Crate this!!

[Paula & Greg]

The great crate debate... Here we are anticipating this new puppy in our little town home south of Denver. In one of the 30 or 40 questions I ask the breeder, I try to figure out what kind of crate to buy. She initially crate trains the puppies and highly recommends that we follow through with crate training when we get home.

Now I've never done this before...we always just house trained our dogs by taking them out frequently and leaving lots of newspapers around (disadvantage of getting news over internet - no newspapers). But we decide to take the trip to PetsMart and get the 'large wire crate' recommended by the breeder. This is one of those that evidently folds up. We thought we could take it in the Trooper when we travel, set it up in motel rooms, etc. We walk to the back of the store where the crates are, and pull out the 'large' box. I grab on to the box, and pull, and pull and pulll...the thing is four feet long by nearly three feet high! Well, our TV room, where we wanted to put this thing is only about 13x14. And this is gonna be a permanent fixture?

I suggest that we could put a blanket on it and replace the ottoman in front of our love seat, or maybe the end table. Might look nice with a lamp on it and some books... But the puppy is so little. Why do we need a wire box the size of desk to house break him, I wonder aloud.

'Lets get the medium one, use it until he can't get in, then get the big one,' I suggest.

'But I really don't want to buy two crates,' she says.

'It really would make a nice coffee table,' I suggest. It's funny how a roll of the eyes can communicate so well...

Then thinking that 4' is not really that big she says, 'Here is a 4ft dog bed. See, it's not as big as the box. The box must be bigger than the crate!'

'Now why would the box be bigger than the crate? It's just as big as the bottom of the crate'

'No, it's bigger. There must be foam inside!'

'Look," I take one out of the box, 'It's as big as the box.'

'So,' she says, 'you're telling me that I can't tell the difference between a 4' bed and a 4' wire crate?'

I know now that I am in very deep water... We try to move on from comparing beds with crates, and agree that the medium size might work out for at least the first year. I start to carry it out: 40 lbs of awkward box.

Seeing my struggle and weighing again the $85, Paula says, "Maybe there are other options. Maybe we could make a 'cave' like, hiding space between the chair and love seat that we could rig up as a crate. Let's do some measuring and think about it."

This makes sense to me, and I'm desperately looking for something that makes sense, so I take the 40lb box back to the rack and slide it in, breaking up a conversation between a puppy owning family and a PM trainer... ("Maybe you should not all give the puppy its command to sit at the same time...")

We decide that a burger and beer make more sense than figuring out dog crates for the time being, and head to Rock Bottom...

So now we're struggling with how to fit a large dog crate into a town home while still maintaining the "home" part

This is where you guys come in.... We need your help and experience. How does this crate thing work for our labradoodle training in smaller living environments? Ideas? Suggestions? Stories? We need everything we can get...

Greg

[Paula & Greg]

Thanks, Robin. Your Bella is like her name, beautiful!!!

[Robin Evenson]

By the way, she's never had an accident in it either.

[Robin Evenson]

Hi Paula and Greg, I strongly believe in crate training. I've done it with all my dogs and so far good luck. I'm adding a picture of Bella in her's that sits in the living room so you can get a feel for the size and location. She is expected to get to be 50ish pounds (currently 39 lbs at 6 months of age). I don't expect to have to get a bigger one than this. She began sleeping in it at night and when i'm out at about 12 weeks of age. Hope this helps.

[Heather Thompson]

We bought a large wire crate with the moveable divider, and I think that Ruckus spent a total of 10 hours in it. We also read the importance of creating thier den, and how it was best they sleep in the crate. But the large crate was too large to fit in our bedroom (lived in a condo at the time). After his mid-night potty break, he would howl and cry if we put him back in the crate. And being in a condo we could not have a howling puppy. So we slept on the floor with him. After a few nights of this, we were at wits end. Then we picked up a copy of The Art of Raising a Puppy by the Monks of New Skete. They do not use crates either. The monks just tether the puppy to the foot of their bed with a leash. So we set up Ruckus' bed next to the foot of the bed, and tethered him to the bed. The tether creates his sleeping area, which puppy already learned not to soil when they were with their mom.

I was worried Ruckus would get wound up in the leash or he would be uncomfortable. But we used a 5 ft lead, so he had plenty of space to move around, he never got caught up in the leash. The best part was that first night we tethered him, he whined & gently pawed the bed to wake me up when he needed to go out. And when we came back inside the house, he went right back to sleep! Success! We stopped tethering him when he was 5 of 6 months old, and we don't have any problems at all.

For potty training during waking hours, we just took him out alot and praised him a ton for going outside when he went. He was such a good boy, he was potty trained in about a week to go to the door when he had to go.

I will admit, however, that since he doesn't feel comfy in his crate, we cannot get him to go in it when we leave the house or need to crate him for any other reason. Good luck!

[Holly Doodle]

We saw some wire crates at Pet smart that were actually built as wooden coffee/end tables. We didn't get one because they were way too expensive but if you could find a used one....
Also we would go crazy without our crate! Holly likes going in there, she automatically calms down once she's in it. I can't imagine not having a crate to put her in to calm down during her naughty puppy stage and current naughty adolescent stage.She's one of those pups that eats random stuff, so at 8 months we still crate her for sleeping and whenever we leave. It's been a lifesaver! I know some people never crate train and it works for them, and they are very lucky! I agree maybe you could get a used smaller one and then figure out if you need to upgrade or if your pup is able to be left out alone. Good luck!

[Debbie and Thomas]

It goes against all of the manuals...but...we did not use a crate. Is that a bad thing? We brought home our puppy a few weeks before we had intended so we were not prepared with a crate. We used our main floor laundry room as a giant crate and set it up with blankets, toys and pillows and the little dood slept thru the night and never made a peep. So...we decided to stick with this procedure and when he was 5 mths old...he had the run of the house. We have never had any problems.

[Lorraine Bromley]

We did the same thing and bought the huge wire crate. He used it very little. Mostly at night incase he had an accident. and to train him to hold it all night. That didn't take long either. He started using the bells on the door to go potty the first day we got them. We ended up piling clothes on it in the laundry room. Then we ran into the conundrum of having to fly with Neely. The wire crate is not coded for inflight. We had to go out and buy another crate that he could fly in. My suggestion is if you think you may travel with him get the big plastic flight ready one. If not I would get a used baby gate somewhere and block off an area for him to stay in when you need to leave the house and he can't be trusted yet. Neely is one year old we traveled when he was sevon months and he hadn't used the crate at home prior to that for months either. I would say we used the crate for roughly two months around 5 -6 months he was trusted at home alone fine. He did chew the drywall and trim a few times but then we found out that he had ear issues and that was likely why the sudden drywall fetish.
If I was serious about cratetraining I would put my money into the fancy wooden crates that are made to be furniture grade side tables. They look like furniture and function as both crate and table.

[Azure & Muppet]

We put ours in the bedroom next to the bed and it serves dual-function as a nightstand. The crate we have is wire, so first I draped a sheet over it, then placed a thin solid material (had husband cut to fit from scrap piece laying around the house) over the top to create a smooth flat surface for placing a lamp, books, etc. This works well for us.

[Patty]

Craigslist gets my vote. You can buy a crate for a fraction of the retail cost and give it a test drive. If it doesn't work out, chances are good you can sell it for the same price you paid.

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Now for the fun part.... Doodles don't necessarily all like the same type of crate. We started with the large metal crate (with dividers so we could expand as he grew). Everyone (including the breeder) told us this was the way to go. We also bought a soft sided medium crate which was light and very transportable. We were going to use the big metal crate upstairs in our bedroom at night and the smaller one downstairs and in the car. Well, Guinness decided from the beginning that he HATED the metal crate. He would not sleep in it, even when it was draped with a blanket and filled with his toys. But, he liked the soft sided crate and seemed comfortable in it. We ended up giving the metal one away and just using the soft sided one for everything. It actually worked out okay for us because it was so easy to move around and travel with. We did end up getting the larger size a few months later and keeping the original one for the car. This is just your first (of many) doodle dilemmas. I do think you made the right call on the burger and beer.