Crate training is widely agreed by dog owners to be the best technique to house train a puppy. You certainly need a crate for puppy crate training. A crate basically looks like a cage. It is used to restrict the movement of your puppy to a specific area for a short period fo time, e.g. when you can’t fully monitor her. Your puppy should be in that crate at all times unless she’s eating, going for a potty break outside with you, or playing under supervision.

The crate serves as your puppy’s den, which is a place where your puppy feels safe and secure, and enjoying spending time in, whether she’s sleeping, napping, or simply needs to be alone. Based on dogs’ natural dislike of soiling their sleeping area, your puppy will not want to soil her own resting quarters, so she will hold her pee and poop until she’s let out of the crate.

Selecting a crate

Choosing the right size of crate for your puppy is very importantI. If the crate is oversized, it gives your puppy space to sleep at one corner, and do her business at the other corner. This then defeats the whole purpose of crate training your puppy, and will set back the house-training process for several weeks!

When it comes to choosing the crate, get one that is big enough for your puppy to comfortably stand up, lie down or turn around. Don’t worry, though, as you don’t have to keep getting new crates to fit the size of your growing puppy. If you can buy just only one crate and use it until even your puppy gets bigger, you’ll save a lot of money in the long term.

Buy an adult-size wire crate and partition the inside space with dividers while your dog is a puppy. Boards or wire grilles serve well as dividers. When your puppy needs a larger area as she increases in size, you can then slide the dividers back to adjust for more space. Alternatively, you can build a crate yourself and replace it with a larger model as your puppy grows.

Making the crate inviting

You can make the crate a welcoming and inviting place for your puppy to go. You may lay a layer of thick blankets in the crate, and also place inside a chew or some toys for your puppy. The door of the crate should be open at all times to appear welcoming. However, the door should be tightly closed when your puppy is inside.

Remember: before your puppy is fully house broken, you wouldn’t want to give her total freedom in the house to avoid soiling incidence. If you let her to move around in every corner of the house before she’s completely house trained, you’re actually encouraging her to eliminate wherever she likes. And each time she does this, the risk of soiling incidence will increase.

Where to place the crate?

Whenever you crate train your puppy, keep the crate close to you. The ideal place for the crate is the hub of the family: usually the kitchen, or anywhere the family gathers. Keeping your crate puppy close to you not only makes your puppy house breaking process easier, since you can keep a close watch on your puppy’s movement, but also helps build the bond between you and your puppy. Your puppy also needs to feel like a part of the family, it’s important that she does not feel alone in a strange environment.

Related posts:

1. Puppy Crate Traing – Extending The Time In The Crate
2. Top Items To Buy Before You Start Your Puppy Crate Training
3. The Basics to Crate Training Puppies
4. The Basics of Crate Training A Dog
5. Puppy Crate Training – Starting Off

Tags: crate train a puppy, crate training your puppy, puppy crate training

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 25th, 2010 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Dog Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.