Does your puppy want to be crate trained? Crate training puppies is by far the easiest way to get your puppy potty trained. However, there is one catch; it must be used in conjunction with appropriate methods. You can’t just get a crate and put your puppy in there! This practice can easily make your puppy’s crate training backfire.
The crate should never be used in such a way that your puppy is locked up for way too long. There are standards for how long you can leave a puppy in his crate without having a mess to clean up.
And remember, dogs don’t mess up on purpose. By nature, they don‘t prefer to be in their mess BUT if they‘ve been forced to do so because of circumstances then they will learn to be in their mess.
These circumstances are usually that
1. they either couldn’t hold it because they were left in longer than their capacity for their age or
2. in more cases than you would think, if they’re afraid or nervous they will mess because they are stressed.
Again, not the dog’s fault but is a physiological reaction and he has no control over it. One of the saddest mistakes that I see is pet owners using punitive methods like swatting, yelling, or rubbing the puppy’s nose in his mess. This is SO counterproductive and does nothing except make the dog fearful and/or aggressive, make the dog distrust you or cause him to run and hide to the potty.
He does not understand that you don’t want him to potty inside; he thinks you just don’t want him to eliminate at all. So he hides when he has to relieve himself because he’s afraid of you and doesn’t want to make you mad but the poor guy has to go some time.
Finding a mess and then bringing the dog over to punish is even worse. He doesn’t have a clue as to “why” he’s in trouble. This can make your puppy fearful, untrusting, paranoid, and just generally unstable because he’s being punished for no reason at all as far as he knows. These are just a few examples of what not to do for crate training puppies.
Your puppy’s potty training stage is very critical to what kind of pet he will become for the next decade. You will make him or break him based on the ways you interact with your puppy during this time of his life.
All puppies have critical imprinting stages of development that will actually form their personalities and habits, so special care must be taken to ensure that your puppy learns in positive ways that enable him to trust you, listen to and obey you, and be a well-adjusted confident pet, (who is of course reliably potty trained).
Crate training puppies is the safest, easiest, cleanest, and the fairest way to potty train and house train your puppy.
