<human>: Provide a brief overview of the text.

Hi, I'm new to this subreddit. I tried searching for morning behavior problems but most of them were about barking. Though similar, I wanted to see if I could get a little advice about our issue. Some background: My wife and I have two dogs, a 1.5 year old male lab mix and a 6 year old female pointer/beagle/other. We're looking into training to get some of their behaviors in check, but this issue in particular is affecting our sleep way too much.

I get up around 5:00 for work. My wife doesn't have to get up til about 6:00 so I try to let her get more sleep. Unfortunately, the dogs have developed a terrible habit of getting up just before my alarm rings, or just deciding they are wide awake at some point like 4 or 5 am and reacting to every movement in the bed or the alarm itself as if to say "OH GOOD, you're awake and can feed us!!!" It's not really that they bark, more like they jump out of bed, jump around the room, wrestle, cry, etc. until one of us goes downstairs with them to feed them and let them out to potty. It's been this way ever since we got the boy (the lab), since the girl was content to stay in bed before, but when the boy gets up, she gets up too and cries even more than he does.

I know there could be a number of factors contributing to it, like boredom for example, or just the fact that we give in and reinforce it. When we ignore them they eventually lay back down, but start back up again any time they sense movement. Putting them in their crates for the night seems to help, but we feel bad because they already spend 9 hours a day in their crates while we're at work. I expect we should do a little more evening play time to try to get them to stay asleep longer, but if anyone has advice on how to curb/discourage the morning behavior, I'm all ears. Thanks!
<bot>: Dogs getting up before we do and make commotion until we give in and feed them. Looking for ways to break the habit.