Dog Crates ??

[Mo Mo's Mum]

Hi

I have just had my Parent's puppy to stay for 5 days and their older dog for a couple of afternoons, talk about busy I had forgotten about the 4.30am starts ! and he has a crate as a wee aside Molly loved him to bits and has been very sad to see him go apperntly he has been the best toy I ever brought home !

Hal ( my parents puppy) has a crate Molly has never had one but was very happy to get in and out of his and I was looking into getting one for her as my parents have just moved 5 hours away and we will be travelling a lot to see them and would be happier to have a crate for her to travel in and sleep in while we are away

My question is after that long winded introdution is this

Is 18 months too old to introduce a crate?

Obviously this will be a slow process with lots of positive reinforcement and not shut doors for quite some time but feed back and suggestions from all the lovely people here would be very helpfull.

Thanks a million trillion in advance

[catnapper]

Nope 18 months is perfectly fine. All you need to do is associate the crate with good things and slowly acclimate her to it until one day you shut the door. Never let her out when she's whimpering or barking, only let her out on quiet. If she's whining, etc, and you let her out then you just trained her that whining, barking, wimpering is the magic word to open the door.

And remember: the crate should only be large enough to stand up without hitting her head, turn around, and lay down.

[mruffruff]

I adopted an 8-10 year old stray who learned to love a crate. He's now 13-15 and will crawl into it often during the day or night. Just as catnapper said, make it a good place.

[Mo Mo's Mum]

Thanks for that the crate I am looking at is the size my friends use for their Malamutes and she is 32 kg ( Approx 15.5 pounds I think I am converting as we use metric) about as tall as a male Lab but longer and not as heavy set this was my thinking as well if I can get her liking it it will be much safer to travel etc I am next away again in 2 months so want to get her going

Thanks again