Kennel or Crate Training Tips!

Nap time!

Training your pets proper behavior is a laborious and overwhelming process, especially for first time pet owners.  One of the challenging trainings, is letting your dogs to get used to their kennel or crates.  Luckily, we did not have difficulty kennel training Scruffy.  Partly because he was really young, around six or seven weeks old when we started training him.

 Here are the steps we did to kennel train Scruffy:

1. Buy a right size kennel or crate for your dog.  Neither should it be too small nor too big.  It should be big enough for your dog to stand, sit, and lay down.
2. Put his favorite bed or blanket inside the kennel.  This will allow your dog to recognize something familiar.  For Scruffy, we put his favorite bed in.  Puppies love sleeping.  He cannot resist not to get inside the kennel when his favorite, fluffy bed is inside.
3. At first, we kept the kennel gate open in the morning.  This will give him the freedom to go in and out as he wishes, and it will not let him feel that he is being caged.
4. Then at night, Scruffy is already asleep when we put him inside the kennel.  So, he did not resisted at all.  We keep the kennel gate closed all night.
5. We also used the kennel to potty train Scruffy.  For potty training tips, click this link:  kennel and potty training. 

Now, Scruffy is comfortable with his kennel.  We also put Scruffy inside the kennel when we need to leave the house.  It gives us peace of mind when we leave the house and not worry about any surprises when we get back.