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Crating YOUNG Puppies

617 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  Abbylynn, 
CandJHarris
I've always crate trained my dogs, but I've never had pups as young as the two girls I'm currently fostering as of this evening (they are 4 weeks old). Right now I have them both in a medium sized crate, but I know they are way too little to start real crate training. I'm planning on getting up with them every couple of hours and taking them out through the night tonight, but I'm thinking about taking a different approach for now, at least until they are 8 weeks old.

I have a X-Large crate (Great Dane sized) and was thinking of setting it up as an exercise pen for the both of them lined with pee pads. As they get a little older I would remove pee pads until there is only one in a corner. Then at 8 weeks they would graduate to an appropriately sized crate to start actual crate training. Does this sound reasonable?
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Abbylynn
With 4 week old Benny I used a crate overnight and did the night time potty runs. In the day he had "areas" ... the bathroom and the linoleum in the kitchen lined with newspaper. I didn't want to buy puppy pads ... too expensive. Lol! :) He did very very well with the newspaper.

Benny slowly graduated from the paper to the outdoors ... but it was nice to have a back-up instead of the carpet being used as a toilet.

When I had to leave the house Benny had the bathroom with his newspaper and his water bowl and a bed and a toy. The bathroom was completely puppy proofed.

I started actual crate training at 6 weeks old during the day ... made it a place to eat and snack and fun. :)
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