[DaySleepers]

I'm in the middle of dealing with some personal health things, so I haven't been able to be around as much as I'd like. But in the meantime, we've been taking the opportunity to work more aggressively on Sam's ability to settle, in the house and out. We're hoping it'll improve his frustration-based reactivity with other dogs.

But anyway, I want to bring up a few things I've been saying about Sam for, uh, years.

"Oh, Sam tolerates his crate, but will never be a dog that really loves it."

"He'll never just go in there on his own to sleep or hang out."

"Or bring his toys in there and use it as his safe space."

...so yeah. It took a grand total of one day sitting down and aggressively reinforcing that chilling in the crate is awesome, and adding a nice comfy bed, before he was going in there on his own to hang out. Obviously this is a fabric crate for training and travel and the like, not somewhere we close him in unsupervised, but this is still a pretty awesome result!

 

[Sydneyrocky]

That's great, he looks really relaxed in there too !!. My Molly loves her crate, when I can't find her she is always in there.

 

[Kathyy]

Love the illustrations.

Bucky gets sent to his bed all the time for barking but he and Ginger love hanging out there anyway.

 

[DaySleepers]

What he's doing right now:

The real trick will be teaching him to chill in there while exciting things are happening, but that's quite a few baby steps away for us at the moment. Just really happy that I came back to crate training after giving it a break for... nearly two years, actually, haha. We haven't really done much with it since we discovered he was great just left loose in the bedroom with a peanut butter kong.

 

[Canyx]

Great work