We have a new puppy. She has a crate to sleep in, but because puppies cannot control their bladders for more than a few hours, her crate is inside of a 18.5-square foot pen in our kitchen. The pen has a few toys and some “pee pads.”
She usually sleeps in her crate, but we rarely shut her door.
At her age, it’s not safe to allow her to roam around the house. Also, she’s not yet house trained. However, she has never peed or eliminated in her crate.
I’d never heard of crate-training before a visit to the US where a veterinarian friend would pen her dog up in a crate if ever she left the house. The cats roamed free. The dog would, apparently, mess things up otherwise. It was not a small dog and could only just turn around in the crate.
In the UK I’ve never ever seen anyone pen a pet dog up in a crate of any size. The dogs either roam in the garden (free, with a kennel, like Snoopy, or, rarely, on a lead) or roam in the home - usually with trained boundaries like no going upstairs - sometimes with a door to give them access to either home or garden. If you can’t train your dog well enough to not go mad while you’re away for a few hours, you don’t get a dog.
Having a crate functioning like an indoor kennel as a home base for a free-roaming dog is different, since a couple of people mentioned that. That’s just like a dogbed with a roof and walls - they can still explore the rest of the home as much as they’ve been trained to.
Cage training is cruel. It takes hands on diligence to train a dog. Locking them in a tiny cage solves nothing. It just delays training until it is more convenient .
Gonzomax, what do you suggest for a puppy if not a crate? Do you just let him roam the house at will, piddling on and chewing anything he pleases? Or are you one of those who keeps his dog outdoors 24/7, alone and barking, no matter the weather? My neighbors would not enjoy that, believe me.
I didn’t want to pen him in the laundry room with pee pads/newspapers either, because I wanted to train him from the get go that eliminating in the house was not allowed under any circumstances.
My puppy was a special case for 2 reasons; 1. He was a shelter dog and learned to pee in an airline crate because he was kept in one overnight at the shelter, and 2. I am not currently working outside the home so I was here to let him outdoors to help housetrain him. I got lucky and rarely needed to crate him. But for some people crating is the only way they can housetrain a puppy, or save him from eating things around the house dogs aren’t supposed to eat.
Trust me, if I built a crate around the couch and stuck my dog in it while I was at work he wouldn’t even notice.
Crates were a lifesaver when my Weim and Lab were younger. My ex-wife and I had slightly staggered schedules, so the dogs weren’t in the crates that long, six hours max. As I recall, they slept most of the time they were crated. Of course, as soon as I got off work, I dashed straight home, grabbed both dogs, and made them swim for two-three hours after toys. They slept on the floor during the night, though the Lab would use her crate as a bed about half the time. The crate was very helpful in housebreaking the Lab. The Weim hates her crate now and instead sleeps on her side of the couch during the day.
I admit I don’t understand crating for 18+ hours a day. At that point, why not have fish for a pet instead? That said, I’ve talked to many people who swear by crates and the dogs seem happy, bonded, and wagging. Certainly a lot better behaved than a relative’s two dogs that are chained out back all day, are starved for attention, and consequently act nuts.
Hell, if I built a crate around my husband’s easy chair and stuck HIM in it, he wouldn’t notice. Or care, as long as he had a clear view of the TV and access to his remote. I’d have to let him out every four hours or so to pee, but otherwise…
I have an 85lb lab that we crate trained. Easiest dog I’ve ever trained. We’ve been able to leave him, unattended, in the house for as long as 8 hours with no accidents or chewing of any kind since he was about 8 months old (he’s 3 now). He has a giant pillow on the floor in the front family room that he sleeps on alot.
Still, he regularly crawls into his crate that LOOKS too small for him (it’s a 36" cage style). He can get in, barely turn around, and lay his head to where it points out to see everyone. He does this on his own with no pressure from us. He’ll sleep in there for HOURS. He goes in there on his own when we go to bed and he’ll stay in there, with the door open the whole time, for an hour after everyone wakes up. It’s his “cave” I guess. He also runs to it when he DOES get in trouble, or if he knows he’s done something bad.
The only times I’ve locked him in his crate at night are the few times he’s had the shits. Not so that he will shit himself, but it makes him bark when he needs to shit so I can get up and let him out. He is not accustomed to waking us up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night as he has an iron gut and a 10gallon bladder, so the few times he’s REALLY needed to go he didn’t really know what to do and shit going down the carpeted stairs. UGH.
He’s taken to waking my daughter up at night by scratching her door and then she’ll wake me up to let him out though.
I agree the cages can be abused, but as others noted, dogs love dens.
We used to put an end table against a corner wall and put the couch on the other side. Thus the end table was against the back wall, and the right wall. The couch was against the end table’s left side. This left only one way to get under the end table.
My dog loved this. He’d go in, and it seemed too small but he’d manage to turn himself around face first and stay. Why? My guess is this way it was impossible for anyone to get at him, except if they went through the front, and that meant getting past his teeth.
He was fully protected on three sides and his teeth would protect his front side. So the this end table “den” provided all the security Mr Dog needed.
In the Winter if we got a lot of snow we’d pile it up as we shovel it and the dog (he was a collie/shepherd mix) would dig into the pile and make a snow den again protected on all three sides and from up top.
A few years ago my cousins had to keep their daschund puppy in his crate when they came over for Christmas, because he kept chewing everything around the house. He had also just had surgery after eating a dish towel, that had to be removed from his intestines.
My dog is six years old and she still sleeps in her crate (we just can’t trust her out in the rest of the house at night, sadly – she’s not allowed in the bedrooms at ALL, for example)
She likes it, because it’s all nice and cozy – she has her bed in there, with cushions and a blanket thrown over the top to keep her warm.
The ONLY problem now is that Annie likes to make her bark and tries to jump on the crate while she’s sleeping. Fortunately, she’s growing out of that.
Lexie’s perfectly happy in her crate. At night when it’s bed time we take her outside, and then my mother puts her in her crate, she goes right in, curls up and goes right to sleep.
Is she still chewing on stuff or is it a potty issue?
I guess we’ve been lucky. Boomer never chewed on anything except what we gave him. He was a year old when he came to us, and somebody must have trained him really well. Sadie is 7 months old and chews socks, shoes, underwear, washcloths, and paper (she loves paper) so we’re adapting, keeping things out of reach. She hasn’t shown any interest in electrical cords or furniture yet. She’s been housetrained for a couple of months – no accidents, even overnight.
We debated getting a crate, but one of us is almost always home, so we’ve managed without one. She hasn’t chosen a den space. I keep waiting for her to do that but she seems okay with the couch, or under the desk at my feet.
Bullshit. The crate is used as a part of training until the dog is housebroken and learns what parts of the house he is allowed into. It’s not a punishment.
You know, I hear tales of people that keep their actually human children in little pens at night as well. Damn, how cruel.
Chewing. She was actually really easy to housebreak.
Well, it’s not so much chewing is that we can’t trust her NOT to get a hold of something, then chew the hell out of it – and ruin it. That and if she DOES get something, she will NOT let you take it away from her. You have to bribe her. She gets really nasty. She isn’t even allowed to have toys anymore, because she’s just too possessive.
On the other hand, she IS allowed to be out when we’re gone. Go figure. I guess she’d probably just want to go and sleep with my dad, and then get pissed when she’s not allowed. She got really upset once when my dad had the flu and she wasn’t allowed to go in the bedrooom with him.
(Yes, I realize she should have been trained better. My mother took her to obedience classes, all of that. She’s a sweet dog, but extremely dominant.)
Oh shit, Annie was just at the crate again. dammit Poor dog, she just wants to sleep.
Right. Crate training is as different from more-or-less permanently crating a dog as dropping your kid off at daycare is different from dropping him off at daycare and not coming back for a week. One is normal, the other is abuse or abandonment.
People certainly do use crates as an excuse to avoid making much effort on their dog’s behalf, but people do all kinds of terrible things to animals and to each other. That doesn’t in itself mean crates are evil.
That said, we crated our Simone for a long time*, and she remained willing to go into the crate whenever asked. She balks at going outside when it’s raining or cold, so I conclude that the crate wasn’t a bad thing, or she would have balked. But we no longer crate her; we now use doggie gates to separate the dogs during the day.
edit= a long period during which she was crated daily, but only for 4 hours at a time, maximum, not for extended periods of confinement
Crate training is used pretty extensively on the show “Its Me or the Dog” which was originally filmed in the UK. So it certainly isn’t unknown there.
Yeah. Our adult dogs (all have now passed on) weren’t crated after puppyhood, even when we were at work. All they did was sleep when we were gone. We did have a chewing issue, especially with my Border Collie (when he was bored), but I kept things picked up and put away and gave him things he was allowed to chew. Nothing like a chewer to improve housekeeping habits!
When my Border Collie hurt himself badly at age 10 (nerve damage; he had very limited us of his back legs) I thanked my lucky stars he was already crate trained and would go in with a “kennel up” command. He had to be kept very quiet with limited movement to heal, sorta like doggie bed rest. The best time to crate train isn’t when your dog is injured. I was so happy I didn’t have to teach him to willingly enter a crate, and that the crate is a place of safety. He knew it already, and accepted being in it. And he healed up with the rest.
Our dog house-trained just fine while using the entire kitchen as a “crate”. He only needed newspapers down in the kitchen for about six months.
I didn’t want my dog to ever think that going in the house is OK - newspapers or not. Potty is an outside-only activity here and going in the house is unacceptable.
I think I must have a very different idea of what crate training is, then. If anyone here put a dog in a crate then they’d probably end up losing the dog to animal welfare, so I’d be absolutely amazed if they were doing that on a TV show. Are you lot talking about outdoor kennels instead, or really HUGE crates that are actually rooms, or shallow crates being used as dog beds, or something?
As to how people cope with puppies that haven’t been fully trained yet - generally the puppies sleep in the kitchen or some other room where accidents are easy to clean up and there’s not too much to chew, and spend any alone time in there too. They get rewards for pooing outside or on the sheets of newspaper put down for them, same as dog training across the world I guess.
Not at all, Dog Trust recommends crate training for housebreaking and behavior issues up to 8 hours at a time (overnight).
http://www.dogstrust.org.uk/az/i/indoorkennel/
Of course they state that a puppy should not be left in the crate longer than 8 hours at a time, or ever as a punishment. That is crate abusing, not crate training.
I believe RSPCA also recommends crate training, their site is down right now though.
