Hello, never been here before and just joined, hoping to get a lot of mileage out of this community. You all seem great. I was hoping for some advice on how to make Juno LOVE her crate. She is 14 weeks old and I've been trying to teach her "Go to your crate!" as a command, but today when I said it she immediately turned and ran in the other direction. Uh oh. I think she's learned that it means she's going to be put away for a while. Advice on ow to get her to both love her crate and enter it on command would be greatly appreciated.
When we first got our puppy, she had all her meals in the crate and lots of pieces of kibble put in there throughout the day. Now, I either have a treat in the crate waiting for her, or I throw in a treat as I say the command "in". Last week I put a piece of dried liver in there and she smelt it from the other room and ran in really fast! If I have to leave her in the crate, she has a kong with treats and kibble in it, again, its in the crate before I ask her to go in there, and often she is so busy eating it, that my leaving is a non-event!
My suggestion , similar to what Elsie has said , is to associate the crate with good things , if you have not got one already I would recommend buying a kong ( at your pups age the pink one would more than likely be the one to go for ) stuffing the kong with part of her daily food allowance and putting that in there with her .Kongs are so versatile as you can use them in several different ways , my Bella just loves hers .We started her off with a small amount of her daily allowance of food in it so that it was easy for her to get to it and then over time worked our way up to stuffing it with a bit of wet food mixed with kibble and then frozen.By placing this in with her when she was told to go to her crate she began to realise that when she was sent to her crate to rest she was given something yummy .It got to the stage where at night she would pester us to go in her crate at bedtime ! lol
Yes; make the crate a great place to go! I would also; put something yummy in the crate and tell pup to "go to kennel". I would also, put the crate in the living room and leave the door open with toys, treat ect in there and let pup go in on his own - while i would be home and pup wouldn't have to be locked in there. So they would get used to it that way as well. And then they do not associate the crate as just a place to go when you are leaving, but a "safe" place for naps and such.. If this makes any sense lol
Thank you for the advice; I have been feeding her meals in her crate, but have since made this thread started to give her a kong with some frozen peanutbutter inside some of the time I leave her in her crate. Hopefully it helps! She already gets excited to go in her crate when she sees me grab the kong, so she's picked up quick that picking up kong = treat time.
