty much owned by, and at the beck and call of, our animals, the idea is to be the alpha of the pack and get them on our schedule -- not us on their schedule. It is very good that your little guy is waking you to go out. Now the thing to do is help him to learn to "hold" it longer to be on your schedule. I have read the thing to do is when he wakes you make him wait 10 more minutes. Then when he is (hopefully) holding it ten minutes longer and waking you 10 minutes later, again, make him wait ten minutes longer before taking him out. Repeat this process until he can hold it longer and not waking you until an hour later. Be patient, a 6-month old dog is still young. Think about how old you were before you could hold it for as long as necessary.
  Rebecca

• Our Biscuit did the exact same thing, her internal clock would always get me up at the same time every night, and sometimes twice a night. I was exhausted and since my husband needed his sleep for work the next day, I was the one getting up. This approach worked for us. I started feeding her her dinner at about 4:45pm and didn't give her snacks or anything except she was free to drink her water. I also had water for her up in the bedroom and she would "tank up" before hitting the bed and then I knew I was in trouble. We removed the water dish from the bedroon and she went looking for it for the first few night, and of course, I felt like a heel, but it paid off in the end for all of us. Now she sleeps through the night every night. So try removing the water where she sleeps and I hope the results are as good as ours were.
  Claire