This is our first time posting here. We are no dog experts so we hope that someone with more insight may help us.

We have a 5 year old male (neutered) Australian Sheppard/Border Collie mix "Murphy". Extremely loveable and attentive. He is a house dog along with our 4 mixed breed cats and 8 year old female (spayed) German Shepperd mix. We got Murphy thru an animal rescue organization about 2 years ago. These problems have been on and off the whole time we have had him. The problem with Murphy is that he seems to have periodic psycotic breaks. Everything will be quiet and then all of a sudden he will jump up and start running around almost like he is hearing things and freaking out. Sometimes it's an hour before he calms down other times it could be all day before he chills. This seems to happen especially at night (all the animals sleep in the house every night). The last several months he's been getting worse. Everynight at between 2 and 3am he will get up and start whinning and wanting to go in and out of the back door. Almost like he had a nightmare. It's not that he needs to go to relieve himself because as soon as we let him out the backdoor, he whines to get back in. He will also scratch at every closed door in the house, almost like he's afraid of the closed doors. This will usually go on for an hour or so before he calms down then he goes back to sleep and is out for the rest of the night.

anyone with any ideas?

thanks in advance for your help...

Definatley a trip to the vet is in order, I doubt anybody here could give you a real good diagnois just on the information you provided. I would pay real close attention to the enviorment in your area, any heavy construction or demolition going on? Any body blasting? Let us know what the vet says

nothing going on in the environment, everything is quiet. none of the other animals notice anything.

We have talked to the vet in the past concerning this. Their only advice was to prescribe tranquilizers and give him one every night. We have been trying to moderate his daytime "episodes" using melitonin which seems to help a little. but nothing so far has helped his nightime issues.

Maybe he can hear mice or bats?
Just a thought... it happens.

none around as far as i know. 2 of our cats are very adept hunters. none of the other animals hear or sense anything, but maybe his hearing is just more accute.