Hi I'm Ty Brown with dogbehavioronline.com.
I am here today in Riverton, Utah teaching
you how to train a dog. The topic of today's
discussion is how to crate train a dog. Now
it is very important to crate train a dog
because crate training is something that is
very natural to a dog. All dogs have what
is called a den instinct to where they feel
comfortable in an enclosed space if that enclosed
space is presented to them properly. So in
this case the crate takes the place of the
den and so the crate is an excellent place
if you have to be away from the home, to go
to work, to do your errands or anything like
that. When the dog is young the crate is a
good place for the dog to be so that he can't
be peeing in your house and he can't be chewing
up your furniture or destroying your things.
And so what you want to do when you want to
crate train an adult dog is simply get a crate,
number one that is a good size for the dog.
The dog should be able to stand up, turn around
and lie down in the crate. All you want to
do is simply introduce the dog to the crate.
Take him up to the crate, perhaps put a little
bit of food in there so that the dog is interested
in it and put him in and close the door. Do
that for a minute and let him right back out
and gradually build up his endurance so that
he can be in there for five minutes, for ten
minutes, for an hour, for two hours to the
point to where you go away for several hours
and the dog can just hang out quietly and
comfortably in the crate. So again all you
want to do is simply go in there Kent. Good
boy. Get him to go in. Close the door. Good
boy. Not a lot of fanfare or anything like
that, simply get him to go in and help him
to feel good about that. You may also want
to feed your dog in the crate to build another
positive association with the crate and never
ever use the crate as a means of punishment.
We want the dog to have only good feelings
towards the crate and so it is important that
you don't use it when you are mad at the dog.
So using a crate and crate training an adult
dog is an excellent means of having a dog
that doesn't destroy your things or go to
the bathroom in your house.