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Training a dog with a crate is useful and effective technique. Its important to start using the crate from the moment you pick your puppy up. Therefore, the crate should be selected and purchased before the puppy is picked up and ideally used to transport it home. Wire crates are the most popular, easiest to clean and maintain, allow the puppy to see their surroundings, and often can be broken down flat for storage. Some dogs can have problems with them, so seeing how your dog reacts initially to their crate is important. Understand that most dogs love their crates, they are instinctively den animals, and their crate should be viewed as their safe haven. If the training is conducted properly, your dog will consider their crate a safe, happy place. Therefore, it is very important that the dog’s crate is not used as a form of punishment.

The best time to start crate training is when your dog is a puppy, as it is generally much harder to effectively crate train an older dog. Crate training should be kept very positive, and while the primary purpose of crate-training is to housebreak your puppy, putting the pup in a crate does not in and of itself house train the dog.

There are lots of viewpoints on how to acclimate the puppy to the crate, but the simplest answer is take it at a pace you and the dog are comfortable with and keep it consistent. A few key points to remember:

• Do not leave your puppy in the crate for hours and hours. The crate is not a substitute for your attention.
• Do not keep moving the crate around your house. Pick a spot and leave it there.
• Make sure the crate is in a safe area, and not where your dog can become too hot or too cold.
• Collars can get caught in a crate’s bars. Many people opt to remove the collar when they crate their puppy.
• If the dog is upset, don’t drag it out of the crate. Let the dog come out of its own accord, after all this is their safe haven.

One opinion is that when a puppy is whining or fussing, don’t take them out of the crate as it teaches them how to get what they want out of you. In general this is a good rule of thumb, however, until you get to know your puppy well, it can be hard to discern whining for the sake of attention versus whining for the purpose of wanting to go out to go to the bathroom. If the use of the crate as a method to eliminate soiling where they sleep is succesful, many puppies are going to communicate the need to go outside by making a fuss. As the owner you are going to need to learn to differentiate the reasons your dog is whining or barking.

Crate training is, at it’s core, simply a method of house training your puppy and because most dogs will not go to the bathroom in the same place they sleep, your puppy will most likely try to hold it when it is confined to a crate. Ideally for a puppy, you start with a smaller crate, or block off one end so he can’t turn one end into sleeping area and the other into it’s bathroom.    By crate training your puppy you can better predict when the dog will need to go to the bathroom and you can take it outside to the correct spot. Some practices that can make this process more successful:

• When your puppy wakes up, take it outside to its spot. Having one preferred spot for the dog to go to the bathroom can help with the early successes.
• When your puppy whines, take it outside to its spot.
• When your puppy goes to the door, take it outside to its spot. Reinforce that its going to the door will trigger your response of taking it outside.
• After your puppy eats, take it outside to its spot.
• Praise your puppy for doing its “business” outside. Make a big deal about it. Play with it and give it attention when it does what you want it to.
• If your puppy doesnt go, put it back in the crate and then try again in a bit.

What you are trying to reinforce here, essentially, is that everytime the puppy leaves its crate the first order of business is to go to the bathroom. Outside.

A noted earlier, with puppies you need to make sure that the crate is confined enough so they don’t have room to make a mess in one area and sleep in another. Until they grow into the crate you should use dividers (boxes work as well) to constrain the size of the crate down to a small size designed for sleeping. As the puppy grows, you can increase the amount of the crate available to them. As the puppy becomes housebroken, you can increase the amount of the crate available to them. As a general rule of thumb, if the puppy is soiling their crate you have either given them too much space, or you are confining them to the crate for too long between walks. Remember our first key point – the crate is not a substitute for your attention.

Aside from aiding in housebreaking, crate training a puppy can have many long-term rewards for owners and their dogs. When transporting a dog, they should be crated as its considerably safer for the dog (and driver) to be in a crate.  When the owner is gone during the day, it provides peace of mind that the dog is not creating havoc in the home.  For the dog it provides a safe haven when they are stressed.  Crate training can be viewed as the easiest and most perhaps sensible method of dog training, allowing for consistency and discipline. The use of a crate to house your puppy can provide dog owners with the peace of mind that their dog is safe and secure when they are not there.