Jenn&Izzie
April 7th, 2009, 12:34 PM
I just found your website yesterday and already have put the training for night-time into our schedule and it worked great last night - no whining! So, onto the next issue.
I have a puppy (Izzie), mixed breed that I adopted three weeks ago. She is currently 11 weeks old. When she first got home, we started her with the crate, getting used to it. She sleeps in the crate every night and minus a little whining - does just fine. The problem came when I would go to work in the morning. She would poop in her crate - which didn't seem surprising since I would leave her in there from 8am until 11:30am and then 1pm until 5pm and her age. The problem was that she would get so worked up that she would get poop all over her crate. Since I knew she was still to young to hold it for that long, I put her in our utility room with a puppy fence and she definitely liked that better but after a few days, she started climbing the fence!
For obvious reasons, I figured we needed to go back to the crate and that's what we are doing today. Again, I went home at lunch to take her out and she had pooped all over her crate.
My question is - should I be putting her in the crate when she is so young? Am I teaching her it's ok to poop in the crate and forever losing my house-training tool? I am ok with cleaning her up and her crate if I know that it's the right thing to do, training-wise.
Other than that, she is absolutely perfect and we are so happy to have her!
I have a puppy (Izzie), mixed breed that I adopted three weeks ago. She is currently 11 weeks old. When she first got home, we started her with the crate, getting used to it. She sleeps in the crate every night and minus a little whining - does just fine. The problem came when I would go to work in the morning. She would poop in her crate - which didn't seem surprising since I would leave her in there from 8am until 11:30am and then 1pm until 5pm and her age. The problem was that she would get so worked up that she would get poop all over her crate. Since I knew she was still to young to hold it for that long, I put her in our utility room with a puppy fence and she definitely liked that better but after a few days, she started climbing the fence!
For obvious reasons, I figured we needed to go back to the crate and that's what we are doing today. Again, I went home at lunch to take her out and she had pooped all over her crate.
My question is - should I be putting her in the crate when she is so young? Am I teaching her it's ok to poop in the crate and forever losing my house-training tool? I am ok with cleaning her up and her crate if I know that it's the right thing to do, training-wise.
Other than that, she is absolutely perfect and we are so happy to have her!