Remind me about crate training tips, please!

[barry581]

I treat every time I put them in the crate, and all meals in the crate for at least a couple months. Once they are in the crate I completely ignore them. When I return home I will walk around for a couple minutes before I let them out. I will not let them out until they are sitting and calm. I also teach them to wait in the crate once the door is open, until I tell them it's ok to come out.

Brooks has been the worst with the screaming, took him about two weeks to stop. He will still give a couple screams when I come home, but he knows he's not coming out until I say so.

[windycanyon]

Sometimes a dark or isolated room helps too (instead of having the crate where they can see you). The key is really not to acknowledge their bad behavior in any way and not let them out until they are totally quiet.

[silverfz]

Our lab german sherpard mix was not from a breeder and was in a play pen with 10 puppies till we picked her and we had to crate train her. We had a fight and atlast figured she would sleep in the crate in our bedroom. During the day my wife gets her real good to go to crate and stay on command. then she went through a week of fighting and now back to normal. we have 2 crates, the bedroom is smaller and we have a big 48 inch one in the living room where she spends time when we are not at home. the small is also the one she uses when we are travelling in our camper.

she is tall , skinny and is 55 lbs at 5 months so shopping for a another crate. i have like 5 crates..time to sell them.
but when she decides not to go, we use lavender and make her go. If given an option to fight and get out she will .

[ArchieSit]

Well, I'm happy to report that twice in the last two days, Ferris has only cried for five minutes or so before settling in the crate. We are still having some sessions where he yells the whole time, but I'll take any progress! I'm doing three sessions a day of about 45 minutes at a time. Thanks for all the encouraging words! I know he'll get there.

[Abulafia]

Yay! Hang in there—sounds like it's coming along quickly.

I feel like we sort of wimped out when it came to day-time crating (night-time went fast and easily). We did crate Hoku once or twice during the day—she was Ok, mainly didn't like it, but no tantrums—but then realized that it was perfectly reasonable for her to be a work dog rather than a "stay at home" dog, and she began just going w/ my husband to all of his jobs (he's a contractor). So, she's crated in the car, and when he's working on a site, he brings her and the crate inside and she'll happily crate there—she prefers it if she can see or hear him, but she's more or less fine no matter what.

We've left her at home (kitchen, baby gate) a few times, and she's perfectly fine. Nut if we're going to be gone for more than a half hour or so, she much prefers to hop in the crate and snooze (and SNORE), just so she can be with us. This is obviously not a solution that can work for everyone, but it's worked for us.