Quote:
Originally posted by nayjo12
Wow, it only took two nights for your puppy to adjust to his cage? |
He may not have
adjusted in two nights, but that's how long it took for him to stop whining/yipping and go to sleep. Here's what we did...
The first night of our crate training (which admittedly was not his first night in our our house) we made sure he had already gone to the bathroom outside and we put him in the crate. We turned off all the lights, went upstairs, and waited. He made all sorts of noise barking, yipping, etc and we just ignored it. We let him outside about 3 hours later but he didn't go to the bathroom. Then we put him back in, went back upstairs, and again waited. He yipped endlessly while we tried to get a little sleep. When it came time for his next bathroom trip, he had already made a pile in his crate. We thought to ourselves "great, this crate thing isn't going to work" but we cleaned everything up and decided to try it one more night. That next night, he yipped for about the first 30 minutes to 1 hour and then slept. We continued to let him out every three hours or so and he would always yip for a while when we put him back in. He didn't pee/poop in his crate that second night, and by the third night he wasn't yipping anymore. For the next year and a half he never again peed/pooped in his crate unless he was truely sick which has happened once. Can't blame that one on him...
Keep in mind that we had been exposing him to the crate for a few weeks and we continued to give him time in the crate during the day when it was light and we were around. We would also feed him in there and give him treats/toys in there. Making the transition to
sleeping the night in there only took us about two days, and it has become a life saver.
And on a different note, when he eventually outgrew his first crate we opted to try letting him free for the night. He was so upset about not having his crate that he ran in and out of the dog door
all night long and never slept. It was almost neurotic. When he opted to chew a hole in our drywall one early morning we decided it might be best to buy a new, larger crate. We did, and he loves it :)