The practice of keeping your dog in a crate is a divisive one
The practice of keeping your dog confined in a cage for periods of time is a divisive one. Still, the virtue of crate training puppies is espoused here in the United States, where crating often continues into a dog’s adult life. Some dogs sleep in their cages, and some dogs spend the day there while their human is at work. Those on the pro side often claim their dogs feel safe in their crates, and that they can be a useful tool for positive behavioral change. But is that true, or a convenient myth?
Kate Anderson, assistant clinical professor at Cornell’s Duffield Institute for Animal Behavior, says the use of crates can be beneficial when house-training puppies, setting unsupervised dogs up for success, giving dogs a quiet place to relax, and making car travel safe and comfortable. But the benefits are contingent on the crate being introduced correctly, and whether the dog truly feels calm and comfortable when inside.
“Not all dogs can be crated,” Anderson says. “In particular, dogs with separation-related behavior problems often display distressed behavior when crated.” While it may seem like crating can be a quick fix for dogs who display destructive or otherwise anxious behaviors when left alone, Anderson says it often only exacerbates the underlying issues.
If your dog seems distressed in its crate, is destructive, attempts to escape, or causes self-injury by scratching or biting, “do not simply secure the current crate or buy a more industrial crate,” Anderson says, “since this does not address the underlying cause of this behavior.” Instead, work with your veterinarian to figure out why your dog is displaying the behavior, and how you can help it feel more at ease.
Crates aren’t for every dog, and they may not be for yours.
Nonetheless, the persistent characterization of dogs as “den animals” often leads to the assumption that any pup will instinctively acclimate to a crate. “The saying that dogs are den animals has been tossed around so much,” says Renée Erdman, a behavior consultant specializing in dog aggression and dog reactivity, “that people think there’s something wrong with their dog if they don’t like the crate.”
Erdman says this is a misconception – while wild pups are born in, and spend their first few weeks in dens, most of their lives are spent roaming free. Other experts agree this does not qualify them as den animals in the way we’ve been led to believe. Beyond that, dens don’t have a latched door controlled by another entity.
More likely than not, spending time in a crate is going to take your pup some getting used to. Erdman recommends introducing it slowly, and with a lot of positive reinforcement. “We don’t want to throw them into the deep end of the water, which would be just putting them in a crate for hours at a time and letting them cry it out,” she says. “That is not a good approach.”