About this Episode
In today’s post, I want to talk about crate training.
The crate is very important for the majority of dogs, and its level of importance is often related to other factors like age and maturity. In the beginning stages of training your dog in your home, it’s a safe and calm spot (ideally) for your dog to relax and not do anything wrong.
When you’ve got a new dog in your house, they don’t know the rules. If you’re not around, they may want to chew or go to the bathroom on the floor. The crate is a fantastic tool for teaching them not to do that. Dogs are creatures of habit. If we prevent them from going to the bathroom indoors and other bad things, that often does the lion’s share of getting them to behave well in your home.
Here’s the thing: a lot of people want to move away from the crate faster than they should. This happens for a few reasons. First of all, they look at the dog and say, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to be in a crate! That wouldn’t be fun for me.” (Usually they say this before they go off to work in a cubicle.) And maybe the crate doesn't fit in the house very well. Maybe it’s a hassle to crate up the dog rather than leaving him out. This results in a lot of people moving away from crates far too quickly.
However, any time you move away from a training tool too quickly—whether it’s a crate, a leash, or treats—its pattern hasn't had the chance to set in. Patterns take different amounts of time to form, depending on what you’re asking the dog. After a week or two, with a lot of repetitions, I might get my dog to sit or lie down reliably. That’s not a terribly hard thing for the dog to do, so we need less repetitions to establish it. Dogs need a lot of repetitions, however, to be able to remain loose in the house. They need to not pee on the floor or not chew up the couch cushion hundreds and hundreds of times in order to learn.
Being in the house while you’re gone is a much more complex behavior than learning to sit. When it comes to the sit command, the dog has two options: sit or not sit. When it comes to being loose in the house, however, the dog is presented with a myriad options: he could lounge around, get nervous and chew, get on the couch, bark at the window, or poop on the floor. In order to overcome all those options, we need a lot of repetition.
That’s where the crate comes in. Because we’re not always in a position to give repetitions when the dog needs them, we give him somewhere to be calm and relax. That’s why I call crates “the silent teachers.” When it’s time to shift away from the crate, it’s best to do so in very small stages. I wouldn’t look at my year-old puppy and say “Wow, she hasn't pooped on or chewed anything in over a year. Time for eight hours loose when I’m gone at work!” That’ll backfire on you almost every time.
