Crate Training - Dealing with Common Problems

Dogs

If properly introduced and properly employed, your dog's crate can become its favorite resting place and retreat. Many owners erroneously assume that a crate is just something you have around during a puppy's first few weeks at home to assist with housebreaking. But crates are far more versatile and valuable than this and should really be a lifelong feature.

Dogs are den dwellers by nature and if you give away their crate once they're housetrained they will find other small spaces in which to sequester themselves when they feel like getting away from it all. Why deprive them of their original den and enforce them to hunker down under a coffee table instead? It just doesn't make sense.

Good Things About Crates

They are den-like and can provide the dog a place of security and comfort.

They serve as the dog's own personal space (like a teenager's own room, away from the family).

When traveling, crates provide safety for you and your dog. Also, some hotels require that dogs be crated.

Anxious dogs with borderline separation anxiety or thunderstorm phobia may elect to go into their crate as a safe haven, especially when their owner is not around (Note: the door should be left open).

Crate training should begin the moment you bring the young pup home. As you walk in the door, pup in arms, the crate should be there, properly equipped, as a retreat for the youngster from that day forward. If the pup's acclimation to his new crate is performed thoughtfully and patiently, there is no reason that your pup's crate should not become its friend for life. However, if mistakes are made at this critical time, a puppy and, then later the grown up dog, can come to loath and detest this small space that should have become his home.

Mistakes That Make a Crate Aversive

Forcing a pup to go inside a crate when he doesn't want to.

Having a crate that is too small for a large pup so that he is physically restricted.

Having a bleak interior to the crate (no blankets, no toys, and no treats).

Leaving the pup in the crate for too long at a stretch or for too long over a 24-hour cycle.

Using the crate as a place of punishment ("time out" in the crate).

The Result of Crate Aversion

If a crate has been rendered aversive to a pup by any one of the means listed above, he will not want to go inside it, will complain when confined, and may injure himself in frantic attempts to escape. In addition, a pup that is confined in a crate too long may be forced to urinate or defecate inside it. Once the sanctity of the crate is defiled in this way, it may no longer be a useful tool for housetraining. Pups can't tell you if you are doing something to them that they vehemently deplore, so instead they act out their grief. The behaviors we see in crate-aversive dogs are, to owners, crate-training problems. They are:

Pups acting aggressively, nipping or biting as you try and shove them into the crate.

Protest barking after you have shut the door, or may scratch frantically in futile attempts to escape.

Biting the door of the cage in angst.

More passive dogs, rather than acting out in the ways listed above, internalize and displace their thwarted emotions by either a) licking either the inside of the crate or themselves, b) turning in small circles within the crate (if space allows) or c) eating their own excreta.

All these problems appear to be diverse but, in fact, are all caused by the fact that the pup was not properly acclimated to its crate or that the crate was abused by the pup's owner, rendering it aversive to the pup.