Introduce Meals In The Crate
Once your dog is showing some signs of familiarity with the crate, start to associate the crate with mealtimes. If your dog is showing signs of anxiety or wariness of the crate, start slowly by feeding your dog near the entrance to the crate, but not inside. If your dog is already happily exploring the crate and even taking some naps inside, put your dog’s bowl all the way to the back of the crate at mealtimes.
Once you have successfully fed your dog in the crate a few times, start to close the door while your dog is busy eating. Keep them crated for a few minutes after they have finished their meal, and wait until they have settled themselves down and are comfortably resting in the crate before opening the door again.
If You Need a Pair of Bowls
How To Crate Train A Dog While At Work
If you haven’t already crate trained a new puppy, it is still certainly possible to crate train an older dog. It is important to ensure that crate training is a happy, positive experience, and never seen as a type of punishment. Follow these steps to successfully crate train your dog.
#9 Reason NOT to crate your dog – IT DOESN’T JUSTIFY “PROTECTION”
Protecting your dog from an emergency or accident does NOT justify regular crating. One may argue that a crate could save a dog’s life in an earthquake, which could be true. However, the probability of a natural disaster doesn’t justify crating your dog PERIOD. Do you hide under the table every day in case of an earthquake? Do you wear a hazmat suit to protect yourself from a potential airborne outbreak? Do you wear a life vest at all times in case of a flood? If the answer is no, then you should comprehend that emergencies just do not make a valid argument to regularly crate your dog. On the other hand, crating your dog when you’re away may pose even more danger to him. Being locked up, he loses the opportunity to escape in an event of a fire, flood, or break-in.
Are Dog Crates Cruel? Should You Use A Dog Crate For Your Dog Or Puppy?
WOOF, the crating debate continues – to crate or not to crate your dog? Although this decision is ultimately up to YOU, the human dog pawrent, I am barking out my opinion as a dog who was crated regularly inside a garage for the first few years of his life before adoption (and eventual transformation as a world-traveling Yorkie). In my early life, I was confined to a crate regularly for a whopping 16-18+ hours daily. My daily crate time included my former human’s workday plus commute, which lasted anywhere from 8 to 10 hours AND his bedtime hours, which was another 8+ hours. Please keep in mind that the time frame does NOT capture the time he spent running errands, hitting the gym, or engaging in social activities.
Sure, I may get a little breather over the weekends, but there wasn’t a single day that I could escape the crate. Now that I live a crate-free, ultra-spoiled world-traveling life with my new and forever humans, I can’t imagine going back to being crated (even though I was lucky enough to have a crate-mate, the sweetest pit bull named Cleo). With that barked, being unjustly surrendered by my former human due to a newborn baby might have been the best thing that happened to me.
A real problem with crates is that they’re easily and frequently misused; 6 hours of crate time can quickly turn into 10+ hours regularly, and yet the line should be drawn at 8 hours TOPS a day for adult dogs (and only few hours for puppies depending on their age). Ultimately, dogs should NOT spend the majority of their lives inside a crate. Believe it or not, crating your dog is even ILLEGAL in Sweden and Finland unless it’s done for transportation or temporary purposes. Although the amount of crating time can vary from dog pawrent to dog pawrent, but I believe regular, long-term crating may still result in detrimental consequences even with good intentions and careful training.