How is a puppy supposed to “sleep” in a cage that is impossible to fit her? This was the surprise of a viral video of Piper, a small cockapoo, whose initial night in a crate turned out to be an easy escape.
In the short video, the owner of Piper, Shannon, secures the puppy in a comfortable environment including blankets, toys and a closed door before walking off. In a few seconds, Piper is silently slipping between the bars and coming out, as though the crate were more of implication than demarcation. The combination of hope and humor that many new puppy families feel was best described when Shannon captioned the first night in the crate with, the first night in the crate is going well.
The urge to the crate, however, is commonplace and common sense. In her comments, Shannon described that Piper was “way too little” to be walking at night and that he required a secure place when he was exhausted or overstimulated. Most trainers put that objective in the form of providing a dog with an easy place to relax, particularly in first few weeks when habits are being established and that a puppy is trying out everything with his mouth. The crates are important to the safety as well: without supervision, the puppies can chew or swallow domestic objects, posing actual medical danger. An orderly, peaceful crate system can minimize such possibilities, and teach the puppies the patterns of repose and silence.
Comfort depends on fit. A too-small crate would seem constricting and a too-large one would make house-training difficult. The (pragmatic) sizing advice emphasizes the size of the dog, rather than its breed name, but instructs not regarding the size of the dog itself, but rather on the dimensions of the body: the puppy must be in a position to stand, to turn around, and to lie on their side with the limbs in a free position, and when lying in that position the distance between themselves and the head should be a minimum of 2 inches. Many owners of fast-growing puppies put a divider in their puppies to increase the space slowly instead of compelling them to switch their crates regularly. The action of measuring the puppy and not just relying on weight makes the set up aligned with the dog before them.
A small detail that Piper gives a breakout is also an indication that security functions and the space are important as much as comfort is. When a puppy is able to squeeze their head or shoulders in a hole, the rest of the body tends to do so. That may cause another type of concern, at least in the case of very small puppies, when it comes to squeezing through things, as this may result in scrapes, limbs being stuck, or panic. In wire crates, the basic safety precautions of checking the spacing between bars with the current size of the puppy is not an advanced training exercise, but rather a basic one.
The adjustment time is typically most successful when the training progresses slowly even with the right crate. According to dog trainer Lisa Burton, the process begins with short door closures; that is, close, then open within a short time period, to allow calm behavior to be reinforced before frustration sets in. Burton advised people not to shut their doors and wait at an early age as it is pretty certain that your puppy is going to react in case it is not content with the door being shut. And if they happen to answer, you have lost that moment of repose you wish to reward. Time and distance may grow in increments, as tolerance is built, and the cage becomes a usual resting place as opposed to an abrupt separation.
Placement can help, too. To some trainers, a young puppy is kept in a confined space close to the bed during the initial stages of training before slowly being moved to the permanent location of sleep as it gets used to sleeping. The idea is straightforward, there should be fewer panic wake-ups, a more regular rest, and a puppy that should know that the tube is not a torture chamber, that it is a habitual thing.
The escape of Piper is comical in the fact that it is so soft and casual. It is also a reminder that in early crate training, you also need to train the puppy to stay in the crate; just like you need to train the puppy to go in the crate: you need a crate that the puppy cannot out of or climb over at night.
