To crate or not to crate your dog? I don’t remember crates ever existing when I grew up. When we came back from Zimbabwe in 2010 we were used to our dogs standing in the back of our pick ups, in the bush, noses to the wind. It wasn’t until Lupin started living with us that we accepted that crating her in the back of our van meant she was calmer and safer. Lupin and Tuli happily jumped in them and slept whenever we drove anywhere. However, I did not think of using them in our home they are after all basically ugly cages.
Friends of ours had them set up in their homes and covered them saying their dogs liked them. I simply did not believe them! As I learnt more about dog listening I realised that using a puppy pen until after teething was a wonderful tool for their families. I was happy to call them a safe space and it was obvious puppies did too. I learnt that many dogs struggle with too much space in our confusing human world.
I still frowned upon ‘crate training’ and their use in the home until November 2022 and our winter in the Scottish Highlands started to get very cold. We are renovating an old stone croft house and our new utility/dog room with central heating are still a way off. My puppies were sleeping very happily in an unheated separate room. Lupin and Tuli slept in their beds in our bedroom where we had a wood burner.
So we invited the now year old puppies in with us to stay warm. All went well for the first few nights then at 2.30am one of them decided to get up and poo in the bedroom. Maybe it’s the change to their routine I thought, so I cleaned it up quickly and silently, by the third disturbed night I had had enough and when I heard the tippy tap circling walk put a light on – it was Myrtle. As I wanted to keep all the dogs together I decided I had no choice but to pop her in a crate the next night. In she happily went when I asked her and we all slept all night…until 2.30am and I heard tippy tapping again. There was Rosie now doing a poo! So that next night I popped her in the large crate with Myrtle, in she went quite happily, we all went to sleep…until 2.30am and there it was again…tippy tapping circling, now it was Violet doing the 2.30am poo. What is this I thought? A puppy conspiracy?!
I got out another crate and Violet who likes being on her own happily went into it to sleep all night. What blew me away was that each of them when asked happily walked in, let me close the door and they slept all night. Not just all night but until 8am. So my dogs happily stay fast asleep from 10pm until 8am. The crates were left open during the day and now Tuli occasionally decided to snooze in them too. Soon I had a problem as at night she wasn’t budging out of hers so we had to set up another crate. Tuli won’t let me shut the door, but she sleeps in there all night given the chance. Lupin shows no interest whatsoever stretching herself out on the now very spacious huge dog bed.
I must admit as a family with five dogs its been a gamechanger. They will all happily go into their crates and have naps during the day as well which means we can have more doors open and come and go freely as we renovate without worrying about them. I only close them into crates during the day occasionally for a few hours if I really need to.
You can’t force a dog into a crate or keep them in it if they are distressed. If you are having these problems then contact me to learn dog listening. I had been going to build a special dog room with raised cosy dog beds for them all. Now our dogs have shown us they are very happy in a row of crates!!
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