Mention crate training and you’re likely to hear either people singing it’s praises or complain about how much trouble they have getting their dog into the crate.
Enter: Crate Love!
We have a new puppy in the house every year to raise as a service dog. The first thing I do is teach them Crate Love.
Here’s how we teach Crate Love:
- Feed all meals in the crate. You can feed them from their bowl, or, if you have speedy eaters, put the meal into a food-dispensing toy. In either case, the food is delivered in the crate.
- Leave the door open, let the dog enter and exit the crate as he pleases to eat his meal.
- When offering treats or chews, toss them into the crate. The message you’re giving the dog is: all good things are delivered in the crate.
- When you have to put the dog in the crate and leave him, it’s important to put a safe food-dispensing toy in there with him to help occupy his time. (I don’t offer rawhide-type chews when I’m gone — too high risk for choking.)
We’ve never had any trouble convincing a dog that the crate is a great place to be using the Crate Love system.
Things to avoid when teaching Crate Love:
- Don’t force your dog into the crate when you’re teaching Crate Love. Part of the beauty is that it’s the dog’s choice to go into the crate.
- Don’t use the crate as punishment.
- Don’t yell at the dog if they bark in the crate. The crate is always a happy place when teaching Crate Love.
Talk to me: Does your dog love his crate? Share your tips and things that have worked for you. (Only positive, dog-friendly ideas, please…)
Nice video, production value/lighting is great on this one (and you look lovely to boot!). I like that Levi doesn’t quite know what kennel is and keeps looking back at you – we’re still teaching Istas “go to your crate” and he does the same thing (needs to know treats are coming, and checks back to make sure you really want him to go to his crate in order to get the treats, waits around the corner and everything too)! We started putting the crate in different places and saying “go to your crate” and he’s picking up on it faster now. We also notice he’s going in there to look for treats when he’s hungry, so we hide them in there every once in a while for him to find a surprise. 🙂 He still only goes in there if he’s hungry or told to do so (when we put him to bed or need to be alone for a while), otherwise he’ll pull his blanket or dino (crate only toy) out of the crate and sleep next to it or somewhere else. I would say he’s at the point of tolerating it, but I don’t know if he’ll ever love it.