Crate Training Your Puppy – Crate Fundamentals
Crate training is widely agreed by dog owners to be the best technique to house train a puppy. You certainly need a crate for puppy crate training. The crate is used to limit your puppy’s activity to a designated area when you’re unable to keep watch on her. Your puppy should remain in her crate all the time, unless she’s eating, playing, or when you are taking her for a potty break outside.
The crate is like your puppy’s den, a place where your puppy feels safe and at ease; this will be the space for her to enjoy her time sleeping, napping or simply being alone. Because it’s a dog’s natural instinct not to soil her sleeping area, your puppy won’t want to dirty her own resting place, so she is likely to hold her poop and pee until she’s out of her crate.
Choosing a crate
Picking the right size of crate for your puppy is crucial. If the crate is too large, your puppy will comfortably use one end as her sleeping area, and the other end as her toilet. This actually destruct the primary objective of puppy crate training, and certainly will impede the house training process for a few weeks!
When it comes to choosing the crate, get one that is big enough for your puppy to comfortably stand up, lie down or turn around. Don’t worry, though, as you don’t have to keep getting new crates to fit the size of your growing puppy. If you can buy just only one crate and use it until even your puppy gets bigger, you’ll save a lot of money in the long term.
Get a large wire crate (for adult dog size), then block off some of its inside space with dividers when your dog is still a puppy. You can use boards or wire grilles as dividers. As and when your puppy requires a larger area to move around as she grows, you can remove the dividers to give more space to her. If you prefer to build the crate yourself, that’s a good idea, too. You can later replace it with a larger model when your puppy gets bigger.
Making the crate welcoming
You can make the crate a welcoming and inviting place for your puppy to go. You may lay a layer of thick blankets in the crate, and also place inside a chew or some toys for your puppy. The door of the crate should be open at all times to appear welcoming. However, the door should be tightly closed when your puppy is inside.
Remember: before your puppy is fully house broken, you wouldn’t want to give her total freedom in the house to avoid soiling incidence. If you let her wander freely in the house before she’s fully house broken, you’re like ‘approving’ her to do her business anywhere she wants to. And each time she does this, the risk of soiling incidence will increase.
Where to place the crate?
When you are crate training your puppy, have the crate nearby. The best spot to place the crate is the center of family activity, usually the kitchen or the living area. Keeping your crate puppy close to you not only makes your puppy house breaking process easier, since you can keep a close watch on your puppy’s movement, but also helps build the bond between you and your puppy. Being new to the environment, it’s important that you make your puppy feel that she’s not alone, and that she’s now a part of your family.
