Starting right from adopting a dog until it’s growing up, it can involve many steps, including proper nourishment.
Having a pet dog can come up with a lot of responsibilities. It can take a lot of your time, as well as your effort.
Similarly, crate training for your dog too can require the same amount of hard work and patience.
Let us first understand what crate training means.
Crate training is something that is essential and proves to be very useful for every dog when inside a household with a family.
What is crate training for Dogs?
Every living being needs a personal space to sleep, eat, rest, hide when in fear, and, most of all, to relax.
Crate works like that own space for your dog or puppy.
Crate training is a practice that requires the family to make their dog feel comfortable and habituated within the closed personal space called a crate.
Staying inside the crate is very important for a dog before it can learn the proper house rules.
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Advantages of Crate Training
There is not a single reason why crate training can prove to be very beneficial.
We will state some of the advantages of crate training.
Some of these benefits of crate training for puppies are:-
- Crate training is the first step to teach your dog how to behave inside a household.
- With proper crate training, your dog would not soil your home.
- It can help your dog have a proper sense of personal space and respect your own space as well. Crate training a puppy is just to make your pup a bit more disciplined than usual.
- If you have to take your dog along with you, then crate training can help your dog get into the car and enjoy the ride along with the family.
- With crate training, your dog would not intervene in the spaces where they are not allowed. Your dog will respect their space where they are if provided with crate training.
Selecting The Proper Crate For Your Dog
Your dog should love the crate and have a sense of connecting with it personally. There can be a variety of crates and various qualities.
It can either be plastic or made of metal. You also have to make sure to select the right size of crate for your dog.
They must not just fit but fit into the crate very comfortably. It is your responsibility to see that your dog is not suffocating inside the crate that you got for him/her.
Take your dog along with you for crate shopping. Dogs are the best at understanding which one is their crate, the one they will completely fall in love with.
Only then can your dog learn to adapt inside the crate quickly.
How To Train Your Puppy To Get In a Crate?
The time it takes to train your dog to get into a crate can vary.
It can either take more than a few days or weeks to prepare your dog to get all comfortable finally and habituated inside their favorite crate.
It generally takes longer to train your dog when he is very young. As a trainer, you need to make sure that your training should be done at a very slow pace.
This is to ensure that your dog is able to learn each process very carefully.
Let us now go through these steps in a very descriptive manner so that you can apply these as a part of your training.
1. Make The Crate Familiar To Your Dog
The very first step of this training is to introduce your dog to his/her crate.
As mentioned earlier, your dog must be the one who should be deciding to choose his/her own crate.
This helps your dog to get familiarized with its crate so that the moment they see it, they would grow a fondness towards the crate.
You can try and put the crate in a playful space of your house, where the dog spends most of its time.
Seeing a particular object time and again, they would be habituated with it.
To make the crate look even more tempting, you can keep a comfortable blanket inside it.
It must look like a very pleasing space and not frighten your dog. Besides the blanket, also put some favorite food of your dog and lure him inside.
2. Let Your Dog Be Fed Inside The Crate
Just like you feed your baby in their ideal space, feed your dog the same manner.
Tell your dog some exciting stories or let him/her watch something on the TV while you are feeding him inside the crate.
This will let your dog be attentive while eating and not roam around the entire house.
The longer you can manage to keep your dog inside the crate, the faster he will be trained in making the crate his own home.
You need to make sure that even when you stop feeding your dog, he must himself see his dish of food and eat it inside the crate.
The moment he starts doing that, you will know that you have been successful in this step.
Moreover, you need to make your dog feel the interest and need to like his place of eating. Do it regularly and feed your dog every time a little closer to his crate.
3. Crate Train Your Dog During The Night or When Left Alone
It is the primary responsibility of the trainer not to make their dog feel uncomfortable or be scared at the crate at any cost.
During the initial days, you have to make sure that your dog is not left inside the crate for too long. This action might end up in making your dog whine.
So, whenever you are out for not more than 30 minutes, you make sure to keep your dog inside the crate.
This can give him the proper sense of personal space, but slowly.
At night, you can keep the crate inside your house, where you sleep.
This can make the dog be near to you and be able to sleep still being inside the crate.
This can also help you listen to all the whinings of your puppy/dog if he has to eliminate or even feel a bit uncomfortable.
The more often and frequency you keep your puppy inside the crate, the less whiny he/she will become.
Eventually, he/she will understand the importance of having his/her own space and even start to love it with time.
4. Let Your Dog Do More Activities From Inside The Crate
There are various activities that your dog/puppy can enjoy inside a household.
There can be watching TV, playing with his/her favorite soft-toy or play-thing.
Let him/her do all these activities from being inside the crate as well.
This will make him like the crate and encourage him to stay inside for a longer time.
Most of all, your dog can be easily trained to be inside the crate when he feels a certain warmth inside the space.
Also, if your dog is doing a particular activity, which is very attentive and can make even make them fall asleep inside.
Once they fall asleep inside the crate, it will help them get accustomed to it.
You should also make sure that your dog/puppy eats inside the crate itself.
Dogs generally eat in their favorite dish, and every time he would want to eat, make sure you put the bowl inside the crate.
This will make your dog/puppy stay inside the crate and eat their food without loitering everywhere in the house.
Play with your dog more often and point him to the crate for him to go. Throw a ball towards the crate and make him/her run towards it.
You can even hide a favorite object of his/her inside the crate, and encourage your dog/puppy to find it.
Conclusion
Given above are some of the most effective steps that your dog/puppy should be provided to teach him proper house manners.
However, you need to be very sure not to put your dog in any kind of discomfort and make them whine about their crate.
This can let all your crate training goes into vain. Every step that you take while training your dog/puppy must proceed with extra attention.
You need to make sure that your dog feels the crate as his/her own home like he feels for your house.
Remember that your dog’s age has got to do with his/her learning process.
You need to let your dog/puppy out of the crate, the moment it starts feeling claustrophobic, and starts making noises on it.
Throughout the training process, make sure that your dog is slowly showing interest in going towards the crate without having to force him/her inside.
Encourage your dog every minute to let him like his crate and make your training a success.