Doggy Downside

There’s enough space between the bars for Roxie to push her snout through for heavy duty licking.

regal-side-turning-roxie.jpg

Roxie sleeps in Stef’s room. She sleeps in a crate.

I understand this is a good thing for a dog and I approve, but it still looks like you’re visiting a prisoner in jail. There’s enough space between the bars for Roxie to push her snout through for heavy duty licking.

This was Roxie’s third night in the crate and her third night pleading to be released. We only found out when Stef came downstairs this morning. She’d spent the night in a sleeping bag next to the crate.

“If anyone asks what I did this weekend tell them I was camping out–on my floor.”

We remember when Stef was a baby. There were times when she needed to nap but didn’t want to. Helaine and I stood quietly outside her door while she cried and yelled for us. It was painful to let her cry, but we knew we had to do it and she had to adjust. After a while she did.

It’s tough for Stef right now. She wants Roxie to be a happy and healthy dog. She too will have to resist answering this baby’s call.

6 thoughts on “Doggy Downside”

  1. One trick I use for easy crate training is to feed all meals to the dog in the crate, nowhere else.

    My three fuzzy beasts get fed three times a day, and their food bowl stays in the crate.

    The water dish is kept outside mainly because they love to knock it over. They make dog watering bottles that have a spout that goes inside the cage like ones used for hamsters…

    It will take some patience, and some slow moves away form the crate, but it will work. Just NEVER use the crate as ‘punishment’. It’s the dog’s “den” and home base…

  2. Funny, just the other day a friend was telling me about the hell she went through the first couple weeks she had her puppy … she, too, slept on the floor next to the crate until the puppy finally stopped crying all night. She said it was just like having a newborn in the house.

    (Said puppy is now a full-grown German Shepherd/Doberman mix who would have Roxie for an hors’doeuvre. 🙂

  3. Nothing against the crate method, everyone who does it raves about it, but I went the old fashioned route when I raised my Vizsla pup, No crate, just a dog bed. This process was fine, but keep in mind that I work from home, so I was able to pay more attention to the puppy on a day to day basis. Had I worked outside the home like normal folk, I’d probably have chosen the crate.

    Geoff, take TONS of pics, they grow up fast!

  4. We had great success with the crates for our dogs. Can Stef move the crate closer to her own bed and be able to put her hand down to her? We’ve moved the crates around to different rooms on and off and our pups really became part of the pack quickly. We now have them in the family room and the dogs will go in them and just veg out when they want some down time…They don’t view them as punishment at all and when we’d leave the house and have to confine them, we’d yell, “time to go in your house” and we’d have a little treat for each “in”… it would be hilarious to watch them run in and expect a treat–even when it wasn’t crate time! Best of luck with her. She’s just darling…love her websites idea!

  5. My yougest son and his wife are raising and taining a pair of shi-tsuz and had similar results. They were able to take the pups outside every two hours when they first got them, rest of the time, in a dog bed or in the crate.

    These characters were responding to ‘come’ at 4 months, and ar every well-behaved now. They also prefer their crate (they share).

    Roxie is exhibiting a little ‘separation anxiety’ since she has been separated from her littermates. Once she decides that Steffie is part of her ‘pack’ and is in charge, Roxie will settle in. Don’t bet on a lot of sleep for a while. Putting the crate next to the bed is also a good ide, but not ON the bed. Steffie needs to be seen as the alpha in the new pack.

    Dogs have a very well-defined pack rank heirarchy and position, and need that to be clearly defined to be comfortable and behave properly. I have one Lhasa Apso, which are typically strong-willed and very hard to dominate–it’s taken several years to get this rescue pup to behave properly–she wants to be in charge, and that just won’t do. Instant conflict that must be resolved to have spome peace in the house.

  6. when we 1st got kiwi ( then a 2 lb chihuahua ( we biught a cage big enough for a great dane , she did cry the 1st night. the second i actualy took the loud bathroom clock ( that goes tick – tick – tick ) and put it next to her cage . thia actualy worked well . until she was 4 or 5 months old , we had a bad thunder storm and she was frightened terribly . we brought her to bed where she immediately peed on the comforter. it was made known to here this was a ” bad thing ” and never did it again , another thing she neve did again was sleep in her cage overnight gosh we are suckers for these dogs , aren’t we?

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