Crate and pen training?

I am bringing home my 1st lab next week. I have a baby and a 3year old as well. I have never crate trained but from research and lurking on the board, I feel it is the way to go. However, I also like the idea of these indoor play pens. My thought is to have her in the pen in the living room while we are also in the living room playing with the kids. That way the pup will be involved with the family but not able to bite/chew on my infant. I have also tossed around the idea of keeping her in the pen while we are away rather than the crate and using the crate for sleeping.

is this a bad idea and I should just say forget the pen and use the crate for all the above? I really like the idea of a pen but not if is not as effective or takes away the effectiveness of the crate?

Thanks

Your options are not mutually exclusive. I highly recommend crate training for a long list of reasons though, but that does not mean you cannot also make use of a pen, when you are around but cannot "manage" or directly supervise because of the baby.

my friend uses a crate within a play pen when the puppies are younger and hat's a good set-up. She is crate training the puppy but when she cannot get home for a few hours sets-up the puppy in the pen with a potty area.

The pen may keep the puppy contained when they are younger but a 7-10mt ld lab is getting big and the pen may not contain them - and they may still be destructive. So I would start crate training right away in case you get to that point, so you are not STARTING to crate train at 10 months (it's doable for sure but easier to start sooner).

A baby a toddler and a puppy is going to be a crazy amount of work. Make sure you have plenty of time to exercise the puppy and most importantly TRAIN. Especially as they hit the teenage stage, they need an hour of free play exercise a day, start planning ahead for that (dog walker, doggy dacyare, someone playing with the dog while the other is taking care of the kids, etc.)

the one thing about the pen is you need to be on top of the dog's potty needs. Part of the bonus of the crate during potty training is they won't want to soil where they sleep to is buys you time. But with a play pen they have more room so are more likely to just pee. So make sure that play pen time is after a good potty break. OR just have some sort of litter/potty area designated.

That's what we did. The crate door was open and the crate was in a home made pen or in our gated kitchen. I did shut the crate door for short times but if we had to go away and might miss a pee break then puppy could eliminate outside the crate and stay clean. Puppies did choose a spot away from the crate to do this. This also gives puppy more room to move, essential if you can't avoid long crate times otherwise. I do suggest the baby pens and X-pens you see around are too flimsy to contain a robust Lab puppy. The OH made our pen. And, puppies can do horrendous damage to walls, cupboards, themselves if gated in a room. We were lucky, ours did not, but a pen might be the better idea.

I bought an XPen for Sam. It was a waste of money. He escaped the first day we left him alone in it. I was so happy I was able to return it.

One of our neighbors who got a puppy a few years ago had a wire crate set up with an expen attached at either side of the door end so that it looked like a crate with a little dog run extending out from it. It looked like a great set up even though it took up a lot of room in a room where they also had 2 other large wire crates for their 2 older dogs. If you have a good space to put it, say, one with washable flooring, that seems like a good option. I don't know how the expen was attached to the sides of the crate but you could probably use zip ties. It seemed like it could be a little more stationary being attached to the crate than it might just standing alone when the puppy gets a little bigger and might jump against the sides of the pen. Just a thought. Good luck, you'll be one busy parent!

Thanks for the replies. It will be a busy couple years but fortunately I'm a school teacher so I will be off the next month to spend with the new pup. When I go back I have it worked out for relatives to come by and let her out every couple hours

We use the ex pen and a crate for the first couple of weeks and then just use the crate inside and ex pen outside. If we are leaving the house, the crate is ALWAYS locked because the ex pens are not entirely safe. I never leave them in those unless I am there to keep and eye out and get there quickly…but they help to give the puppy extra room when you can't watch them as closely as they need to be watched.

I'm not sure I'd personally feel comfortable leaving my pup in an x-pen while I am not supervising. I have seen them come down and puppies climb them. It just doesn't seem safe.