Crate Training...When And Why ?

Oreo has always been oppposed to crate training, and yet the picture to your left would speak in favor of it from time to time. Over the years we have figured out that nothing is learned by agreeing with yourself. So we have asked a friend who is experienced in shelter work with a training background for his knowledge and reasons for support. He is currently serving actively in the Animal Control Field Services arena, and finds crate training to be valuable in rehoming issues or in dealing with the "growing pains" of pet ownership. We do crate our dogs during travel for safety purposes, and we maintain a covered kennel area in case of an emergency ( fence blowing down etc ) I use it as a potting area. After having it for 35 years I still haven't had to put a dog it it, but I feel like a better steward for providing it. I am becoming aware that a crate could be useful in rehoming, and with some behavioral issues a novice dog owner could find themselves in. I still feel if you have to crate all the time you aren't ready for a dog yet. The text in brown is the lovely article offered up for the site.
I believe the lack of awareness of, or misunderstanding about, crate training is in fact a tragedy. I say this because the most common reasons people “fall out of love” with there dogs, and then surrender them at shelters, can be resolved by the proper use of a crate. Two common reasons for owner surrender of dogs are destructive chewing and/or housebreaking problems. I certainly don’t fault people for not loving a dog that has these problems. I myself would find it difficult to love a dog that does his/her business all over my house, and I likely wouldn’t care much for a dog that chewed up all my things either. But the simple reality is that these are common problems for most dogs and their owners; and they can be resolved by the use of a crate. Housebreaking and chewing problems for dogs is as natural for a dog as potty training and thumb sucking issues are for children; they are perfectly natural issues. But if a dog owner doesn’t solve these problems they are not likely to keep the dog, which means they’ll likely dump the dog on the local shelter to deal with. When you consider that in most communities, that 50% of abandoned or surrendered dogs are euthanized; you can see we are talking about a potentially life threatening issue for the dog.
As a dog trainer, in years past, I spent a great deal of time explaining the benefits of crate training to dog owners with these typical problems. Generally, the first obstacle to overcome with the dog owner was that they think putting a dog in a crate is cruel. In a perfect world this might not be the perfect situation, but it certainly is not cruelty. Consider that a child, for about the first 2 years of its life, spends almost all of its time in confinement. It is either in a crib, playpen, highchair, car seat or some other containment device. So why should have so much difficulty understanding that containment of a dog is cruelty? In fact, virtually all dogs love their crates. Like most humans, we have are favorite place to sit at the dinner table, our favorite chair when watching TV or “our side” of the bed. Like most humans, dogs are creatures of habit and therefore actually prefer to lie in their crates even when they aren’t being put in their by the owner. I have had many dogs that had to be forced into their crate the first two weeks, like a child having to be forced to sleep in its own bed, only to find the dog going into the crate on his own a few weeks later; so don’t make judgments by the dogs initial reactions to it.
So, when you are not able to supervise your dog, especially during the housebreaking/chewing phases of a dog, generally about 6 months, use a crate; you just might be saving its life.
The daring young puppy in the commode is a very young Burley Dog..