For me crate training was a no brainer, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing but now 2 months on, Cooper cries to be let into his crate every night because he WANTS to go to bed. 

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The main thing to consider with crate training is how are you planning on managing the toilet situation? With larger breeds I think the general rule of thumb is they can hold their bladder for 1 hour per month of age, so when your 8 week old pup comes home, the chances are every 2 hours you’re going to have a pee situation- and trust me, dogs HATE peeing where they sleep, if your pup does pee in their crate, they are not going to like it and you ARE going to get a wake up call.

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The 2 options are generally: 

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1. Set your alarm for the relevant interval, sleepwalk down and take your puppy outside to toilet, then straight back to bed again.

2. Set up a play pen/separate area outside the crate with a puppy pee pad, so if they need to pee in the night, they can pee away from where they are sleeping. 

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Our breeder initially said to us not to give Cooper water after 8pm to help him sleep through, but a trainer we spoke to said never deprive them of water. It’s hard to know who to listen to, but in the end we went with option 2 and we didn’t deprive him of any water. 

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Night 1…

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We didn’t have the play pen at this point, we hadn’t spoken to the trainer, so we followed the no water after 8pm rule and put Cooper in his crate along with his bed some toys and some blankets at around 10pm. He cried. It was horrible! I ended up sitting with him for about 15-20minutes before he settled down and fell asleep, then I crept up the stairs like a ninja. He slept through to 5am the following morning. Not a bad start! 

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The Testing begins…

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Puppies like to test you, and as the week went on, Cooper was beginning to click that when he cried at 5am, someone came down and gave him attention, so what did he start doing? He started crying at 1am, or 2am. Fortunately for me I’m a heavy sleeper so I didn’t even stir, however the rest of the house was not, and I made the fatal mistake of going down to ‘comfort’ him. He didn’t need comfort, he didn’t need the toilet, he just wanted to play! 

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A couple of nights of this happening we decided enough was enough. By this point we had set up the play pen around his crate so he had more space and also a place to pee. We brought a set of cameras and set them up on the crate/play pen so we could see from our room that he was okay and there wasn’t any other reason for the crying. Then we left him. We had 2 more nights of howling and sulking and jumping up at the play pen, just making a racket in general, then…silence. 

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The Blip…

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We had a blip. One night, only about an hour after he was put to bed (he was around 12-14 weeks at the time), he began to howl the place down. He hadn’t pooed that evening and from day 1 he’d never poo in the house, so I figured we may have a number 2 situation on our hands. Down I went, I put him on the slip lead and took him outside, nope, nothing. 

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I did a quick google search as you do-  ‘how to make a dog poo’… Rub their belly in a clockwise direction. Okay sorted. By this point Cooper had resumed his favourite sleeping spot in the kitchen, and as he loves belly rubs I knew he’d be more than happy to comply with my methods.

 

Long story short, I fell asleep. The next thing I knew, it was 3am, I had a paw pressing on my face, I was freezing on the tiled floor with possibly the worst backache known to man. BUT, I had this little furry face looking at me with these puppy dog eyes saying ‘please don’t go…’ In the end I got a blanket and resumed my place on the kitchen floor. It was the first time that I’d managed to lay down with him on the floor and him not try to eat my hair or pull the blanket off- it was a novelty for both of us! 

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Anyway, the next night came around and what happened? An hour after bed the howling started again. Been a bit bigger now it was accompanied by the banging of the play pen as he moved it across the tiled floor. We were back to square one. Cue 2 more sleepless nights trying to ignore the cries and barks. 

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Now…

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If you saw Cooper now, you wouldn’t believe that he ever disliked his crate/play pen. At 9:50pm every night without fail he’s at the kitchen door, pawing to get out to the hall so he can go to bed. As I’m typing this he is just under 19 weeks and has just started sleeping through from 10pm to 6am without peeing. Every night we put his snuffle mat down with some treats in it, put a couple of toys in with him, including his trusty zebra who’s been with him from day one, a bit of water and then finally a couple of pee pads down in case he can’t hold it. 

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I know a lot of people say it’s cruel and heartless to ignore their crying, but as we’ve been reassured several times by trainers, it really does not do them any harm! And like my mum said, she used to do it to me as a baby and within days I was sleeping through the night and I wasn’t scarred for life because of it! 

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The future…

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Obviously eventually when he’s older, not having any accidents and well and truly out of the chewing stage, we want to give him the run of the downstairs to sleep…but until then I will remain the meany that locks him away at night.

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We are currently turning half of the garage into a ‘Cooper Room,’ complete with lino floor, lots of space, lots of toys, but most importantly, nothing of value of ours to chew on! This is where he’ll be left when we’re out (not for long periods of time), but for a few hours or so and at night. I think it will be an adjustment for him at night, but he is generally a very laid back easy going pup and with him, the older he’s got, the less fazed he is by change. So fingers crossed it all goes to plan!

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If you are interested in reading more about the pros and cons of crate training, check out the article below.