PLease help!!! Crate training is going horribly!!!

 Since you live alone, I would move the crate up to your bedroom. My pups crate is in my room. Dogs are pack animals and want to be near you, especially while sleeping. So being able to hear you breath and such should help.

Also, as soon as dogs wake up at that age, they have to go to the bathroom. Whining or not, if the dog wakes up take it outside immediately.

Speaking of age, 7 weeks was too early to be taken from the litter so, socialization with other dogs is going to be very important.

But back to the crate - make the crate a very nice place to be. Give the dog a kong stuffed with food/treats - frozen is better, especially for a teething great dane.

Feed all meals in the crate.

Give chewies in the crate, etc. 

Oh, yes, seven weeks is way too young.  So, from this babies perspective, you took her away from her security, from her "family" and loved up on her for a few days, then stuck her in a crate far away from you in the dark of night.  She was likely terrified.  And books falling from the sky?  Poor little thing!

Move the crate....put it on a table next to your bed if possible so she can really SEE you.  What I do is stick my fingers through the crate at the first whimper and gently shush.  If contract works, the pup was just frightened and needed reassurance.  If not, then pup needs to potty and I take him/her out with a minimum of lights and conversation.

marv800

After a long day of attention from new people, she was tired and went straight to her crate to lie down. I saw this as an opportunity to close the door because I figured she wouldn’t potty in the crate. I closed the door while she was asleep and everything was fine until she woke up. When she did wake up, she cried and threw a tantrum like a Tasmanian devil for 15 minutes before violently defecating all over the crate. At this point, I took her out and spent the next 30-45 minutes cleaning up the crate and bathing her.

OK, she was crying because she needed the toilet.  Not wanting to reward her crying (which I do understand!!) you tried to ignore her till she was quiet, but she could not hold it any more.  A lot of dogs are uncomfortable about being shut in the crate at first at the best of times, but this is bound to have made it worse.  So no wonder she is going mental really.  I do not think the startling her will work, because in her case I think she is genuinely quite distressed at being shut in so startling her is not helping.  It might even be making it worse.

I would definately take up the suggestion of putting the crate near you at night.  Your presence is likely to reassure her.  In addition, there are other things you can do to soothe her: the old quiet ticking clock and warm water bottle trick (soothing like her mother's belly and heartbeat) some soft toys to snuggle up against, an old shirt with your scent on, some DAP plugged in nearby or spritzed into the crate, a radio playing softly (classical music is used in some rescue kennels to lower dogs' stress levels!!)... If she has a peice of material from the breeder with the dam and litters' scent on, put that in there too.  Make it very very comfy in there.  Hide a couple of tasty tidbits for her to find.  Drape a sheet over it so it is more like a den than a prison.  Make sure it is not near radiators or draughts and try to make sure she can see you.

You NEED to take her outside to eliminate in the night (I know I know, I feel your pain!  I have a 6month old baby at the moment so I can truly empathise!)  It is IMPERATIVE that no further accidents happen in her crate.  I am sure you know about "cleanliness instinct".  It has distressed her being "forced" to make such a mess of her den.  And that important and useful instinct can be over ridden which will make house traiing much harder.  It is very unlikely that she will be ABLE to "hold it" till morning.  Your instinct to not reward her for noise was not far off... but as you've learned, if she DOES start crying you have a dilemma.  Reward her with release so she can eliminate outside or ignore her and risk her soiling the crate again?  The answer - anticipate her need and pre-empt her crying by setting an alarm and YOU wake HER - not the other way round.

Can you take the crate to work and leave it under the desk with the door open?  When you start shutting her in (at home) shut the door for only a moment at first.  Open it very quickly before she has a chance to react negatively and praise her.  Make a game out of it.  Toss a treat in or get her to sit inside, close the door, count to5 or 10 or 15 then open the door and play tug or throw something for her or give her a treat....  That sort of thing.  Just make it a fun, happy place.  Then progress to giving her meals, chewies and stuffed Kongs while shut inside the crate.  Our dogs ONLY get stuffed kongs when shut in the crates.  You can do all sorts to make them really yummy.  (soft cheese, peanut butter, liver cake mix etc)  They can't WAIT to get in their crates so they can have this special yummy exclusive treat   At first you want to open the door just before they finish eating or at least before they become restless.  Build up the time gradually.

You have gotten really excellent advice here. The only thing I would add is to try to get as much structure in her life as possible. If she's sleeping for a while, she's going to need to exercise and run and play for a while before she's ready to go down again. Try to structure her time to work along with your time.

Another thing I want to say is to remind you that your hard work (and sleepless nights) WILL pay off! This is temporary and you're right in the middle of it and I know it seems like a nightmare! But keep with it, take the advice you've been given here and hang in there! Tell yourself that this is temporary. Terrible, but temporary.

I have potty trained 4 puppies. I feel your pain, too! This too, shall pass...  

Can you keep taking her to work?  7 weeks is really young to go 4 hours without pottying, especially if she's stressed.

Another idea for night- can you put her on a short tether by your bed instead of in a crate?  Our puppy is happy in his crate for a couple of hours during the day, but at night, the tether works better. 

really great advice everyone!

hang in there!!! i know how frusterating potty training can be! it seems like it'll never end, but when they finally get it, it's fantastic. when they go a few days without having an accident in the house- you'll realise it out of the blue, and be really proud of yourself.

remember, deep breaths and patience... your puppy depends on you to teach her this, and you will :)

good luck!! 

Marv, at 7 weeks your puppy can't hold it for even 2 hours (they can generally hold it for one hour/month, e.g. at 6 months they can hold it for 6 hours). So she needs to be taken outside fairly often at this stage, and especially after eating, sleeping, or playing. Also, she was taken from her litter sooner than puppies really should be, and being separated from her littermates is a bit traumatic for puppies to begin with, so going younger might be more traumatic for her. She's going to have some other things you're going to need to work on due to being taken form her litter early, such as bite inhibition, which they start to learn from their littermates. A good puppy book that discusses what puppies learn and when/how they learn it will be invaluable to you. Between now and 16 weeks old is a critical period for learning for dogs; this is when their brain growth is happening and is imprinted with things, when the connections in their brains are formed that will imprint their personality for the rest of their life.

Crate training needs to be done in small increments; after getting the dog to willingly go into the crate (using treats works well) you close the door for 15-30 seconds, then let them out. This gets repeated and then the time is made longer in small increments. There are some excellent books that discuss this, such as ones written by Ian Dunbar, Patricia McConnell, Jean Donaldson, etc. You can even find a lot of good information about this on the Internet (see links below). But at 7-8 weeks your puppy is very young and can't be left unattended in a crate for hours at a time; nor should she be startled by books dropping...and if she's seeing you dropping the books and is startled and fearful of them, she's going to associate you with the bad sounds, which isn't a good thing.

Also, just as with any training, one has to be consistent and patient; and you have to make yourself not respond when your dog whines...if you go to her when she does it, then you're rewarding her for whining and she'll continue doing it. I know it kills to ignore it, but if you can live through a night or two, it will stop. If you keep going to her within a few minutes of her whining, she'll never stop it - or at least not for a very long time. I use a 4x4 pen for my dog; he wasn't happy the first night (and he was 10 weeks when I brought him home) so I slept next to the pen on the wood floor that night. The next night I stayed on the couch, and let him whine, which he did for a while...since then he's never whined again. I can also ask him to go in the pen when I lift up one side, and he goes right in for me.

One thing I got for mypuppy when I brought him home was a toy that warms up in the microwave and makes them feel like they're with a littermate. It's by Petstages, and is one of their soothing toys...it worked great. It's the toy on the left at this link:
http://www.petstages.com/needs.asp?case=6

Here are some good links about crate training:

http://www.inch.com/~dogs/cratetraining.html

http://www.hsus.org/pets/pet_care/our_pets_for_life_program/dog_behavior_tip_sheets/crate_training.html

http://perfectpaws.com/crt.html

http://www.sspca.org/Dogs/CrateTraining.html

it's normal for puppies to wail when first left alone-- a pup that young that finds itself alone in "nature" is a dead puppy unless mom comes along to rescue the pup fast. The only cure is to NEVER pay any attention to the puppy unless the puppy is quiet. Ear plugs are handy here.

And yeah, you need to set an alarm clock and take this pup out every hour on the hour around the clock for a few days and then gradually extend the time between trips out. You'll be a zombie, but it's worth it. A few weeks of pain, and it'll be done. People who are lazy about housebreaking prolong it for months. Every accident you cause the pup to have inside adds a couple weeks to the training process.

 Do you intend to let her sleep with you all the time? If so, you can start now, but if not you will have to get her used to the crate. When we first got our pup I read that if you let them sleep with you at first, you won't get them out.
I agree that you need to put the crate in the bedroom. A lot of the time Marley just wants to hear that we are in the room, and she settles down. And when she whines at 4 in the morning, I can take her out. Right outside, right inside and back to bed. The past couple nights I have let her sleep in bed because the BF wasn't in there. She doesn't even get up now, but she is also able to sleep in her cage when she has to.
It hasn't been long, but I forgot what a pain it is to get them used to being alone. Good luck.

Well, that's tough!  I'm not a big fan of putting the crate in my bedroom, when we first got Tabitha she cried all night, we brought her up in our room and she still cried, which of course, was worse, 'cause now I could hear her even louder and I wasn't taking her out and putting her in bed w/ me (she's the Maltese, was very tiny), for fear I would wake up finding her dead from either me or my DH rolling on top of her.  I know gross, but that was my thought!  You could try bringing her up into the livingroom, or if it's completely dark where she's at, maybe you could leave a night light on.  If she's wailing about and thrashing about, never ignore it, it could be because she has to go potty.  We found this to be true about 90% of the time w/ Misty.  Always take her outside to go potty before you put her to bed, too.  Don't give her water after 8pm, this will help w/ any accidents, and I wouldn't feed her after 5:30pm, this way, hopefully she won't have any accidents in her crate.  Also, maybe you can leave a radio on for her, or a TV, this might help w/ her wanting to go to sleep, so she doesn't feel like she's alone.  Good Luck!!

I would also like to add some advice with dogs and rain.... I know from experience a lot of dogs HATED going outside when it rains out... including my brother's dog when I was a little girl.... so when cokes was being house trained, everytime it rained, I took the liberty to go outside with her, more like dragged her outside with me, and pretended to be having the time of my life outside despite the rain.... dancing and jumping up and down and talking in a happy tone...

it worked though...cause now shes like one of the few dogs I know that doesnt mind the rain at all... she will just stand outside of it.... looking for little squirrels and birds to terrorize... lol

Hi Marv!

You need to take her out every hour or two.  She's just too young to hold it for very long.  When you take her outside make her use the bathroom first before you play with her.  It is important not to delay her with play.  She needs to know that she is out there to use the bathroom first and then it is ok for you to play a bit.  

 Now your crate training program needs to be broken down into parts.  The following link is an easy but effective method I used to crate train my dog and it might be of some help to you:  *Removed by moderator* .   Crate training doesn't have to be for punishment however it is a powerful tool of re-enforcement for other types of training and it will help her to become more aware of her boundries.  Be paitent with her and all should go well.

 Best of Luck!

Thomas, FYI, this thread is 3 years old.