Crate Training Dogs

We have had our two puppies for three weeks now! We decided to give crate training a try with these pups. With our older dog, we never did crate train her. Unfortunately she is very spoiled and sleeps on our bed! This time around we wanted to do things more correctly. We are taking training our puppies very seriously as we have learned that bad habits last for a lifetime!

Since our puppies are brother and sister, they currently sleep in the same crate. Being together comforts them and helps minimize the night time whining. Although they still whine some and of course they feed off each other! It can get pretty loud in here!

When crate training your puppy, you want the crate to be their comfort zone. It shouldn’t be a place they always go for punishment. We leave the crate door open during the day and the puppies will often go in the crate to nap on their own. At night we do close the crate door. Sometimes they whine and sometimes they go right to sleep. If they do whine, we try to wait it out- just like a baby! After fifteen minutes of whining, I will go check on them. Do not open the cage while they are whining though. I make them be quiet for 10 seconds before I open the cage door. I don’t want them to associate loud whining and barking with getting “free”.

The crate will also aid in potting training the puppy. Our puppies still wake up in the middle of the night to potty. Dogs do not want to soil their sleeping spot. Therefore the puppies will whine to let you know they need to go outside to potty. Overall our puppies are doing excellent with potty training. We have had minimal accidents so far.

I bought our crate on Midwest Life Stages Crate on Amazon. There are a variety of sizes available with free shipping right to your house!

The only negative we have found to using a crate is that the crate is large. You need to find a spot to keep the crate that is in a central part of your house so you can watch the puppies. Other than that, crate training is the way to go!

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Renae Chiovaro

Renae is a married working mom of two handsome boys. She works as a registered dental hygienist by day and blogs here at How to Have it All by night. She enjoys cooking from scratch, working in her vegetable garden and functional training.