Hi, My first time posting, we have a 12 yr old lab and a 1 yr old & I suppose it's like kids you forget aspects of your labs upbringing lol, we crate train our youngest & he is more than happy in his crate, but, he's a notorious lab! He chews anything & everything, which our 12yr old didn't (but, when she was a pup, we didn't have young children, so she had less temptation lol)....at what ages did you trust your labs out of the crate? I was brought up with labs, so feel pretty savvy in the care of them but this is my first ever male in 40 years lol, he's super loving, but probably the worst IV ever known for what he eats lol xx
Around 9 to 12 months if only for up to an hour. Any longer then I would still crate until about 15 months. Depends entiely on the dog though.
Thank you for your reply, we left him for about an hour an a half this morning, put him in his crate but didn't lock the door, thinking he would only get out if he leaned on the door, the only casualty when we got back was a small Sven figure off frozen which is no great loss with two young daughters ....both of which have been warned that anything they leave on the floor is fair game to him; will probably just keep doing this to see how he goes xx
We stopped closing the door on his crate at around 7 months. His behaviour and ability to calm himself dramatically improved at this point, and he started voluntarily going to bed when he was tired, something he had never done before. We found he only did naughty/ destructive things when he had an audience to play up to. I found it easier to leave him in peace to rest and not feel guilty about how much time he was crated. It also made us more 'agile ' responding to his episodes of overexcited behaviour -I could just exit the room as soon as he started to play up, rather than first having to coax him into his crate. If /when I get another dog I will not be using a crate at all beyond maybe the first few weeks.
There is no age guideline. It is more: When you are home and your dog is never doing any of the things you don't want them to do (attempting to chew stuff they shouldn't etc), then you can be more confident that they won't attempt it when you are not home. If your lab is ever attempting to do things you don't want them to do when you are home, you can't leave them unsupervised - or they will do it for sure!
