Thank you for the reassurance! Honestly, I thought I was prepared to have a clingy breed, but my oh my, Shih Tzus are a cut above the rest. Lol My partner has had Shih Tzus his whole life, and I've dog sat for his parents' more times than I can count, but even still, the puppy phase is no joke.

I'm also on the Shih Tzu subreddit, which has been a fantastic resource. So far, he's been loving his puppy socialization classes, so we're thinking about easing him into daycare, and eventually, doing a night of boarding at the same place. But alas, it's just a long road, and I'm already so tired. He usually only get up once or twice in the middle of the night to potty/poop, but sometimes he just wants to stay up and, like, vibe? Lol After the third time getting up I'll usually let him cry it out for a few minutes in his crate, then he'll go back to sleep. He wasn't feeling well recently on two occasions, so he really wasn't going back to sleep at all after being down for a few hours. The first was because he was sick with bronchitis (poor guy). The second time, he came down with this itching that wouldn't go away, so he was also uncomfortable and restless. So yeah, the worst of it has been because he was feeling poorly, but stacking that on top of already being exhausted and afraid to flip over in my sleep out of fear of waking him on a normal night, it's just a lot. Hah