Welcome to the Fixing Separation Anxiety Podcast, where it's all about healing your dog, regaining
your freedom, and getting your life back on track.
And now, here's your host, Julie May Smith.
Welcome to another episode of the Fixing Separation Anxiety Podcast.
In this episode, I want to tell you about why it might seem like I'm really confused
when it comes to crates, because I am passionate about crates.
I love them with a passion, and I hate them with a passion.
So in this episode, I'm going to explain to you exactly what is going on in my head, and
why I feel what I feel about crates.
Okay, so here's the thing.
Let me just cut right to the chase.
Dogs who have separation anxiety do worse when they're confined in a crate.
They just do.
Not every dog, because there's always rule breakers, but the vast majority of dogs who
hate being left at home alone do far worse when they are crated.
Do we know why that is?
Well, I have my ideas on that.
I suspect a big reason is they've had bad experiences in their crate when they've been
left.
In their nighttime, maybe when they're in their crate next to your bed, not when they're
in their crate during the day, and they're just chilling when you're around, but when
you leave them.
The chances are they had a bad experience, and that's why they hate going into their
crate when you leave so much.
And the other thing I think it could be is that the crate is just an extra sense of isolation
and separation.
So if we assume that dogs are frightened of being separate from us, of being left on their
own, crating is another barrier to getting to be with you.
And it could be both of those things, but for whatever reason, most dogs who hate being
left also hate being left in a crate.
They hate that more.
And there's a big problem with that because that's not what popular opinion will have
you believe.
You can go on Amazon and find crates, often called anxiety crates, which will tell you
the marketing, the listing, the words around the crate in the advert will tell you that
this crate is going to fix separation anxiety.
There are plenty of blogs on it.
There are videos on it.
So what's going on?
Why are people telling you that crates fix separation anxiety when I'm standing here
and saying, no, not only do they not fix separation anxiety, but most dogs hate their
crates so much when you leave that it often makes their condition worse.
Well, here's the thing, a crate is a different experience for a dog depending on the context.
And let me tell you what I mean by that.
So I don't know about you, but I love my bedroom.
It's where I go to sleep, it's got a nice duvet on the bed.
It's where I go and I feel snuggly and cozy after a long day.
That's great, huh?
Bedrooms?
Yeah.
You just feel kind of all chill when you think about it.
But if you locked me in my bedroom when the house was on fire, if the door was closed,
you'd locked it and you had the key.
Would I love being in my crate at that moment?
Would I love being in my bedroom at that moment?
Or would I be desperate to escape?
I'm going to tell you, I'd be desperate to get out of that bedroom as much as I love
it in there, as much as it's my little safe space in my haven.
I want to get out and I desperately, desperately try to escape.
I'm in a panic.
So the context has changed how I feel about that space.
It's no longer my safe space, my cozy space.
It's trapping me.
It's causing panic.
I need to escape.
However, with crates, we tend to have this blanket view that, oh, crates are a dog's
safe space.
Yes, they absolutely can be a safe space, even for dogs who hate being left in a crate
when you go out, but not all the time.
Now in my house, we have crates everywhere.
I think at the last count, I've got about seven and that's not including the two fold-up
crates in the garage, the soft crates that we take with us when we travel, but I've got
three dogs.
Allow me the indulgence of having seven crates.
During the course of the day, you'll find different dogs snoozing in different crates.
I leave the doors open, different dogs pick a different crate.
There's one crate in particular that seems popular with all three and they seem to share
that on rotation.
However, if there was a thunderstorm and I was with my dog Tex, who hates thunderstorms,
I would not put him in a crate and lock the door.
I would let him go to his crate if that's where he felt safe.
I'm not closing the door, I'm not doing that thing like I described with the bedroom where
I'm in the panic and somebody locks the door and takes the key.
So can you see how a crate is only safe if it's where the dog wants to be in that moment?
Putting a dog in a crate and closing the door doesn't automatically, by default, make the
dog feel safe.
In fact, it can make the dog feel the opposite of safe.
It can make the dog feel scared and trapped and panicky.
So should you use a crate when you do home alone training?
If a dog loves a crate, if you crate trained your dog, here's what I would do, just leave
the door open.
If you're worried about creating a safe space for your dog when you go out, leave the door
open on the crate.
Let them go in, give them some choice about it, but you are going to make your life harder
and your dog's life more stressful if you try and do home alone training with your dog
in a crate.
You can try it, but it's going to take longer and it's going to be harder work.
So then I hear you say, but what about the chewing?
What about the destroying?
What about the soiling?
That's why I have to crate my dog.
Let's just do a refresh on how separation anxiety training works and then I'll show
you why you don't need to crate your dog to stop the damage.
When dogs are left, dogs who get anxious about being left, when they're left and they go
into a panic, that's when we see different dogs do it differently, but that's when we
can see damage done.
Not every dog damages when you leave them in a panic, some dogs don't, but if your dog
is one of those that does damage, what's going on is it's the emotion, it's the fear, it's
the panic that's driving the destruction.
So how do you stop the destruction?
You don't put a panicking dog in a crate, what you do is you stop the panic and crating
a dog doesn't stop the panic, it stops the destruction, potentially, although dogs can
still destroy the crate and their nails and their teeth, but crating doesn't stop the
panic.
What stops the panic is stopping the leaving and once you stop the dog having panic attacks,
you don't need to worry about destruction or peeing or soiling or any of those things
because the dog is no longer doing this emotional behavior, it's no longer doing these things
that are driven by its panic.
It horrifies me actually the ads that get shown to you, whether that's when you go online,
you go and shop and you're looking for anxiety remedies for your dog and up pops, anxiety
crates, indestructible crates, name them, call them what you will.
It horrifies me to see how those crates are described, they're described as something
that can stop a dog from being anxious, no they can't, no they can't, remember go back
to that analogy of being in a burning house, bedroom doors locked, you're not going to
suddenly go, oh it's fine, I'm in my safe space, it's okay.
What will happen is, and what happens with these dogs is they try to escape.
If they don't try to escape because it's an indestructible crate and that's almost impossible,
they'll start to display stressed panicky behaviors in the crate.
So they're not feeling better, they're feeling worse.
What can sometimes happen though is eventually the dog goes, this isn't working, this isn't
working, they don't stop feeling scared, they just eventually give up, they feel helpless,
they do what we call stop offering behavior.
So those calm dogs that you see in videos of dogs in indestructible crates, they're
not calm, they've given up, they've given up any hope of ever escaping their panic and
I know that's not what you want for your dog, I know you want a dog who doesn't feel
like that.
So try not to buy into the hype, crates don't fix anxiety, for the most part crates make
things worse.
Now one final thing, this may be going through your mind is, wait a minute, my dog seems
fine when I close the door on the crate overnight, he can sleep for eight hours in his crate
overnight in a separate room or maybe in your room, so what's going on there?
Here I am saying that anxious dogs hate crates and they particularly hate the door being
closed but you're telling me your dog sleeps eight hours at night in the crate but when
you go to leave them, when you leave the house and they're crated they explode.
The answer is your dog has just decided that the crate is safe in one situation but not
another.
When the house is burning down I decide my bedroom isn't safe and I need to get out.
Other times I think it's probably the safest place on earth.
So your dog is just telling you, when it panics in a crate it is telling you I don't feel
safe in here, if it sleeps for eight hours at night in the crate it's telling you I feel
safe in here right now, in this context, at this time, it doesn't mean to say I feel safe
in it all of the time.
So don't try, don't get confused, don't worry too much about what he seems okay sometimes
and not others.
He has every right to feel differently in different situations as do we and that's all
that's going on.
So do yourself a favour and by that I mean do what you can to make your training go as
quickly as it can and forget the crate.
If you need to leave your dog during training and you're worried or when you train because
you will leave your dog during training and you're worried about wires being chewed or
things being scratched, remember you're not going to be going out for very long, you're
going to be watching your dog the whole time and if you do have things that he can get
into in an instant then I just want you to put them away or find a safer space.
Dog proof a room or part of a room and that's where you're going to leave your dog.
Okay so can you see now why I have different views about crates?
Sometimes I hate them, other times I love them.
It just depends on the context and that's exactly where your dog's coming from.
Sometimes your dog's going to love it's crate, sometimes it's going to hate it's crate and
as long as you understand that it's not as confusing or conflicting as it might seem.
Okay that's it from me, if you've got any questions about crating or about separation
anxiety don't forget you can check out my book Be Right Back, I've actually got crate
training plans in there because I am really passionate about crates.
I think they have their uses and they can be a great space for dogs as long as we get
them to love it and as long as they're okay on their terms.
And if you have other questions beyond the book every week I go live on my page and you
can jump into my free Facebook group and get your questions answered there.
Alright good luck with the training and I'll catch you online soon.
Thanks for listening to the Fixing Separation Anxiety podcast with Julie Naismith.
For more information visit the website at www.subthresholdtraining.com.
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Thank you for joining us, we'll see you again soon.
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