Description
This article is from the Dog
Behavior FAQ, posted to rec.pets.dogs newsgroup. Maintained
by Cindy Tittle Moore with numerous contributions by others.
006. Crating a dog is an awful thing to do to it and they hate it.
Again untrue. Dogs are by nature den animals. When properly
introduced to a crate, most dogs love it, and they will often go
into their crates on their own to sleep. Of course, no dog should
be left in the crate so long that it must soil the crate. It's a
wonderful tool to use for housetraining, but puppies are not
physically equipped to go for more than three or four hours without
going to the bathroom. And all use of a crate should be done with
an eye toward eventually weaning the dog off of it. There are only
a few dogs that must always use a crate while you are gone.
Afterwards, it is a very useful thing to have -- for example if at
all possible your dog should always ride in the car in his crate.
Crating a dog works to prevent the dog from doing many of the
behaviors you don't want it to. What your dog does not do does not
develop into a habit and thus requires no correction. Second, it
means that when your dog does have an opportunity to engage in the
unwanted behavior, you are around (because you're home to let it
out) to give a proper and timely correction.
As the behavioral aspects pointed out above, reducing the territory
to protect and keeping it in the den are also positive things from
the dog's point of view, reducing the overall stress that it
experiences.
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dog, owner, behavior, understanding, modifying
