I don't think I'll ever stop talking about crates as long as I do this podcast because
it seems like there's just an ongoing confusion about the role of crates in separation anxiety
training. Just this week I posted on social media that crates, if we're not careful, can
be a really abusive and unethical solution for dogs. Dogs who hate crates hate hate being
locked in a crate. Anyway, so I posted about that and a few people commented, OK, so you're
telling us what not to do, but why don't you tell us what to do instead? That's why in
this episode I'm going to revisit crating. I want to talk about the facts of crating
because there are so many myths and I'll give you some tips on how to crate train your dog
safely and ethically. All right, let's dive in.
Hello and welcome to the Be Right Back separation anxiety podcast. Hi, I'm Julie Naismith, dog
trainer, author and full on separation anxiety geek. I've helped thousands of dogs overcome
separation anxiety with my books, my online programs, my trainer certification and my
separation anxiety training app. And this podcast is all about sharing my tips and tricks
to help you teach your dog how to be happy at home alone, too.
Let's start with the facts about crating because there are way too many myths out there. The
first thing I need you to know, so fact number one, is that crating doesn't fix separation
anxiety. Despite what you'll hear, despite what many trainers who don't know separation
anxiety will tell you, crating doesn't fix separation anxiety. It used to be generally
held, a generally held view that crating does stop a dog from panicking when left. Well,
stop a dog panicking? I'm not sure if the people recommending crate training even really
ever understood what was going on with a dog who was left. Those people, that is, who recommended
crate training for fixing separation anxiety. Because the thing is, when a dog who has separation
anxiety is left alone, what's going on isn't bad behaviour. So if your dog chews when you
leave it, or if your dog chews, then maybe barks when you go, he's not being bad. What's
happening is he's got a fear of being left. So he panics. And the behaviour that happens
as a result comes from how he feels. He's scared, and somehow trying to escape, or maybe
barking or whatever it is he does, is making him feel better. He's doing it, not because
he's trying to be a bad dog, because he's not a bad dog. He's doing it because it's just a
response to his fear. And on top of that fear of being left, we find that so many dogs who
don't like being left alone have a phobia of the crate. So they especially hate it when
they are crated when they're left. Do we know why so many dogs who have separation anxiety
also hate to be crated? We don't really know why. But my theory is that, if I had to guess,
I'd say the crate offers or the crate gives an extra sense of isolation to the dog. So
they're already scared of being alone, and now there's this extra sense of being alone.
And maybe, and I think this is often the case too, a dog who has separation anxiety has
been crated in the past, because we're all told to crate dogs with separation anxiety.
And so he's come to associate the crate with scary alone time. So it's kind of a double
whammy thing. But what are you going to do if you've got a dog who is chewing the walls
or ripping up the floorboards? What are you going to do? Because a crate seems like the
only answer, doesn't it? You've got to stop your dog from getting to the floorboards.
You've got to stop him damaging himself. You've got to stop the destruction that's happening
to your house. But you also want to stop the severe physical risk that's happening. Here's
the thing. Panicking dogs, and I've seen this way too often, will often damage themselves
even worse, even further, trying to escape the crate, even so-called anxiety crates.
The memory of that panic of trying to escape is lasting. So what can happen is, not only
have you caused or potentially created the risk of your dog harming itself in a crate,
but even if that doesn't happen, you've created a potential psychological impact. Your dog
has a memory of the panic that's really hard for it to lose. And by the way, massive side
note, I am not anti-crate. No, no, no. No, I am not that person who goes on social, who
jumps on a podcast and says, crates are bad. I am not that person. If you came to my house,
you would see, last count, I'm just counting it up in my head right now, I think we have
about six crates in this house. And that doesn't include the crates that we've folded up and
no longer use, because crates are invaluable tools. They are really helpful for containing
excitable dogs who try to knock over people when they come through the door. And they're
really handy for things like travel, for containing dogs while they're at the vet or the groomer.
There are alternatives when they're at the vet or the groomer, but sometimes it's helpful
to have a dog who loves going into his crate and doesn't mind staying there when they're
in that different environment. And of course, they can really help house training. And that's
why I also talk a lot about house training with and without crates, because I know that
so many of you want to house train with a crate. So I cover house training with and
without crates in both of my books. But to an anxious dog, a crate is not the safe haven
that everybody says it is. To an anxious dog who hates a crate, closing the door is just
a form of punishment. I know it's awful, but that is what's going on. Just because
of the fact number two that I want to cover today, and it links back to what I just said
there about crates being a safe haven, because that view is really well established. It seems
like that's unchallenged. Dogs like a safe haven. They love to den. But here's my second
crate fact. Just because dogs do seem to like to den, it doesn't mean to say that they will
love the crate and see it as their safe space. Okay, yeah, so in all the wildlife documentaries,
we see wolves denning, we see them loving kind of huddling in a group in their den or
even on their own. So it seems natural to conclude that dogs like to den too. And I
don't think that is too much of a leap of knowledge or leap of faith. Dogs do seem to
like kind of, you know, denning down for want of a better word, but they do seem to
like snuggling in small spaces. Many of them do. They do seem to like seeking out those
little dark, cosy corners in the house. But what we can do with dogs who want to den is
we just keep the door open. So let's give our dogs a choice because there's a massive
difference between denning down in an open crate because it's cosy and it's snuggly and
they feel really, really comfortable in there and closing a door. Closing the door on the
crate changes it from something that dogs love and that makes them feel safe to a prison.
Dens don't have doors. Those wildlife documentaries we see of wolves, you don't see anybody coming
along and closing the door on them. What would happen if we did do that? More likely than
not they would panic. So dogs, if you want to create a safe space with a crate, do it.
But make sure that your dog is free to enter and exit at will. That's if you've got a dog
who's crate-phobic. If you've taken the time to get your dog to love its crate, and it
can be done, then of course you can close the door because your dog's not going to panic
when you close the door. But if you want to create a safe space for a dog who doesn't
love a crate, just leave the door open and let them decide whether to come or go and
whether to use that as their den. And how do you get a dog to love its crate? Well you're
going to use a fear-free crate training plan. It can take a long time with a crate-phobic
dog to get that dog to love its crate, but it can be done. I want to touch on dogs who
hate things like thunder and fireworks too because, again, you'll hear that the advice
is to create a safe space with a crate. And again, it is true. They do often seem to like
going into smaller spaces. I think a dog who is frightened of thunder or fireworks, it
feels less noisy, it feels further away from the scary stimulus when they're down in a
crate. And, and I certainly see this in my own dog who hates thunder and fireworks text,
he hates the light associated with those things. So for him, a dark crate is a great place
to be. But I always leave the door open for him. He's a dog who loves his crate. I mean,
loves, loves, loves his crate. And he's got no separation anxiety whatsoever. But when
he goes to his crate in a storm, I leave the door open. And the reason I do that, and by
the way, I'm sat by him when he does that, because we're doing lots of counter conditioning
as the noise continues on. But I want to make sure that he doesn't get so panicked that
he suddenly wants to escape. And now he feels trapped. So the door stays open and I stay
with him. I let him choose whether to go in and out of his crate. And that's how you make
a crate safe for a dog who's in a panic. Just leave the door open and let them choose.
Okay, a third fact. And this is to clear up a big confusion about dogs who seem to be
okay in their crates, say, at night. But as soon as you try to leave and pop them in their
crate, they struggle. They hate it. And that's really confusing. If this is your dog, you
might be just scratching your head as to why he seems fine in his crate at night. But as
soon, that minute that you try and crate him to leave, he just loses it. He freaks
out. Well, just know this is a really common scenario. And for whatever reason, some dogs
have decided that they're okay in their crate at a certain time, but not at another time.
It makes no sense to us, but it makes total sense to them. If getting your dog comfortable
in a crate when you leave, if you want to get your dog to be comfortable in a crate
when you go out, then take comfort from the fact that if your dog can sleep through the
night in a crate, he's showing you he can be okay in a crate. In that context, yes,
not during the day yet, not when you leave yet, but he has shown that he can be okay
in a crate. He just needs to learn that crate confidence that he's got overnight in other
Okay, my fourth fact for you is about anxiety crates, so-called indestructible crates. And
what I want you to know is that these are not the answer. Anxiety crates aren't the
solution. If you Google separation anxiety, or you've popped it in the search box on Amazon,
you might have seen indestructible crates pop up because they are purported, they are
marketed as a fix for separation anxiety. The idea being that they are constructed so
that the dog can't escape, and if the dog can't escape, then it will get over its separation
anxiety, which makes me scratch my head. I'm even scratching my head now at that thought.
But so many problems with this. For a start, it's not changing how your dog feels about
being alone. It might stop the destruction of your home. It might, if you're lucky, stop
the destruction of your dog, destruction of your dog. What I mean by that is it might
stop your dog harming themselves, although some dogs still manage to harm themselves
in these so-called indestructible, harm-free crates. And even if they're not physically
damaging themselves, even if they give up because the crate is just too tough for them,
there's a psychological damage that we talked about earlier in this podcast. So locking
a panicking dog in a cell-like crate isn't the fix to separation anxiety. No matter what
anybody says on the internet, it is not going to make your dog feel better about being home
alone.
Okay, fifth fact, you can train without, a house train without a crate. You absolutely
can. So yes, it would be great if you could get your dog or your puppy to be really comfortable
in a crate, because it does help house training. Just confining a puppy to a smaller space
speeds house training. But it's not necessary. It absolutely is a great tool, but it isn't
necessary. It's not the only answer to house training. And plenty, in plenty of countries
around the world, people don't use crates to house train. What do you have to do instead?
You have to be way more vigilant. And you definitely have to create a smaller space
in your room or in your house, because being vigilant, you need to be able to keep your
eye on your puppy every single second. So you need to know where they are, which is
why a crate helps. But if you're not going to use a crate, you need to create a smaller
space in which you and your puppy hang out. So you do have to do some management like
that. But you can still house train. And in fact, I house trained all my dogs without
crates. And I probably would do it again, because I don't find it difficult. It's a
bit more laborious. You do have to be on your guard. But it's doable. And why wouldn't I
use a crate? For no other reason than actually, I like hanging out with my dogs when they
were puppies. So they were kind of always hanging out with us anyway. My dog Tex absolutely
loves his crates. Percy's behind in a crate now. It took me a long time though to do that.
And India can't get enough of being in her crate. But if I did it all over again, I would
not worry for a minute about having to crate them for house training.
Okay, another fact for you, you don't have to crate your puppy to prevent destruction.
Because I know that with your puppy or your dog, who's stressed and destroying when you
go out, it just seems like the only way to stop that is to crate, right? It makes sense.
If you put them in the crate, you're going to stop the chewing and the destroying and
the soiling. But you've got to remember that the reason that your dog is destroying, unless
it's kind of normal puppy getting up to find the misty stuff. But if it's a dog who's really
anxious or a puppy that's really anxious about being left, and they're destroying as a result
of that, the minute you stop the anxiety, that behaviour stops. It can seem counterintuitive,
we see the destruction, we want to crate, it seems obvious, but actually the crate then
makes it worse. So we let the puppy or the dog out of the crate, despite the fact that
they destroy the house, but stop the emotion that drives that behaviour. And you stop the
outcome, you stop the destruction. And if you're going to do that, you're going to work
on home alone training, where you're going to suspend absences and gradually get your
dog used to being without you when you go out. And that changing emotion is what prevents
that drive to destroy stuff. And by the way, if you're listening to this and thinking,
well, my dog doesn't destroy when I'm gone, so maybe that means I haven't got separation
anxiety. Not all dogs by any means, not all dogs with separation anxiety destroy. They're
all kind of unique, and they all do different things when they're upset. Destruction is
just what some dogs with separation anxiety do. Other dogs with separation anxiety do
different things. Remember that when you do separation anxiety training, when you do those
safe departures, you're only going out for an amount of time that your dog can handle.
You're not going out long enough to cause him to panic and freak and so he won't get
up to the previous destructive behaviours that he showed when he was panicking and freaking out.
Plus, you'll be watching him like a hawk. So you don't have to worry. Once you start
the separation anxiety training, you can stop worrying about the chewing and the destroying,
and then hopefully that helps you feel more comfortable not crating.
And even if you're still a little bit anxious, and I kind of get that, even if you think
watching them the whole time and coming back as soon as you think there's anything
going to happen, even if that doesn't give you enough comfort, then you can always create a
safe space in a room or part of your house that's puppy-proof, that's dog-proof. So
you use extended exercise pens, you block off parts of the furniture or the door or
whatever it is that you don't want him to get into. It's much easier to protect stuff
than to lock your panicking dog in. All right. And then finally, my final, final, final fact
on crates is you can still do separation anxiety training in a crate. All right. So I could have
just skipped all the previous facts and said, yeah, you can still do separation anxiety training in
a crate. It's just a lot more work. So that's why I left this fact to last. It's always my preference
to get a panicky dog out of a crate to see how the training goes with the dog out of the crate
than to do training in the crate, than to do separation anxiety training that is in a crate.
It just takes longer, especially for a dog who is already having issues with the crate. Not only
then do we have to help him feel better about alone time, but we've got to help him feel better
about the crate as well. So it's not that you can't do it. I'm just all for efficiency and
making your life as easy as possible because I want you to get your dog over separation anxiety
as quickly as you can. And adding the crate into the mix, especially with a dog who's crate phobic,
it's just going to take more time. But if you do want to do it, what you need to do
is get your puppy or your dog to love its crate first. And then what you can do is work on the
home alone training. How do you get a puppy or a dog to love its crate? Well, the headline is you
go in really short steps. It's very similar to separation anxiety training for that. But we do
use food for crate training. We create an amazing association with the crate, build up duration
without the door closed, then with the door closed until we can get a nice amount of duration
with your puppy or dog in the crate, door closed, you in the house, but not visible.
And once you get to that stage, then you know you're ready to start departure training
with your dog in a crate. Okay, I will talk about crates again. I just know I will.
But I hope this episode has helped clear up some crate confusion. And if you still have
questions on crates, remember, you can always pop into my free Facebook groups and ask there.
And you can dig out copies of my books. You can find them both on Amazon. Be right back the
original and be right back the puppy version. Both go into crate training in some detail.
That's it from me for this episode, but keep training and good luck out there.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Be Right Back Separation Anxiety podcast.
If you want to find out more about how I can help you further, head over to julienasmith.com.
Meanwhile, if you enjoyed listening today, I would love it if you would head over
to wherever you listen to your podcast and consider rating my show.
Thanks so much. Good luck with that training and bye for now.