Be sure to understand the difference
between temporarily confining your dog to a crate and long
term confinement when you are not home. The major purpose of
confinement when your are not home is to restrict mistakes to
a small protected area.
The purpose of crate training is
quite the opposite. Short term confinement to a crate is
intended to inhibit your dog from eliminating when confined,
so that she will want to eliminate when released from
confinement and taken to an appropriate area. Crate training
also helps teach your dog to have bladder and bowel control.
Instead of going whenever she feels like it, she learns to
hold it and go at convenient scheduled times.
Crate training should not be abused,
otherwise the problem will get drastically worse. The crate is
not intended as a place to lock up the dog and forget her for
extended periods of time. If your dog soils her crate because
you left her there too long, the house training process will
be set back several weeks, if not months.
Your dog should only be confined to a
crate when you are at home. Except at night, give your dog an
opportunity to relieve herself every hour. Each time you let
her out, put her on leash and immediately take her outside.
Once outside, give her about three to five minutes to produce.
If she does not eliminate within the allotted time period,
simply return her to her crate.
If she does perform, then immediately
reward her with praise, food treats, affection, play, an
extended walk and permission to run around and play in your
house for a couple of hours. For young pups, after 45 minutes
to an hour, take her to her toilet area again. Never give your
dog free run of your home unless you know without a doubt that
her bowels and bladder are empty.
During this crate training procedure,
keep a diary of when your dog eliminates. If you have her on a
regular feeding schedule, she should soon adopt a
corresponding elimination schedule. Once you know what time of
day she usually needs to eliminate, you can begin taking her
out only at those times instead of every hour. After she has
eliminated, she can have free, but supervised, run of your
house.
About one hour before she needs to
eliminate (as calculated by your diary) put her in her crate.
This will prevent her from going earlier than you had planned.
With your consistency and abundance of rewards and praise for
eliminating outside, she will become more reliable about
holding it until you take her out. Then the amount of time you
confine her before her scheduled outing can be reduced, then
eliminated.
