Our Crate Training Journey

Our experience of changing our mind

If you have read my “Puppy Blues” blog, you will have noted that I didn’t particularly agree with crate training at first. I believed it was cruel to cage your dog in their own home - your home is their home and they can go where they please.

However, our experience completely changed that perspective.

Fenrir lured us into a false sense of security when we first brought him home. He was shy and very placid. We bought a pen for him which we used to call “The Fen Pen”. On the first night, he escaped and pooped all over the floor so we temporarily renamed him Houndini.

From then, we decided to leave the door open and let him sleep where he liked. For the first few nights, he was great! He had the occasional accident, but that is expected of an 8-week old puppy. We never used puppy pads as we wanted to train him to go outside as early as possible.

The funny thing is, overnight was not an issue for us, he wouldn’t whine or bark at night - as soon as the light went off and we went to bed, he was fine.

Our struggle was during the day. At the time, I worked fulltime from home, and you may think this would make things easier as I was with him all day and I would be able to keep an eye on him, but when you have calls or meetings, it is arguably harder.

When you go out and come home to the destruction, you deal with it and know it there was nothing you could have done because you weren’t there. Now imagine being in the middle of a meeting, in another room, and all you can hear is the chewing of a table leg or the sound of toys being torn apart. You simply cannot focus. All you are imagining, is the state of your living room when you can eventually check on the Hell Hound.

On top of that, even when I was working near him, I could not get any work done - the destruction would not stop. He would not sleep, he would continuously chew things, as well as me, and the accidents were wildly unpredictable. I became exhausted and increasingly low.

It wasn’t a very hard decision to begin crate training him. For my sake, this needed to stop. And let me tell you, it was the single best thing we did.

I didn’t waste a second when the crate arrived. I researched the best way to crate train and spent as much time as I could training with it.

I don’t know if it was just the breed but it was only a matter of days before he would quite happily sleep in the crate with the door closed. Our issue was Fenrir’s FOMO. If we were in the room, the crate was like a prison to him - he wanted to be involved, he wanted to play, he wanted to do anything but stay in there. Aside from that, it improved things a lot.

Once naps were enforced throughout the day, you could see the difference - he was calmer, less nippy and less destructive. It was a dream! I honestly don’t think I could have coped without doing this.

I want to share the things I did that lead to Fenrir becoming crate trained:

The most important thing about crate training is understanding that is it NOT a punishment. It needs to be associated with positive things, such as, feeding in the crate, favourite treats in crate, certain toys that are ONLY allowed in the crate.

To begin with, I would lure him into the crate with a treat. Even if just one paw stepped into the crate, I would click (we do clicker training) and reward. I would continue this until he learned the word “bed” and associated this with going into the crate.

Before long, he would quite happily go into his crate simply using the word “bed”. To this day, we still give him positive things in the crate - licky mats, Kongs, rabbit ears etc. He will happily sleep in there for hours and we have had no accidents!

He still suffers with a bit FOMO, but it is considerably less as he has got older.