Dog Kennel Debate

[Cara!]

Cara sleeps in a crate at night and any time she has to be left alone during the day. All in all this doesn't add up to much time though, as I'm home nearly all of the time with her. She is a little over a year old and completely house trained (as in going to the bathroom outside), however I don't trust her to not get into things while not being supervised and a crate is a good way to keep her safe. All it would take is her getting INTO one wrong thing while alone and she could be dead, need surgery for an obstruction, etc. Also in the event of a house fire a dog in a crate is going to be much easier for firefighters to get out safely than a dog running scared. Just my opinion of course, and all that being said Cara LOVES her crate. I've attached two pictures that show instances in the last two days where she has chosen on her own to go in her crate. I guess it's also useful to mention that I've never used her crate as punishment, she learned from the time that I got her home that lots of really great stuff happens in her crate.

[Delti]

A crate, used properly, should be the dog's sanctuary, and I encourage everyone I know who has dogs to have one so that the dog has a place where they know they can have some alone time, especially if you have a busy household. All 7 of my dogs willingly go in their crates with a simple command of "crate up", and all of them sleep in them with the doors open while we are home, although they do sleep in my family's various bedrooms at night. We leave 2-3 of them in crates during the day usually (between 4 to 5 hours), as one will bark incessantly outside and the other two get cold easily. For my barker, she is a very nervous dog in general and has been very attached to her crate since puppyhood. I can leave her in there when I leave for the day with the door open and see on our security cameras that she didn't actually leave it the whole time I was gone.

Who?, you made the same mistake a lot of people do-you bought the crate for a puppy when you knew they were going to get bigger. Always buy a crate for the size you think the dog will be as an adult, not the size they are now-if you're not sure how big they will get, ask the breeder, a trainer, or a shelter/rescue employee. People who see puppies often are usually pretty good at predicting how big they will get. As for being cramped, the rule of thumb is always as long as they can turn around, the crate isn't too cramped. My heaviest dog (85 lbs) actually prefers my smaller crates-I don't remember what the smallest dimension is, but I think is supposed to be for dogs under 40 lbs (it is supposed to be for transporting foster puppies and small adults), and he will choose it over my much larger crates.

Pretty much all dogs/puppies whine when they go into a crate for the first time...that's why they call it crate training. You have to teach the dog to like being in the crate, you can't just throw them in and expect them to enjoy being in it when there's all kinds of fun things to do outside of the crate right off the bat. It's kind of like expecting a baby not to cry when it is put down in a crib for the first time.

For traveling, I actually prefer it over a seat belt. I have a friend whose Aussie would be dead if it hadn't been in its crate when she was hit by some idiot running a red light. The crate itself got thrown out of the car and popped open, releasing the dog, but some Good Samaritans caught her about an hour later. Police basically said that if the dog had been loose in the car or in a seat belt, she probably would have been killed by the impact. The hard plastic crates (like Sky Kennels or Vari Kennels) or aluminum crates (such as the awesome but very expensive Winger Zinger crates), obviously, are the safest for traveling in cars (wire crates, like the OP posted, sometimes collapse, and I don't like cloth or canvas crates in generally, as any dog with destructive tendencies, which is most puppies, will happily gnaw their way through).

And for those wondering, the easiest way to crate train is to give the dog its food in the crate. Breakfast, dinner, rawhide, antlers, whatever, if they're being fed in the crate, it can't be a bad place. Leave them in for about 5 minutes after they finish at first, and gradually work it up in 5 minute increments to about a 1/2 hour.