"Crate"

This girl loves her crate! Even though she spends as much as two hours at a time 'locked up' when we go out, she likes to be in there even when we are home. She especially loves to have a place to bury her treats or hide her chew toys (which are a stuffed gorilla and a house slipper)


We crate train Adrian mostly for our own sanity, but also for her comfort.(Dogs are den animals and are most comfortable if they can bed-down in an area that feels protected) It was useful when she was a puppy to contain her in a safe space until she knew the boundaries of the house; it also gave us peace of mind when we were gone. We knew that there was no way she fell in the toilet or ruined the clothes hanging up to dry.

Adrian crate trained in just a matter of days, but because she was used to pee-peeing and pooing inside her crate before we bought her, it took a long time to teach her to use the bathroom elsewhere. Putting her food bowl inside her crate helped to stop this because dogs naturally don't want to eat where they have also gone pee-pee.

Again, start the training sessions with a hungry puppy-- it makes the reward that much more enjoyable! We started just by sitting near her crate, putting a treat inside and saying "Crate!" Doing this enough times in a row will help her associate the word with going inside the crate to find a treat.

Sometimes we physically picked her up and put her inside to help her find the treat, but this may be stressful to some puppies.... all of these things are based on your dog's personality. Going into the crate should always be a positive experience (because it's their 'home') so we don't use it for discipline and we don't keep her in there so long that her little bladder can't handle it.

Another big benefit of teaching her to go in the crate when we command is containing her when we have visitors. They have no idea that the blur of brown and white barking at the door is not going to eat them alive- so we've recently begun the ritual of commanding her to go to her crate until our visitors are in the door and have taken off their shoes- it gives spirited dogs a chance to practice patience and then calmly greet our friends.

Happy Crate Training!