My Dog Question

Background can be found here , and more pictures can be found here

So to bring people up to speed, he’s now a month in my care, and wow did I get lucky. He’s chill when I’m at home, will play for a bit then go lie down. He sleeps through the night and holds it too. He’s mostly potty trained. (still a few accidents) He doesn’t bolt out the door when it’s opened. He’s great off leash (even thought he doesn’t get much chance, I live on a busy street) He’s people-friendly, and dog-friendly (well, he’s still getting used to the bigger dogs sniffing him) And he’s a lovable puggle.

Now on to the terror that lives within. I’ve been trying to crate train him, until he get’s more potty-trained. But lo and behold last week he figured out how to get out of his crate. When my sister went to pick him up to care for him in the afternoons, he was out. Nothing was damaged, although I did find a poo a few days later. I’ll assume it was from then. Yesterday I left him out except for one room. He poo-ed on his pee-pad in the morning and then shredded his pee-pad and the stairwell in the afternoon. I don’t know about the pee-pads but the stairs is because that is where I leave from. So that makes sense.
If I let him roam free he seems to do better than if I close doors.
What should I do? Risk it all and let him have free run of my house? Or go get a better crate and try to get him used to that? Thanks in advance!

As the owner of a lovable 1 year old puggle, let me just answer the question of whether you should let your puggle have free run of the house: Shit no. These are beautiful cuddly organic machines of the devil. Your puggle will wreak destruction such as you have never known - maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. You’ve heard the saying “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war?” Those dogs were puggles.

In summary, get a better crate. Teach your puggle to use it. My puggle likes her crate now that she’s spent a significant amount of time in it.

Good luck!

Peter Wiggen

The purpose of a crate is to limit your dog’s opportunities to make mistakes, thereby lowering the probability that he will learn bad habits.

Don’t undo what you’ve accomplished so far by chucking that out the window. He’s not old enough yet to give him carte blanche.

Not keeping up the crate training would be like saying your 7-year-old kid has been basically a good kid so far, so I’m gonna take him out of school and give him his own set of car keys.

Let him make it all the way to graduation. You’ll both be WAY happier for it.