Inside Puppywishes

Learn How To Use A Crate To Prevent Behavior Problems And Perfect Your Puppy's Housebreaking Skills

Dog crates are generally used as housebreaking tools, they are also used to help pets travel, and to confine puppies when they cannot be watched. However, as you will now learn, the crate can be an indispensable tool for almost all areas of puppy obedience training.

For a number of years dog training experts have been teaching people that dogs are den animals. As such, when you place a puppy in a crate it will naturally feel safe in the comfort of its den or "safe place".  Although this was the common belief for many years, modern thinking has revealed some greater truths about dogs, pack animals and natural den behavior.

While it is true that dogs are den animals and as such they often seek out confined areas to rest, it is also true that the element of safety that comes from a den, is immediately lost when the den becomes a trap. 

► Your Time Out Area - A Method Of Humane Discipline

A "Time Out" area is the place where you will send your dog when it willfully resist your authority. You are not going to hit, scream at, shock or yank your puppy when it misbehaves. Rather, you are simply, and swiftly, going to strip it of all freedom. To do this effectively you will need to ascertain where your 'time out' area is going to be. 

There is a new puppy in my house and he is as crazy as the last puppy that was here. He wants to jump on me, nip my hands, pee on my floor, bark at my friends, eat my food and sleep on my bed. I am looking at this puppy as I type, thinking, “How is this any different from bringing a wild animal into my house?” I inhale, and then exhale slowly. I cradle my head in my hands, thinking, “Why, oh-why, do I have another untrained puppy in my house. Did I not suffer enough horror with my last dog? Apparently not.

Suddenly, a beam of light shines through the clouds as I remember something important; I have a puppy training cage, a crate, an inexpensive wire construction that is designed to keep a puppy confined to its bedroom area. The next time my new dog decides to hit me in the groin with his head, intentional or not, I am going to send him to his room. “Time out,” I will bark - a bold and grandiose declaration, “To your room! If you cannot control your head around my ‘small and gentles’ then you must leave!”

Suddenly, yes, another ‘suddenly’, I remember something I read on the internet, written by a respected dog trainer. The trainer, Ed Frawley, writes, “I never heard of time-out until a few years ago. Not sure where the idea came from but a time out is not a correction. In fact it’s a bad idea. It goes against what we are trying to teach our dogs about crates- which is his crate is a good place to be – not a punishment.” Frawley continues on to say that, “The fact is I don’t think dogs look at the crate as punishment anyway. I think they look at it as a place to take a nap. Maybe if dogs lived longer – like 50 years, they could grasp the concept of being in a crate as punishment.”

Ed is right, being in the crate is not the punishment, rather, being away from the owner is where the corrective power of a time out is found.

In Biblical terms, Hell is sometimes defined as the greatest distance away from God. The further you stray away from your faith, the greater your torment in life will become. I believe this to be a great truth, and it is also a truth that applies to the way we can correct unwanted dog behavior.

I first became aware of a "time out" when watching a group of dogs playing together. There were five dogs in the group, four adults and one ‘teenager’. The four adults played with an uninhibited sophistication and mutual respect, while the youngster played like a buffalo. The mature dogs tolerated the buffalo for only so long before they aggressively turned on him and chased him away from the group. The buffalo, having no where to go, turned and watched the playing adults but did not attempt to play with them again. And when he did muster the courage to raise his buffalo head, the other dogs were quick to run him down. What was most interesting about these behavioral displays was that it was clear to me that the buffalo no more wanted to leave than the adults really wanted him gone. I was not witnessing four adults banish a youngster, rather, I was watching a buffalo learn how to be a dog.

A time out is a natural way for one dog to demand respect from another. The message that dogs send to each other is simple: “Treat me well or leave”. Experts who have lived with groups of dogs have all witnessed this behavior but few of them have developed a way for us to use this natural form of communication in our own lives.

When you were a child and you were sent to your room as a form of punishment, you did not learn to fear your room? Probably not.  Rather, being left alone gives us time to think and reflect on how we can better fit into our families when next we socialize with our loved ones. The ability to think and improve our behavior based on our own inner thoughts is a skill shared by many animals, including puppies.

Dogs are social animals that have a strong desire to live harmoniously with their human pack. When this harmony is disrupted and a dog is asked to remove itself, nature has programmed puppies to modify their own behavior so that they can better support the feelings of their family. Telling your dog to “go to its room”, is not a punishment based on coercion or isolation. Rather, it is a natural correction that taps into your dog’s ability to use its own mind to better itself.

All over the Internet you will find articles that tell you not to use your puppy's crate as a punishment. "If you punish your puppy by putting it in the crate," they say, "your puppy will learn to fear and hate the crate."  This is not true, and it is a tragic misconception that prevents dog owners from utilizing the power of a simple dog crate.

Let me take you through a step by step series of events that will help you understand why a crate can be used as a time out area.

Imagine you are walking through the living room, happily listening to your favorite song, when all of a sudden your puppy, like a little shark, jumps out of nowhere and playfully bites you on the foot. Yeeoch!  That really hurt!  Worse, your puppy has been assassinating your feet for weeks and your toes are covered in bruises.

Now you're mad, not frothing at the mouth furious, just seriously bothered. "That's it," you shout at your puppy, "go to your crate!"  You then pick up your puppy and take it to the crate. In this situation the discipline occurred when you screamed "Yeeoch!" The sharp sound of your voice cutting through the air can cause a young puppy to feel alarmed.  This alarm, followed by the upset manner in which you escorted your puppy to the crate, will leave most puppies thinking that, "Something is wrong." 

Once your puppy has been placed in the crate all discipline stops. In fact, your placing the puppy in the crate seconds after you scolded it, gives your puppy a comfortable place to sit back and relax after an alarming event. The only way for you to create a negative association with the crate is to punish your puppy while it is inside. But when the crate is used as a "Time Out" area, the correction always takes place outside of the crate before the puppy is put in.

Puppies often develop into terrible dogs because their owners are unable to stop them from repeating their crimes. Again, let's imagine that your puppy jumps out of nowhere and bites your foot. You scream "Yeeeoch!", and for a second your alarmed puppy jumps back and looks to see what is wrong. If you give your puppy a bone to occupy its mouth, then you are rewarding it for assassinating your foot. If you try to ignore your puppy, it may keep nipping, and nipping and nipping. If you talk to it in a soothing tone you are again rewarding it for biting you. So what do you do? Time Out!

When your puppy starts to engage in unwanted, unpleasant behavior, it may repeat the behavior over and over again, almost as if  he is whipping himself into a frenzy. This frenzy is self-rewarding. It is like a behavior drug that fills your puppy with a pleasant high.  The more often your pup slips into this frenzy, the more ingrained the unwanted behavior becomes. For this reason, it is vital that you STOP the frenzy before it has a chance to escalate. This is best accomplished by simply putting your puppy in its crate where he can chill out.