New puppy - to crate or not? and overnight location

[PositiveModelling]

Hello all! We are getting a Labrador puppy soon and I have read so many different opinions on crating etc that my head is spinning. 😅

The first couple of books I read were very pro-crating especially for overnight and it made a lot of sense to me. We live in a 3-storey house and in my mind it makes most sense to have pup downstairs at night so it's a short trip from their bed to outdoors for toilet trips... but we also can't leave them uncontained downstairs overnight! Also, whilst there will almost always be someone at home during the day, there will be times when we might have to leave for five minutes (school run) or be able to put puppy in a safe place to exist unsupervised whilst dealing with a kid emergency / bum wipe etc. Finally, with youngish kids around the house there will be times when some rooms just won't be appropriate for a chewy puppy whilst toys with small parts are out and being played with. So in my head having the option of containment makes sense to prevent puppy from getting into mischief when we can't be supervising.

However, I have been reading various posts that oppose the use of crates ("cages"), but I can't get my head round the practical issues of what to do with puppy when you need to keep them safely contained, especially at night.

I'm also wondering whether anyone has any perspectives on dog sleeping on a different level of the house from its humans, I'm not sure if I'm being woefully naive 😅 but it also seems practically easier to have puppy at garden level!

Any thoughts/advice gratefully received!

Work with the puppy you get. Sometimes like lots of others on this thread they are happy in crate. Others they'll be crying and lonely and desperate to get out. If you have one of those puppies then don't do it. Even if they do get used to it the behaviour will come out elsewhere because you're essentially getting the puppy to think that it needs to fend for itself as no one will help.

All the crap about making a rod for your own back is ridiculous. Our pup hated the crate. We allowed him in our room as close to us as possible and also on our bed. As he grew up we moved his bed further out and now he sleeps on the landing - no crying no scratching just easy. And then he comes into the bed in the morning for cuddles.

in terms of free reign in the house - just puppy proof - you need to be where puppy is all the time and close doors to places you don't want them to be. I'd also unfortunately say 5 minutes is too long to leave a puppy but that's your choice.

Crate training properly can take weeks, or months - it’s not just sticking them in a crate and leaving them to it.

Putting a puppy into a crate away from you is more than likely going to just end up with a real upset puppy.

we used a crate at night for her to sleep in, in our room, she was happy enough to go in but in retrospect I wish we hadn’t. She woke us up when she needed to go out and would have done that if she hadn’t been in a crate. If you crate downstairs you won’t hear that and they might go in their crate which they hate. If they are downstairs I’d put them somewhere like a utility, kitchen with a hard floor, in a pen where you put the mesh up round if you don’t have a door, and just clean up any mess in the morning as they soon start holding it in over night anyway. Or get up and take them out every few hours.

ours hated the crate in the day, we never even used it, and just found her own safe space to sleep.

Open crate with an enclosure around it from day one. I do have a utility room though. She still sleeps in the utility room in her open crate. I took the enclosure away once she was house trained. She did come upstairs and sleep on my bed after her spay surgery, but was happy to go back downstairs once healed. During the day she has the run of the house unless I'm going out. Border Terrier.

We were exactly the same as this with out lab. He was in my room for 2 weeks in a little crate and then we moved him down to the living room and he slept really well. We kept the crate until he was about 9 months old and he just naturally grew out of it.
Crate was never a punishment and like this poster apart from at night it was for 30 mins max.

It was the best thing we ever did with ours.

Toilet training was a breeze in the early weeks, it kept her safe at night and when we were out, or when we had guests over and they didn’t want to be jumped at, so she could have a safe space when there were new people/children around.

Shes 15 months, we put the crate away at 12 months and she now has the run of the house at night (she sleeps on my daughters floor by her bed, mainly), she’s fine when we go out.

We keep the crate for holidays though as I don’t want to risk it in Air b&bs or caravans. So we take the crate with us and she’s fine in it at night and when we pop out. So glad we did it know if only for that, we can take her anywhere with us and not worry.

Depends on the dog though, some are fine.

The breeder we had our retriever from had the mum and pups in a big room, with lots of open crates in it. He never shut them in, they had no doors, but the pups (and mum) would come and go from the crates as they pleased and were used to sleeping in them.

When we brought our girl home at 11 weeks, she saw the crate and bounded straight in it, and fell asleep a few mins later. She fell asleep that night in it and that was it. She never minded being shut in as she was used to them from birth.

We had her crate in the utility room as it was easy to get her right out the back door from it when we were toilet training.

ETA - it was slightly easier for us as she was a few days shy of 12 weeks so not a tiny 8 week old (her breeder doesn’t let them go until 12 weeks, he let us take her a few days early as it was the start of the school holidays, so more time to settle her in before the school runs started).

I'm not a fan of crates, but if you have young kids it's a good idea, especially with a Lab, as they can be very bouncy and both kids and dog need space away from each other.

Just make sure you are crate training separately from alone training as they're different things, and you may find you will need to have the dog with you overnight anyway as it may not settle alone - it's been sleeping in a pile of puppies all its life and dogs are naturally social sleepers. Also you'll be needing to pick it up and take it outside for toilet training anyway, so where you sleep is just as convenient as near the back door.

It also may not be okay leaving it for school runs - I would expect they're longer than five minutes and you might need to build this up very slowly. I wouldn't leave a puppy alone for that long when it was tiny at all.

Not enough people on here paying the pup tax! Thank you, @MissBridgetJones

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We have a beagle who’s 7 now and he’s never once been in a crate. He slept upstairs in our room from day one, never had an accident overnight, took a few weeks to toilet train and was just left in the living room if we needed to go out. He’s never been destructive (the most he destroyed was a throw pillow when he was about six months old) and has never had an accident when left.

While I think crates can be useful I really wouldn’t rely on a) your puppy actually liking them and b) them being an ongoing tool in dog ownership.

Thanks for this. One of the reasons I asked the question was to try to have a clear sense of the different options so I could sort of have different approaches to hand if needed.

One backup option would be a playpen, rather than a crate. We've spent some time around the litter and our pup definitely enjoys getting away from it all at the back of a crate (not locked by breeder, just around as an option for sleep), so I think he'll enjoy a "den" for sleep but if he isn't happy being contained in one awake then we could definitely do a pen. Unfortunately our house setup doesn't really allow for a whole room for puppy, the ideal space for that is our utility but it's where DCats sleep and I think they need to retain that space for their stability.

I'm also conscious of the importance of providing lots of "legal" outlets for chewing, I'm not expecting pup never to chew! And I'm not anticipating masses of time when pup will be unsupervised at all.

Can you elaborate on 5 minutes being too long? At what point/age is that a reasonable duration to leave them?

The school run is a tricky one - the local school has a no dogs on school grounds policy, but kids aren't allowed to leave the teacher until they can see their parent is in the playground...! And even if I could get DD brought to me at the gates that seems like it could be a very busy and stressful environment for a puppy? (The school is truly 60 seconds from our house though).

I could probably see if a friend could bring DD home for the first few weeks but have no idea what a reasonable timeline would be for building up to 5 minutes with me out of the house.

To me a crate is like a cot for a dog. They are safe and secure.

Re. sleeping space, if our ultimate aim is "not sleeping in bedroom", is it easier to start with puppy (whether in crate or on a dog bed or whatever) in bedroom and then slowly move the location of their bed, or to start with a human sleeping near the crate/dog bed and slowly move the human away, if that makes sense? We do have a daybed downstairs.

I think start the puppy off sleeping where it will always sleep, then it’s always consistent.

For what it’s worth I really don’t think leaving for five mins for school run is too long. Presumably you’ll be leaving puppy out of sight to use the loo during the day etc!

Playpen sounds good idea for your set up especially if breeder also uses one.

It’s ridiculous to suggest a puppy can’t be left for 5 minutes and as your puppy is used going in a cage then I would start with a cage in a large pen so you can leave the door open . I mean you need to answer the door / go to the toilet etc all of which can take a few minutes and dog will have to be left . Try and make sure that school pick up coincides with nap time and make it as quick as you can . I’d usually say just puppy proof the utility and have a gate on the door but that won’t work because of the cats and you also can’t really leave the dog free range with the cats until you know he / she will leave them alone .

Thanks for this! Yes, I was hoping to try to encourage a nap prior to school pickup - aim for some training / play a bit before and then start winding down.

DDog was a 7 month rescue and was used to going to the toilet outside, helped by getting her in the summer and we left the back door open so she could go.out whenever she needed.

She settled happily in the living room overnight (back room so outdoor open) had a tendency to steal one of my socks to curl up with. Never chewed it, just snuggled up.

Has since used her cute, hopeful stare to be long established in bed with me. No need these days to.leave the back door open, she goes overnight without needing the toilet.

Never needed a cage. She does like being close, if I am out late - very rare - she snuggles up with DD. When DM dog sits DDog has to sleep downstairs and settles without a fuss.

She knows who the suckers are who will give in to the puppy eyes!

Our Labrador is two now. I deeply regret not insisting that she was crated, husband was anti.

She chewed skirtings, architraves, shoes, boots, curtains, two dog beds, 15 cushion covers and a beautiful rug replacement cost 1k.

DO CRATE!!!

We're 1 week into puppy ownership and had exactly this quandary ourselves. We have a playpen in the kitchen with a crate in, with the door to the crate always open. So far our pup has been very happy to settle in the pen for naps and overnight, but hasn't really slept in the crate. However over the last 2 days he has started taking toys into the crate and chewing on them there. So we will see how he goes. From night one he has slept in the pen and one of us has stayed until he was asleep then left the room. We have a nannycam and just go down to him when he wakes up. Last 2 nights he has slept through from around 11 to around 7am, which is amazing. Before that he was up once or twice. I fully expect that he will be up in the night sometimes for a while yet. I thonk the advice to play it by ear and see what your puppy responds to is great. We were fully sure we would crate train and then when he arrived it just didn't make sense when he was so happy and settled in the pen.

@PositiveModelling I think a playpen sounds like a very good compromise if you can't (quite reasonably) proof a room enough and (also quite reasonably) don't want to disturb the cats.

Pup will be fine for five minutes so you can do pick up, goodness me. You're going to need to leave him to put the bin out/go upstairs/hang the washing out etc anyway, and it's ideal practice for him being alone for a genuinely limited period of time, regularly. Dogs love routine and as you'll be doing it most days you'll be able to establish a nice steady rhythm of what happens at pick up time. Agree also about establishing a place to sleep and sticking to it if you can. But I never slept downstairs with my girl when she was little – she just slept in the kitchen from day one and that was that.

I think school runs actually helped DDog from being anxious at being left, because they happened 5 days a week for a very short time. Ours was in the kitchen with a baby gate though. We had a routine of play, wee & snuffle mat/ licky mat (with Greek yoghurt & then frozen). So the treats were worth being left!

Personally I think baby gates work better than closed doors because there’s less feeling of isolation & nothing to scratch at.

Not leaving a puppy for longer than 5 minutes just isn’t realistic.

How do people food shop, shower, sleep, take children to school, run errands and work. I’ve had dogs all my life, all have been unscathed from being left for an hour when small as I’ve had to go and food shop so we (and they!) can eat. I’ve made sure they are left for short periods from day one, building up the time. It’s just not realistic to have a puppy/dog with you every second of the day.

I’ve read on here in the past advice to take your puppy into the bathroom when you shower and just take them biting the shower curtain 🤣 Absolute madness.