Our little furry friend will be joining our home on Mon 12/23. I am a little nervous as it has been a long time since we have had a puppy in the house. I have never crate trained a dog and looking for suggestions, idea's and anything you can help with training. Thanks Donna
Hi and welcome, your new pup must be with you now, your very brave getting one at Christmas!! Hope all is well.
How exciting. Crate training worked really well for us. From the start we had their beds in the crates but left the door open except for overnight. They love to go in and actually it will be hard to get rid of the crates when the time comes as they see it as their space. They'll often voluntarily nap in their crates during the day too. Crate training sped up toilet training, and meant they didn't get into the habit of chewing furniture when left overnight. When they were young we got up once in the middle of the night to let them go out to the loo, but now they are 9 months old they happy sleep through 8-9 hours and only wake up when they hear us come in, which is fab. We are lucky as both at home with them all of the time, so never really crated them for any length of time during the day, though occasionally for an hour or two back when they were younger if we both had to go out. Now if we have to leave them for a little while in the daytime they have the run of the kitchen and behave very well. Tend to have a 3 hour max limit for leaving them, but I am aware many people do longer without problems, but that's not for us. We use the command "bedtime" and they'll hop right in!
I fed my 8 week old puppy exclusively in the crate for a couple of months. I used the word “Crate!” whenever I put his food in. It really gave him a positive association to be put in the crate. I also crated him at bedtime until he was three months old. By then he was starting to outgrow the smaller crate I had him in, and did fine sleeping on the dog bed I had in the bedroom. He’s six months old now, and I crate him in a larger crate about three hours a day about four days a week.
