We are having a problem with our 14 week old crocodile - er - I mean, lab-mix puppy. I read some of the articles on this forum about puppies and biting and I understand it is a phase, but it is still a very painful problem and I'm looking for answers on one particular issue. According to some of the articles I read on this forum about biting, to keep the puppy from biting, you want to try to keep him calm. If he is too excited and biting, the articles suggest that you might put him back in the crate to help him calm down. My problem is that my puppy seems like he wants to play all the time. He likes his crate, we are having good success house training him with the crate, and he sleeps well in his crate through the night. I'm afraid that if we start putting him in the crate when he is too excited to keep him from biting, he'll start perceiving his crate as a punishment and it will set back our successes in crate training for house breaking and sleeping through the night. How can you place your puppy in the crate to calm him down without him thinking that he is being punished? Any advice would be appreciated.
Hi @Adamf You are correct,--you don't want your dog to think of the crate as an aversive. Since you have a houseline on your dog, you can move the puppy to another room, such as the laundry, for the time-out place, when he becomes over-aroused.. Just clean up the area so that he can't get into anything that would be dangerous to the dog, e.g. detergent or other chemicals.
We had to put Kyko in the crate for biting as we don't have another room where he couldn't get up to mischief, we just scooped him up didn't say anything and popped him in. Literally a minute or 2 later when he was quiet and not barking we let him back out. He calmed right down just with that. He has literally had to be put in there twice & now when we say ah ah no biting he stops
oh I should add that was only when he went in biting in anger & meant it. If he's just mouthing but a little painful we just redirect him to a chew toy
Right, you don't want the dog to think of the crate as punishment - but as long as you give the dog a tasty Kong when put in there, they are unlikely to experience it in that way!! You can also play all kinds of training games around the crate - check out the DVD 'Crate Games' which you can get on Amazon. Teach the pup to go in the crate on cue, and to wait until told to come out again. Associating the crate from the start with all this fun training is going to make a big impression which isn't going to be lost from occasionally calmly putting the pup in there with a Kong. Crate training:
