New Husky Pup vs crate/crying

Question
Recently I got the beautiful husky that I always wanted. She is very playful and we love her. My quesiton to you is HELP!!!! She is just over 8 weeks old and we put her in her crate when we have to leave the house and go to bed. It's been four days since we got her and she now views the crate as punishment.

Lets say I put her in the crate at 11:30pm just as I go to bed. She will cry so bad and I found myself staying in the room until she falls asleep. Then around 1:30 or so I wake to crying/howling. People tell me to just ignore it. Well we all have to work in the morning and she will cry for ever it seems. I found myself taking her out of the crate and taking her outside where it appears she goes pee and sometimes poo. Am I doing a terrible thing or is it, that she wakes because she needs to go do her business. We then repeat the process getting her in the crate and asleep and the pattern repeats. We feed her at 8am and at 6pm, we even tried taking up her water at 9 so she wouldn't get so full of water and need to pee. I new with puppies and regarless of what I have read about not getting a husky as your first pet, my wife and I did. Can you help me so she doesn't cry so much and she doesn't view the crate as a prison. Please Help the sleep deprived.

Answer
Unfortunately, this is something that you have to deal with when raising new puppies.  Here are some things to help:

1) Bladder size of a dog is such that a dog can hold it for about one hour longer than the number of months it is old.  So a two month old dog should be needing to go out about every three hours (even overnight, although often times you can add in an extra hour or so).

2) Try making the crate a comfy place to relax (although still not large enough for the dog to do anything in there but stand up and turn around in).  Inviting the dog in the crate for times that you aren't leaving her helps the dog to not view the crate as punishment.  Feeding in the crate can also be beneficial, as well as "fetch" like games that get her going in and out of the crate a lot.

3) If the dog is crying in the crate - ignore her.  Actually, this is the tough one on many levels.  Your job is to ignore her completely . . . unless she has to go to the bathroom.  My general advice, if she whines in the crate, take her outside.  No play time - she just goes outside.  If she takes care of business out there, there is a short time of petting and praising, and then back to bed.  If she does not, she goes back in the crate and that's it.  You don't want to encourage her to come out of her crate for anything other than the bathroom, but that is a completely legitimate reason to howl or scratch at the crate and should be answered.

Keeping a toy and a blanket in the crate can also help.

Hope that helps and feel free to write back.