Hello there. Our 3 month old yellow lab Lilly is like most puppies...a hand full. She plays, annoys our older dog, pees and does all things puppy. However after a while we get tired and need a break. My wife and I were playing tag team supervising all weekend as we tried to get things done. My wife is reluctant to put her in her create for a "human timeout" because she spends a lot of time during the day in her crate. So my question is, just how much crate time is too much? She likes her crate and doesn't really have a problem going to it and napping in it. But man that little dog wear's me out.
You have done the hard work in getting her to like her crate. Use it She won't come to any harm if you pop her in the crate from time to time. There are times when it just isn't safe to,have a pup around. There are times when you just need a break from the little 'tyrant'
A rule of thumb I heard for crate time is one hour plus one hour per month of age. So 4 hours for a 3 month old. But, is that total per day? Or is it between breaks out? Probably a puppy needs out more often than every 4 hours to pee. Once a puppy can control her bladder that rule might have an eight month old puppy crated for 9 hours a day. There are no studies to confirm but my Vet believes too much crate time is why he is seeing more puppies and adult dogs with UTI, neuroses and joint ailments from not enough free movement as puppies. Some people do leave their dog crated for 9 hours while they are at work. I decided, rather arbitrarily, that my daily limit would be three hours. 3 hours a day, no more, in the crate. We did have a crate, we put it in a pen with the door open or for one in our gated kitchen. Worked fine for us though puppies can destroy your kitchen and hurt themselves, we were lucky ours did not. Puppy got used to the crate but could leave it when they wanted. Oban in particular always felt the heat and would move in and out of his crate to find a cool spot to lie in. We only ever had one dog at a time, I can imagine the pen or gated room might be harder to do with two. And since the crate was in my kitchen there were a few times the crate door was shut, gives me the heebie jeebies to be cooking and moving pots of boiling water around with a puppy nearby.
I run home for lunch an let her out, so she is not crated more than 4 hours at a time, except at night. My house has a open floor plan so giving her more room is going to be rather difficult. I guess I am going to have to try to convince my wife to get more puppy gates.
I don't crate piper. But we have a baby gate on the 'dog room' (small bedroom) so that gets closed on them at night and if I'm out and she's clean in it. She has a bed next to Rocco which has been the single biggest thing in getting her settled. She adores him xx my friend crates her lab, Nidge. He loves his den. Horses for courses.
Puppy pens are great, much more room, I wouldn't crate a small pup for more than a few hours at a time and when they are really young they'll need out frequently for wees. I am going to be forced to crate my 13 month for several months following her op and dreading it, I just feel really uncomfortable crating dogs, but that's just my opinion, I don't have a choice in this situation unfortunately, but as a pup she had an open crate in half the kitchen with a baby gate and was fine and then when we moved house I just got her a big puppy pen. Now she's free roaming downstairs ( until next week) . Pen and crate is good for some quiet time though , I remember the need for some breaks!!!!
This sounds a lot, to be honest - so is that she is crated in the morning, in the afternoon and over night? That's an awful lot for a 3 month old puppy. I like the ASPCA guideline on how long it's ok to crate dogs for. I think this applies to the whole day (ie that's not 2 lots of 1 - 3 hours for a 3 month old puppy, it's one period of 1 - 3 hours) but probably does not include the overnight time: 8-10 weeks 30-60 minutes 11-14 weeks 1-3 hours 15-16 weeks 3-4 hours 17+ weeks 4-5 hours My target to leave my adult dog is no longer than 4 to 5 hours in any 24 hour period, although sometimes my work means he has to go a bit longer than that time to time. He sleeps with humans overnight, on our bed, so the nighttime period doesn't mean he spends even more time alone.
My girl has only ever been crated for shopping trip so a couple of hours and overnight. I never physically crated her at any other time. Least time possible is to be preferred
