I've got a puppy joining our family next weekend and I intend to crate train her. At night from day one, I'm going to place the crate right next to my other 2 labs downstairs. However, I am confused as to which of the following methods I should use! Pippa's 'The Gundog Club - The Right Start' puppy guide advises me never to respond to a puppy making any noise in their crate. Overnight she advises leaving the pup in her crate with the door closed for 6 hours - if you see she's messed in the morning, the following night reduce the time's she's left slightly. However, some articles on this website (which I believe are also written by Pippa?) advise I DO respond to her crying during the night and get up and let her out. I am going to use a large crate with a divider - a third option I'm considering is overnight taking the divider out and creating a sleeping area and a 'mess' newspaper area within the closed crate - and not responding to any crying during the night. Please can anyone offer me any clarification?
Hello there, and a very warm welcome. The Right Start is an excellent book - but it is a little old now. Pippa's book "The Happy Puppy Handbook" is more up to date. I personally would not leave a puppy in a crate if there is a risk of him or her soiling the crate, that's not good at all. It's also not good to create a toilet space in the crate. You depend on the dog's instinct not to want to soil it's sleeping area, it's den, in order to house train it at all (this is why dogs can be house trained, but some other animal can never be house trained). Eventually, the dog will see your whole house as its den - so don't do anything to damage that instinct to keep the den clean. So you either make sure you get up and let your puppy out of the crate well before there is a risk of the puppy pooing or peeing in the crate, or you leave the puppy in a pen, with the crate inside the pen, and a toilet area well away from the crate to deal with emergencies. I used a pen with my puppy.
I had a crate beside my bed for the first few weeks and took her out for toileting during the night and just popped her back in afterwards. No fuss or bother even when the crate was placed in the kitchen.
There's no right way to do it - you have to choose a way based on your circumstances. I chose to go with the method of setting my alarm to get up a couple of times in the night to let Willow out for a wee, carrying her outside and back to her crate without talking to her, other than to say "good night" when I popped her back in. I increased the time between alarms by 15 minutes each night. She wasn't a big crier, though. She cried for two nights, for a few minutes each time. I might have reassessed my approach had she been more distressed. I did end up sleeping on the sofa for a week or so during this time, when she had an upset tummy. At that time, as soon as she woke and cried, I did respond to her, because she really needed to go and it would have been cruel to not respond. I don't feel it made her more whiney after she got better, because she was making the noise to go out, rather than for attention. So, you have to learn to read your puppy, too
Oh, and welcome to the forum!!! Tell us more about your puppy; do you have a name? What colour is she? Am I right in guessing "Sunshine" is her name, so she's yellow? That may be a little too obvious, though - from someone with a yellow dog called Shadow
Hi, There is a definitive correct way with this process - We intended to crate train our Lab from day 1 and read so much about how to encourage her to use the crate and it was more simple than any information lead us to believe it would be! We recommend a crate that's only big enough to fit a medium sized bed in, ensuring the bed fills the crate in its entirety, adding plenty of comforts i.e a blanket smelling of mum/siblings and a soft toy.. When our pup came home, we put the crate in the lounge ensuring the lounge door was closed and allowed her to explore the room, she found the crate and happily walked in and made herself comfortable.. As she was happy in the crate from day one we decided at night to place the crate in our bedroom, covering it over with a sheet. She would sleep about 2/3 hours before waking up and crying, you must be prepared to get out of bed every few hours and take pup to desired toilet location, this was the garden for us and she learned that the toilet was outside very early on (now walks to door when ready and only goes toilet outside). When waking up in the night avoid giving pup any fuss/attention, it's out of the crate, straight to the toilet and straight back in the crate. When our pup whined in the crate, we found a soothing sounds video on YouTube, it was waves or birds tweeting or something! Played it on the iPad next to the crate and it helped us all sleep haha! Hope your pup settles well, crate training is an absolute blessing! All the best.
Hi @Joshua and welcome to the forum. Why don't you head on over to Introductions and tell us a little bit about your girl. We love pictures, too, so share away!
