houndlove
Posted : 1/15/2007 9:22:48 AM
So, I know I've already recommended this book to you in another thread, and I'm re-reading it right now so it's fresh in my mind, but in
The Culture Clash, Jean Donaldson talks about crate-training as a method of housebreaking. Her feeling is that crate-training is the quickest and most efficient way to housetrain a dog. How does this deal with the "cruelty" issue? Because she also notes how totally undoglike we expect our dogs to behave and how crappily we communicate to them what we'd like them to do and why. What we ask goes totally against their instincts most of the time. And then we punish them and confuse the heck out of them. A crate helps to clearly, quickly and safely help a dog understand what we're asking of them and it (if done right) involves no random (to a dog) punishments for doing things that to the dog seemed perfectly logical. She asks us to imaging ourselves as pets to another species. This other species has porceline water-filled flushing basins all over their houses yet every time we sit on one to eliminte, we get harshly punished. That's what our dogs experience when we first bring them home. The whole world is their toilet, yet they keep getting punished for using it. The one place a dog instinctively (unless they're from a puppy mill or abuse situation where at a very early age they've been forced to eliminate in their cages--just another reason to not get a pet store dog) won't eliminate is their sleeping and eating quarters. So, use that instinct as a way of helping the dog to understand this very undoglike seperation we have between inside and outside as far as what's a toilet and what's not. It really beats the alternative, for both human and dog. It's about a million times less cruel than the ole newspaper-on-the-nose method.
As far as other pros on the side of crates, I have a million. One of my dogs has seperation anxiety. This is a panic disorder that some dogs develop and it is more than just being bored or lonely. It is a full-on anxiety attack. Conrad weighs 95 lbs and is incredibly strong. A dog like him having an anxiety attack is not something you really want loose in your house when you're not there. Some dogs with this disorder can't even be crated--they destory the crate and injure themselves seriously in an attempt to get out. We were very lucky in that Conrad did take to a certain kind of crate (the plastic kind--the metal bars kind was disasterous for him) and it has helped to rehabilitate him. It fills our need to keep him contained and to keep our house from being turned into a pile of rubble, but also it turns out that it completely fills his need to feel safe and hidden when we're not there to protect him. When we first were trying to deal with his anxiety, a very real possibility was rehoming him to someone who would never ever leave him alone. How many people are out there who can take a large dog with them everywhere? Probably not too many. The unspoken subtext to that plan was that he would very likely end up euthanized because no one can care for such a dog. So, what was crueler there? Crating or euthanizing?
And finally, dear Marlowe. Marlowe is in fact not crated right now because we're lucky enough to live in a house that had an extra room that we weren't really using for anything. That's Marlowe's room and he's confined to that during the days. Marlowe's room has nothing in it except his crate (he does sleep in it, door open) and his toys. No furniture, no lamps, no books, nothing. So basically it's just a big crate. He is confined there when we're out of the house. And that only works becuase he's not one of the many, many dogs who have discovered the joys of drywall-eating or carpet-shredding. He's there because a few months ago when we gave him a bit more run of the house (though still not the whole house) because he'd proved to be generally pretty good alone with some minimal dog-proofing. Anyway, one day I came home to discover that he had eaten a bottle of ibuprofin. Ibuprofin is highly toxic to dogs and quite often fatal. My husband left a bottle out on the bedside table. Accidents happen. But this accident could have killed our dog. We rushed him to the emergency veterinarian where Marlowe spent a very expensive and very stressful weekend on an IV and being monitored 24 hours. Had he been crated or even just confined much more closely, this would not have happened. He could have died and had we not had the ability to pay for his treatment he probably would have.
I volunteer at an animal shelter. A tremendous number of dogs are surrendered by their owners because of very basic behavioral problems that could be helped and even completely alleviated by proper crate training (problems such as failure to housebreak, destructiveness when left alone, and mild seperation anxiety). But people won't do it because they think it's cruel. Instead, they surrender thier dogs to a high-volume euthanizing animal shelter. That I just do not get at all.
Other advantages to crating are that your dog has a traveling home, for when you go visiting other people with him; if you have multiple dogs you can be assured, if both are crated, that they are not getting into the Fight of the Century while you're not there to referee; the dog is already acclimated to close confinement if they ever, heaven forbid, have to spend a long time at a veterinary hospital (they keep the dogs in cages when they are not being actively worked on); and it helps the dog to understand that when you arne't around, that is the time for quiet napping, not for doing zoomies around the house, or exploring what's under the kitchen cupboard, or chasing the cat or any number of fun and interesting things a dog can come up with to do when you're not around to entertain them.