My dog is about 9 months now, and finally getting to be reliable with potty training (pugs take awhile!) so I’d like to start thinking about training him away from using the crate when I’m not home. Right now, he’s in his crate overnight as well as when I’m at work or the gym, which is a good amount of time, though I do come home as often as I can, including at lunchtime. He doesn’t have a problem with it and isn’t destructive, nor is he seemingly unhappy when I come home, but I feel guilty about the number of hours he spends in his crate since it’s no longer strictly necessary. I’d like to give him room to stretch his legs during the day, and then still be crated at night – I don’t want him to get totally unused to the crate as it’s very useful in some situations, like when traveling, and he’s perfectly happy sleeping in there.
From what I’ve read, the idea seems to be to introduce being outside the crate when I’m gone gradually. The crate is already in a spare bedroom (next to my bedroom), so it’ll be easy to gate him off into a small space, and then gradually open up additional rooms. He’ll still have access to his crate if he wants to. The sites I’ve read also recommend starting with short periods of time and then slowly increasing, so I guess I’d start with weekends and being gone for 15 or 30 minutes at a time, then work my way up to the point where he can be alone at least 3 or so hours. At that point, I can start moving this into weekdays since I can move my lunch hour a little bit to accommodate.
Does anyone have any experience with this process? How did it go? Any problems I should consider with this plan? Is there anything that I should do other than try to dog-proof the room and provide some toys that will be (reasonably) safe while I’m gone? Anything I can do to help prevent backsliding on potty training? Is it too soon if he’s only about a month out from still having occasional accidents?
Step 1: Clean your house.
Step 2: Release the hound(s).
That’s really all it took for Toby. He’d been crate trained for almost a full year until one day I decided to just trust him not to tear the ever living shit out of my house. Go a week at a time giving him free reign during the two shortest consecutive blocks of time he’d normally be in the crate, and work up from there. If he’s good (i.e. nearly perfect) about going to the bathroom outside when he’s out of his crate, he should be fine.
Hmm, maybe I’m overthinking it, then. I will probably restrict him to one room at first just to watch for problems – when he was younger, he liked to hide his accidents – but other than that I guess I’ll just do gradual times.
I just bought a 2 year old that is crate trained. She understands outside means bathroom. I watch close that she squats and does her thing.
Unfortunately she also likes my laundry room.
The instant she finishes eating. Outside! If I hear her drinking water I rush to get her out. She’s very good at sneaking into the laundry. It takes 20 seconds to get a yellow puddle.
She never soils her crate. I doubt she can ever be trusted outside of the crate without supervision.
We are currently transitioning our dog off the crate. We have started by closing all doors to the carpeted areas and restricting both dogs to the hardwood portions of the house. Start off small and work your way up. Ours only has a day more to go and goodbye “baby house”!
We’ve crate trained both of our dogs. The transition was very smooth: one night we just started leaving the door of the crate open. We still followed the same routine: called them to the crate, had them get inside, turned out the lights and walked away. We just didn’t close the door of the crate as we left. No problems whatsoever.
I wonder if you might even start at night time. If he’s good about staying asleep all night, you could try putting a dog bed in your room and having him sleep there. Unless the snoring keeps you awake!
Our dogs are crated during the day and sleep by our bed, in their own dog beds, until just before dawn, when they are allowed to jump up and join us for the last bit of the night. It works out pretty well for all of us - that pack sleeping time is important to them.
I would also like to work towards not crating our girls during the day - but they are basenjis, notoriously destructive, and very very fickle! They can be on their best behaviour one day, and eat half a leather sofa the next. (Slight exaggeration. But only slight!) So we occasionally leave them out when we are not going to be out long, and if the house is thoroughly picked up, with no delicious books, shoes, bags, etc. to tempt them. These two circumstances, alas, do not often occur simultaneously. They too seem very content in their crate (they share a big one), with Kongs.
It’s not the snoring – he actually doesn’t snore much for a pug – but I like my sleep. Maybe sometime I’ll be patient enough to work with him to not get on my bed, but he’s a needy little dog sometimes. I wouldn’t be against him sleeping on the couch or whatever, though. I’m just concerned that he’ll need to go and won’t wait for me to get up. Mornings were always worst for accidents.
Plus, maybe it’s pride, but I’m a single girl and I don’t need the ‘baggage’ of a pet that HAS to sleep with me. Y’know. In case I ever get a date.
Bruce (my pug) can get into trouble, but generally only if there’s stuff lying around for him to get into. I’m going through a big cleanout and decluttering cycle so hopefully that will get rid of any temptations. Generally he’s quite happy playing with his toys and with the cat. I’m thinking he’ll be OK. Plus it’s a motivation to keep the house clean.
Giraffe - I think that sounds like a good idea whenever we’re ready to do overnights. Dogs love routines. Do you leave yours alone during the day outside the crate?
Acid Lamp - Pretty much my whole house is carpeted! Fortunately it’s mostly old carpet I planned to replace before I sell it, so I’m not too worried.
aceplace57 - my dog was the Poo Bandit for awhile. He’d stash a poop in about 10 seconds if he needed to go (and he always hid it, because he knew he should ask, but just couldn’t seem to hold it long enough). Pee was not a huge problem - he can hold it for a long time - but for the longest time, he had a completely hair trigger butt. Fortunately he’s better at holding it now, and better about making his needs known.
(The bad part is, once he learned that scratching the door got my attention, he now does it for everything. It’s like a baby crying. You have no idea what it means. It drove me nuts until I figured out that’s what he was doing - scratch, I need water. Scratch, I want to go outside and sit on the lead. Scratch, it’s kibble time and I do not have food yet.)
Yes. We got the dogs a couple of years apart, and for the first year we had each one, we crated them every night. We also crated them while we were at work at first, but that lasted a lot less than a year (I don’t remember how long), just kept/keep them confined to the kitchen and family room.
Right now our younger one is back in the crate at night, as she’s been eating tons of fruit off our fruit trees and then pooping on the floor in the middle of the night. :smack:
Had to chime back in as a proud pet Papa: Good Bye Baby house! I put it up last night and she didn’t notice a bit really. She watched me put it up in the storage loft and dragged the blankets that were inside it around for a while but has otherwise been perfect. Huzzah!
Pretty much how we do it. Dog number three (Kali, in the middle) is now 4 months old. She has never “had an accident” inside, due to our anal approach to crate training. Last night we didn’t close her crate door (which is in our bedroom). Good thing, because I forgot to set the alarm. Five minutes after our usual wake up time I got a tongue thrust into my snoring mouth. It was not my gf’s.
We started transitioning Simone out of her crate at night. Both dogs have dog beds right beside our bed. We don’t let them up on the bed (except for one night, when Sadie got really scared when a falling piece of furniture woke her up) but it’s not been a battle at all – they’ve been really, really good at respecting the boundaries we set. They went right back in their own beds without batting an eyelash the night after the Scary Night. It probably helps that we made their beds into positive spaces for them; when we’re tearing the house apart cleaning, Sadie in particular goes and sits in her bed because she thinks of it as her safe place.
fluiddruid – I insisted that the dogs not sleep in the bed, by the way, both for purposes of having a clearly defined boundary and because the bed has…recreational uses. But they do get “pack sleeping time” (I call it “puppy pile!”) on our terms – I’ll take a blanket and make a little pallet/“dog bed” for myself right beside their beds sometimes. Or my wife will lie on the big foam dog pad in the living room and watch TV with them. We come to them, not vice-versa.
Our dogs appear quite content with this arrangement, but they’re good at taking instruction and have few bad habits (for example, they’ve never messed with the trash at all, and they will leave a big bag of dog kibble alone until we pour some out for them). They’re not pugs, though; I don’t know how different pugs might be.
Cool! Is your Kali named after anyone? Our pup was named for our favorite bar in the world, Kali’s beach bar in St Martin. Can’t wait to show Kali (the human) our dog’s pics this winter!
She had that name when we adopted her, but we’re assuming she’s named after the Hindu goddess of destruction. Given what she does to so-called indestructable toys, it seemed appropriate. Also, she only has about 16 bytes of RAM so we didn’t think we could successfully teach her a second word.
My pug has never slept in the bed, but it’s hard to keep him out since I don’t use a bedframe; it’s right at floor level. I’m getting new furniture soon, so that’ll change, but I do like uninterrupted sleep. Between the dog and the cat, I imagine they won’t let me rest too much!
He is receptive to instruction, it’s just I’ve never had him loose much in the bedroom. Generally I prefer to keep him out of there and in the living area, except during the initial couple of months when he slept in his crate in there.
Oh, we definitely get pack sleeping time! Bruce is a cuddler and if I’m laying on the couch, he comes running to sit on or beside me. He likes physical contact a lot – if I’m on the computer, he’ll often curl up where he can make contact with my foot.
However, when he’s sleeping, he doesn’t really care for actual contact. He’ll pull away and sleep on the other end of the couch, or in his dog bed (about 2 feet away from where he lays down on/next to my foot at the desk). He seems perfectly happy sleeping in his crate anyway; I put an extra dog bed and a towel in there, and cover the whole shebang with a blanket if it’s cold. If he’s sleeping out with me in the common area, he wakes up whenever I move and follows me around constantly, so I think it’s good to have night-times be structured so he doesn’t have to feel on the alert every time I roll over. (I’m a very active sleeper.)
Anyway, we tried a little time with me gone today (around 15 minutes). It went fine. No signs of anxiety (he barely noticed me leaving or returning since he was playing with the cat). I also realized how much I do to keep Bruce in sight at all times, so I’m trying to loosen that more and see what happens. I need to get a doggy door to keep him out of the laundry room (where the litterbox and the cat’s automatic feeder are) before I can really give him free reign, though. I’m not sure what he’s doing back there but he’s definitely in there every time I forget to block the door!
We are just putting the final touches on housebreaking our 2nd dog. In both dogs cases, we started out by confining them at night and during the day when we were gone. Confining was usually defined as in the crate at night (covered with towels) and put into a small bathroom during the day. We felt bad about having them confined so much, but it was really the only option. We did what we could to get them a chance to stretch their legs in the morning while we got ready for work before they went into the small bathroom.
That continued for a couple months, with occasional times of being left open in the house while we were gone for an hour or so, as long as they had recently been out. After a couple months, then we started letting them out in the house at night. Since I’d often go to bed at midnight, I could let them out just before going to bed, and since the wife would usually get up at 7-7:30, she could let them out in the morning.
By the time another month or two had passed, the dogs pretty much ‘got it’ - in terms of their routine of when to go to the bathroom, and where they could go. Then it was just a matter of finding short days here and there to leave the dog out in the house during the day.
So, basically what you found out already - approach it gradually
