How long can a dog stay in a crate?
Comments (0)I get this question all the time. There is no one way to say exactly how long your dog can hold it or how long you can leave your dog in a crate before he has to go to the bathroom. There are a couple different formulas that I use, though, to help people know how long they can leave their puppy in a crate.
One school of thought says that you can leave a dog in a crate as a puppy for his age in months, equal to hours, plus one. That means that if you have a two month old puppy he can ‘hold it’ for three hours. A four month puppy can ‘hold it’ for five hours and so on and so forth. I have found this to be true for certain dogs that seem to have ’small bladders’.
For other dogs, and in my experience this is most dogs, they are capable of ‘holding it’ a bit longer. For most dogs I find that their ability to hold their bowls falls into a timetable much like the following:
- 8 weeks old- 3-4 hours
- 10 weeks old- 4-5 hours
- 12 weeks old- 5-6 hours
- 4 to 5 months old- 6-7 hours
By about 4 to 6 months of age is usually when a puppy can ‘hold it’ for an entire eight hour work day. Again, these are just basic formulas. There are always exceptions to every rule. Some puppies will be able to last longer quicker and many will take longer to work up to a full eight hour day. Go at your dog’s pace and you will be in good shape.
Why cleaners and sprays AREN’T the key to house breaking your dog
Comments (0)If you search online for such keywords as ‘house training a dog’ or ‘housebreaking a puppy’ or ‘adult dog house training’ you will find all sorts of resources and dog training articles about the best way to stop your dog from going to the bathroom in your house.
One thing you will also find are certain products, sprays, and cleaners that claim to fix any house training and housebreaking problem. The idea behind the spray is that you spray it on the area where the dog has had an accident and it gets rid of the odor well enough that the dog wont go to the bathroom again. I have also seen some cleaners that advertise that their formula will repel any dog from going to the bathroom in the house again. Do these cleaner work?
The reality is that these accident cleaners may help a housebreaking problem, but it is very unlikely that they would ever fix a house training problem.
The reason why they may help a house training problem is that if you get rid of the odor entirely some dogs wont go back to that spot to relieve themselves. Many dogs will, however. Many dogs don’t care whether or not there is an odor left over, they just feel like going to the bathroom wherever they please.
Marketers of these products hope to sell their cleaners by offering the quick fix. It just doesn’t work that way, though. When it comes to house training your dog there aren’t too many shortcuts you can take. It all boils down to four steps to a housebroken dog:
1- Supervision
2- Correcting your dog when they do go to the bathroom in the wrong spot
3- Encouraging the dog to go to the bathroom in the right spot
4- Keeping your dog on a general food and bathroom schedule
It isn’t a bad thing to get those cleaners to help you in your house training efforts. Just realize that you likely wont get the whole way there and you need sound training principles to get you over the hump. Good luck.
This is gross, but you may want to try it
Comments (0)I was recently in the home of a dog training client and we were working on a couple of behaviors that their dogs were exhibiting. Their dogs had a dog door that let them in and out of the house. When they were in the house they were fine. When they were outside, though, they were prone to dig and destroy young trees by chewing on them.
One thing I always tell people is that the hardest behaviors to fix are the ones that happen while you are gone. Often the best medicine is prevention using a crate and gradually allowing a dog freedom from the crate in brief intervals while you are gone.
Well, these clients weren’t too thrilled with the idea of using the crate. Their dogs were great inside the house and they didn’t want to use a crate for help in fixing backyard destruction. So we started brainstorming about how to fix these destruction issues.
For those of you who have read my training article about how to fix a digging problem, you will remember that I recommend using your dog’s own stool to fix the problem. After explaining this method to my client they came up with the idea, “Hey, what if we used our dog’s poop to stop them from chewing on the trees?”
I love ideas that are ‘out of the box’ so I said, sure, let’s try it. Sure enough they gave it a shot. They took their dogs stool and rubbed it on their young trees in the areas where the dogs were chewing. This wasn’t damaging to the trees at all but so far has worked to help the dogs stay completely away from the trees. The dogs are repelled by their own poop and as such leave the trees alone.
What are the drawbacks? Well, my client reported that she nearly threw up, which is understandable. But for five minutes of gross out she now has trees that are protected from her dogs. Think this idea is crazy? Maybe it is. But if your dog is chewing up your trees, shrubs, or bushes you may want to give it a try.
Further insight into submissive urination
Comments (0)Submissive urination is a dog behavior problem that drives people crazy. I’ve written an article about this problem previously, click here to read it. After dealing with this problem more and more, however I have a little more insight into how to fix this behavior problem.
What is submissive urination?
To recap what I wrote in my article, submissive urination is a problem caused by an excess of submission. Your dog should feel submissive toward you. The problem starts, though, when your dog feels overly submissive. This happens when the dog owner communicates in a way with their dog that confuses the dog and causes the dog to go into a mental void where the only thing that makes sense is to roll over and pee.
Now, keep in mind, this urination is not an overt behavior. It is more of a reflex and as such has to be treated in a different way than you would treat other ‘misbehaviors’.
How to not treat submissive urination
A great deal of my latest insight into treating submissive urination deals with how to not go about your training efforts. There are a couple ways that people deal with this behavior that tend to make the problem worse:
Getting angry/punishing/correcting the dog-
Remember, your dog has this problem because you have communicated in a way that is confusing. You may not realize that you have done this but it is important to understand that you have. If you observe dogs communicating amongst themselves it is very rare that one dog will submissively urinate toward another dog. It is only when a dog is very confused and feels overly dominated that they will submissively urinate.
If you punish your dog for submissive urination it will only serve to confuse your dog even more.
Don’t coddle your dog-
Many people act the opposite of angry when their dog has a submissive urination problem. They coddle the dog. They let their dog get away with murder for fear of setting off another round of peeing. This doesn’t work either.
Remember, the solution is all about proper relationship. The proper relationship between you and your dog is not that of servant (you) and master (your dog). You can’t allow your dog to do whatever he or she wants. The proper relationship is you in the fair leadership position. If you are constantly coddling your dog in order to avoid a submissive urination problem you will find that the relationship will still be out of whack and the problem will still continue.
How to fix submissive urination
So if you can’t punish and you can’t coddle, what can you do? The key is to fix the relationship you have with your dog. One of the best ways to do this is to keep your dog on a leash for a while inside the home. A lot of bonding happens through the leash. It will also put you in a position to correct misbehaviors without emotion. Too often dogs start submissively urinating when their owner shouts at them, spanks them, hits them, or chases after them when they catch their dog chewing, jumping, barking, etc. This frightens the dog and sends him into a state where he submissively urinates. If you have a leash on your dog it allows you to catch him in the act of any misbehavior and give him a quick jerk on the leash. If you are fairly correcting your dog for misbehaviors it shouldn’t set off a round of submissive urination.
Also, work on your obedience training. Obedience training is a great way to bond with your dog and clear up any areas of confusion. Don’t do ‘treat training’ as this will just further coddle your dog. Simply be firm but fair and you should be able to fix the relationship in no time. There are still several other tips for treating this problem in my other article previously referenced. Good luck.
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