If your talking about being gone more than like 8-10 hours at a time crating can be hard but if you let him play plenty before and after it will be fine. I have a 60lb lab Shepard mix (had since a puppy) and a rat terrier (adopted at 2 yrs). The crate training worked very well for house breaking the bigger dog, along with my hand (spanking isnt abuse imo) and putting her face right next to the mess so she knew for sure what the problem was. It is usually true they wont mess where they sleep so early on making them sleep in the crate is probably a good idea just make sure you take him straight outside when you do let him out. However, my other dog that is in a similar situation as yours (adopted as an adult) has proven quite impossible to house break. We have a feeling she may have been abused at some point because of the way she acts in situations, and we also think she was living in a kennel for a while. She would poop or pee right in her kennel without hesitation but we think thats because in the pound she often had no choice. She definitely knows its wrong but she either cant hold it or doesn't want to. We solved this by getting a doggy door, but thats not always a solution. On a side note im very lucky that my dogs only eat when they are hungry and i can leave out a bowl of food and they eat a little in the morning and at night. A lot of dogs will eat until its gone. But with the eating and crating remember YOU ARE THE PACK LEADER!!! he will cry for a while but eventually he will give up, IF you stop giving in and spoiling him with treats. Good luck with your dog and watch the dog whisperer, yea he is a tool but he also knows his stuff...plus its hilarious.
thanks a lot. We leave him inside the bathroom when we are gone, with plently of his toys and water. He is alone for 6-7 hrs every day. When we let him out he is just super hyper and runs around for a good 20 min. They are very smart creatures, he shows us how pissed of he is for leaving him locked in there. I think the bathroom can function as a large crate don't you think?
Mine don't stay in the crate anymore(really a pet carrier for me). Its amazing how well it worked. He sleeps in our room now. I want to say he was only in the crate for 3 weeks.
if he's isnt peeing and pooping in there then i suppose it works. different situations call for different things. i liked the crate for 2 reasons. 1. when i was using it, now i have a long child gate to keep them locked in dining room or i put them outside when we have company, but I called it their 'kennels' and when they were in trouble or i just wanted them out of the way I could command them to kennel and they would (the little one would put on all manner of protests usually going with the roadkill routine ). bottom line is i sometimes dont want them running around and it was nice for them to have their own place that didn't involve using one of my bathrooms should someone want to use it. 2. the crate still allows them to see/hear whats going on for the most part and half the reason i have my big dog is for security. she could still bark and sound very threatening from inside the crate.
Yea i see what you mean, he doiesn't go in the bathroom so I guess its fine. My dog cries to the point i can't bear it so I just left the crate in the garage for trips.
Crates are good and probably safer than locking a dog in the bathroom. Who knows what he can do in the bathroom. We put our dog in the crate when we leave to go to work. I just don't trust him alone in the house. By the way...what food do you give to your poodle?
it may seem that way, but you have to observe other dogs to understand that it isn't. They begin to view it as their home, and many dogs will actually choose to go sit in their crate after a while (even if you leave the door open), since they believe it is their territory...their "comfortable" place.
