I read up that puppies should enjoy being in their crates and it should be a good experience. My puppy HATES her crate. We have only had it for about a week. When I go to sleep I take her out, put her in her crate, and she LITERALLY CRIES for an hour! I sleep about 7 hours, but I always wake up every two hours and let her out quickly and put her back in after praising her. She is potty trained for the most part, but I don’t know why she cries sooo much! In her medium dog sized crate is a few fluffy towels for comfort, a hard squeaky toy, and soft stuffed animal toy. I am crate training her so I put a divider 1/3 of the way, but she has plenty of room to turn around and lay down. What can I do so she wont cry for so long and actually enjoy going "sleepy" in her crate?
p.s. I am also having a hard time teaching her how to "COME." She will sit, lay down, and potty on command, but I think she is hitting her curious stage and take about 5 minutes to come to me.
Oh she is almost 10 weeks
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Start by putting the pup in the crate for a few minutes. Announce it is time to go to bed. If while you are laying there and the pup starts to whine, go ‘BAAAH’ in a horse voice. Once the puppy stops whinning, go ‘Good dog’ repeat as necessary. Next time do it for an hour, then a couple….and so forth.
Eventually the pup will learn to love being in there.
do you have a wind up alarm clock,?…no?…go to a bargin store and get one for 2 bucks ..lay it in the crate and it will imitate the mother dogs heart beat,
How did you introduce her to the crate? A lot of dogs will go through the stage where they whine when crated. I think it’s perfectly normal.
Feed all her meals in the crate, leave the door open for a little bit then close it. Once she’s done leave it closed for a few more minutes. She’ll soon understand that crate = food = good thing!
Don’t put her in there when you’re mad at her, you’re sending mixed signals and she may hate the crate even more.
How long is she crated? Is she alone or can she see you?
As for the come command you must make yourself more interesting than what the puppy is looking at/sniffing/eating. Call her, clap your hands, run away from her and she should see it as a game and chase you. Praise her everytime she comes.
Edit: Give over. Ten weeks is perfectly acceptable to be away from mum. 10-16 weeks is the prime socialisation period.
Ah, there’s your answer. Your dog is too immature to have been taken from its mother so soon.
There are critical growth periods in the infant lives of puppies that require them to remain with their mothers until 10 -12 weeks of age. Puppies that are pulled from their mothers too early suffer socialization issues, emotional problems, and generalized health problems. They are more difficult to train, they are anxious and can become lethargic or aggessive. They often don’t eat right, and demonstrate other quirks that pose serious questions by their unaware owners. While some think that such infants are cute and cuddly — as in fact they are — they do not realize they are doing severe harm to underage puppies when they are taken from their mothers.
You can ease your puppy into the crate by putting a ticking alarm clock inside with it. It mimics the mother’s heartbeat.
During the day, try putting some treats and toys in her crate with her while you are sitting there with her and see if she will go in it. Don’t close the door on her at this point. Just let her know that it is ok. The toys and treats are a positive reinforcement for them in the crate. Do this for like half an hour. Let her know its ok to be in the crate, not just for sleeping. After that half hour, take the toys and treats out and close her in and leave the room for about half an hour and then go in and let her out. Do this process a few times. After several times, if she cries, ignore her. She has to know that crying will not let her out. Try looking online at humane society websites. Go to this website and it will give you more details. Read down the page.
http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/dogs/tips/crate_training.html
Hello I am a dog trainer and enjoy learning about different dog temperments. You are doing great taking good care of your puppy. It seems your little pooch has assoicated negative things with being in the crate. Try to reintroduce the crate with positive things like spending time with you while near the crate, give treats when she goes in and out the crate. Don’t be quick to close the crate door sit with her and wait for her to relax then put a treat in the crate and let her eat it, keep the door open. You want her to be in a calm state when she enters the crate. NEVER use the crate for punish your dog.
try leaving it open during the day so that it doesn’t become the place that she has to go to at night and is instead just her living space. also a good idea might be to give her a bedtime toy or bone. it has to be something way better than anything else she ever gets (for example a flavored rawhide bone or one of those bones that’s sold for dogs that still has meat on it or something). when you put her in the crate for the night, give her that bone. and in the morning after you take her out, put that bone away.that way it becomes a special treat for going in the crate at night.
with my yorkie, she hated it too. i eventually gave upi on it and instead opted to get a big clear plastic storage bin. i put a pillow and a bone in it with her and then i put it next to my bed. she whined for a couple minutes, so i let my arm hang in the tub and she was able to go to sleep. the thing with a lot of dogs is they just hate to be alone or confined (mine’s also afraid of the dark). so if it’s a smallish dog and you planto graduate her to sleeping in a bed outside of a crate anyway, you can try that option.
also, is the crate the solid plastic kind? maybe she hates being closed in. you could try buying the wire kind where the dog can see out all the time. that way she’ll feel less confined and be more able to feel comfortable in the kennel.
on the "come" command, go to the pet store and buy cat treats. friskies come in a little plastic cup. the treats are the perfect size for training and they’re moist-ish and smell way stronger than milkbones. they don’t smell bad, but you’ll see a difference as will the puppy. but the fact that you can shake the can works way better than a clicker once the puppy knows there’s treats inside. just say come, shake the can, and give her a treat. after a few days, i was able to just shake the can and all of a sudden i’d hear running from somewhere upstairs and then i’d blink and be staring down at an overexcited dog! when you run out of treats, you can also fill the can with coins, gravel, etcetera to continue training and use it as if it were a clicker.
Feed her in her crate so that she associates it with good things.
Regularly put her in her crate for periods of relaxation. During these periods, she should have a special toy or treat to chew on that she only gets when she’s shut in her crate, such as a food-stuffed Kong or a Nylabone. Here’s more info about teaching her to settle down and entertain herself in her crate:
http://dogstardaily.com/training/errorless-chewtoy-training
Lead her into her crate as many times a day as you can, shut the door, give her a treat through the wire, and open the door and let her back out. Keep her in there for various amounts of time (one second, five seconds, ten seconds, twenty seconds; mix it up), and then let her right back out so that she learns that good things happen when she goes into the crate and that she doesn’t have to worry because she’ll be let out.
You need to keep her awake for an adequate amount of time before bedtime. Depending on her energy level, you might have to keep her awake for a couple hours or for the entire evening so that by the time bedtime rolls around, she’s a zombie on her feet and is ready to go right to sleep.
Where are you keeping the crate? The best place would be in your bedroom so that she can see you and knows she isn’t alone. If you can’t put it in your bedroom, then make sure it’s in an area of the house that is frequently used (like the living room instead of the laundry room).
Leaving her in the crate overnight is similar to leaving her for a few hours during the daytime, so this article (which is about the latter) may help:
http://dogstardaily.com/training/home-alone
As for training her to come on command.. When you say that you think she’s hitting her curious stage, do you mean that it takes her five minutes to get to you because she’s sniffing around, arcing slowly, looking away and generally giving the appearance of being uninterested in you? If so, she might just be sending you calming signals, which you can read about here:
http://www.canis.no/rugaas/onearticle.php?artid=1
Even seemingly small actions on your part could trigger her behavior. For example, a woman taught her dog to target her hand on cue, right? And the dog knew how to do it, and was rewarded with a pat on the head and a yummy treat each time she did it. But when the woman tried to show the new trick to her trainer, the dog just yawned, looked away and laid down. It ended up being the pat on the head that discouraged the dog from performing; most dogs do not like to be touched on the head, and the dog simply decided that she wouldn’t do the trick so that she wouldn’t be patted on the head. The trainer realized this, and the woman stopped inadvertently punishing the dog. Once the head-patting stopped, the dog happily resumed performing for treats and praise. So be aware of what you’re doing. Your voice needs to be happy, cheerful, playful, enticing. Try crouching down when you call her and turning your body away slightly, and maybe patting your knees and/or drumming on the ground to entice her to come.
You have to teach her that fantastic things will happen when she comes. What are you using as a reward? It needs to be proper motivation; reliably obeying this command could save her life some day, so don’t be stingy with the reward, okay? You should always reward her heavily for coming. Find out which treat she goes crazy for. Chicken, hot dog, cheese and steak are usual great choices. Read these two pages to learn how to teach her to come (both by formally training her and by playing a fun game with her):
http://www.dogtrainingbasics.com/come.html
http://www.chazhound.com/forums/t83184/
From the very first day your puppy comes home the clock is ticking. All aspects of puppy training and behavior modification will only get harder as time goes by, so don’t wait, start training today!
The first item on the agenda is errorless housetraining and chewtoy-training. You can’t expect your new pup to magically know where to pee and poop, what to chew, or when to bark. Instead, you need to teach her. Additionally, you will need to teach your pup that these rules still apply when she is home alone, and that there’s no need to be anxious in your absence. All of this is easy with a doggy den and puppy playpen: short- and long-term confinement areas for your puppy that will help her learn to have free reign of the house.
Read more important tips, http://nauco.notlong.com