Crate Training To Doggy Door

[sluggo]

Evening All,

When we eventually choose a pup in a few months we plan to house him in our internal laundry and fit a doggy door for him to go in/out and do his business. We plan to crate train him from day one as we don't want any mess inside the house. My question is, how would we incorporate the crate with the doggy door so that eventually he uses the door on his own? Should we leave the door alone until he has the going outside bit down pat first, or use the door from day one with the crate?

[puggy_puggy]

Crate training means leaving a dog in the crate untill you choose for it to come out.

If you wanted your dog to use a doggy door you would have to leave it's crate open so therefor it would not be crate trained it would just be toilet trained.

[SearchJane]

Evening All,

When we eventually choose a pup in a few months we plan to house him in our internal laundry and fit a doggy door for him to go in/out and do his business. We plan to crate train him from day one as we don't want any mess inside the house. My question is, how would we incorporate the crate with the doggy door so that eventually he uses the door on his own? Should we leave the door alone until he has the going outside bit down pat first, or use the door from day one with the crate?

If you are using a doggy door then just do that - no need for a crate as well (just out of interest why do you think you'd need a crate as well?) We have this set up at home. Sam has a bed in the laundry and a kennel outside & can come & go whenever he wants. The initial challenge is training them to use their doggy door which I started doing about day 3 - before that I was walking him out the open door to toilet. A few treats was all it took!

Cheers

Jane

[Erny]

I'd break up the two things and teach them to her separately.

I would crate train (naturally, the crate is not a substitute for toilet training, but is a training aid in that respect) and just concentrate on teaching pup that the routine is to get outside and THEN to toilet.

In the meantime, I'd be making a game of the doggy door so that puppy habituates to it and isn't worried about it when it is introduced later on. Obviously, break it down into increments, beginning with the doggy door flap being held open - just getting puppy used to going through the hole in the door. Then hang something like a piece of cardboard so it can flap (as the doggy door would) and gently slide across pup's back etc. Work this in increments until you feel she's pretty confident about going in and out via the doggy door.

But don't worry about using it as part of the toilet training regime in the very early days. When you get her out of her crate in the morning, for example, one of the first things she'll probably want and need to do is pee ..... don't spend time fluffing around with getting her through the doggy door. Just get her outside.

As things start to become a bit more routine and controlled (including her bladder), then you can add in the 'go through the doggy door to go to the toilet sequence'. Example : out of crate, through doggy door, then toilet. And of course skip the 'crate' step in the routine for the many times that she isn't crated but gets to the time when she should be wanting to toilet.

Edited May 31, 2009 by Erny

[sluggo]

Thanks Erney for a very informative reply... it was kinda what i was thinking, ie. splitting the two routines.

All our previous dogs were exclusively kept outdoors, and as we are considering a whippet this time round, we are just trying to get up to speed with puppy indoors techniques.