I adopted an 8 month old whippet two weeks ago. I took one week off to bond with Paddy and now I crate him during the day, coming home at lunch to take him out. How soon can I let him be alone on his own; I just hate crating him, he HOWLS when I do it. Thanks!

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

Answers

Well, it depends. Is he potty trained? Does he chew? Is he "ready" to be let loose?

I crate my dog during the day (unless it's going to be a LONG day) and she loves it. She sleeps in there even when we're home. I also researched the dog crate issue, and I learned that dogs enjoy having their "own" space, and that some dogs don't like to have big open spaces. Every dog is different. I think now that if we got rid of our crate my dog would flip out. As it is, if the door is shut to it, she freaks if she can't get in it.

The thing is to not associate the crate with anything negative. When you punish her for something, DON'T put her in the crate. She'll associate the crate with something bad and as a result not want to go in there. Maybe if you give her a treat before she goes in she'll be more amenable. Also, put a blanket, or some toys or chewies in there. We've also taught our dog certain commands (we went to doggy training) and one of them is "get in your cage". She runs right in there, no problems whatsoever.

But if you let her out while she's howling, you're reinforcing her behavior. Let her out once she's STOPPED howling. I've also read that you can throw pop cans full of pennies at the cage to make her be quiet (or shoot her with water or lemon juice). Dogs associate that loud noise (which they hate) with her howling. I never did that but I did read that it might work.

Anyway, good luck!

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

It depends on the dog. Some dogs absolutely must be crated, especially if they are boredom or anxiety chewers (or, in the case of many puppies, just generally chewy). Some dogs seem to prefer to be crated.

Unless your house is both immaculate and utterly dogproofed (say, if it were completely empty), I wouldn't ever advise giving any dog true run of the house. I've learned by experience that most dogs shouldn't be left alone with access to a kitchen, there's just way too much trouble to be found in there. A grown whippet could definitely counter-surf with a little effort, but aside from the counter there's also cabinets and whatnot near the ground.

If you really can't stand crating him, and since you don't sound like you intend to always crate him, you may want to consider baby-gating him into one room. Start out by removing anything you remotely value/can't replace, and minimize his access to cords and wires, and then start with a few test runs in increments of 15 minutes. If he does prove to be calm and non-destructive in short durations, eventually you can work up to half-days crated (say, crate in the morning and gate in the afternoon). When your confidence is up, try all day.

My dog is always gated in my room when I'm gone, and he likes it just fine. He has his food and water in there, and his toys, and he mostly spends his days sleeping on my bed, happy as a clam.

The usual advice applies on this as it does to most dog issues: if he gets up to mischief, roll up a newspaper and smack yourself on the head so you remember not to give him the opportunity again. It took me a while to figure out all the rules with Dork. One of the rules is I cannot leave anything but bed-related items on the bed. Anything that is not a blanket or pillow (like, say, a book, or my cellphone) is his, and WILL be chewed. He won't touch anything on a table or bookshelf or floor, unless it is food. I can leave him for 9 hours. If I am late, I'm cleaning up poop. If his paws are muddy and I don't make up my bed in a very secure fashion, he will pull down the covers and wipe his feet on my sheets.

Dork is an 80-lb greyhound and I have a 28" gate. He could jump it, easily. He just doesn't know he can, and apparently has never tried. If yours is a jumper, you can find gates up to 32" in most stores, and even taller than that in some pet supply catalogs. I've used two gates, one above the other, with a cat-sized gap, for another dog who could and would jump. There are several nifty pressure-fit plastic gates on the market (they're cheaper in the baby section of a human store than at a pet store) that are just fine for your average-sized doorway.

-- Anonymous, May 06, 2000

I have two whippets (a one year old female & a two year old male) who have the run of the house daily. As long as the house is moderately "puppy-proofed" I haven't had any real problems. I leave plenty of chew toys around & let them go. I wouldn't recommend this with *every* dog, but whippets (sighthounds in general) prefer to sleep (my wife has been at home the last few days & has confirmed that they don't do much more than sleep all day).

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2000

We started giving Doc the run of the house at about 6 months. He was fully potty trained and we rarely leave him alone for longer than 6 hours, although he can go up to 9 in a pinch.

Until last week, though, we still used baby gates to lock him out of Jeremy's room, because he tends to steal things. Since we started leaving the gates down, he's stolen a few things, all things that we would have put out of reach had we been on the ball (Jeremy's hair brush, a microwaveable heating pad).

He mostly steals things for attention, though, so we've almost never come home to find something chewed up on the floor. When we do, it's usually junk mail.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2000

Thank you all for your suggestions! I left Paddy out one afternoon and he chewed a foot and a half of the molding by the front door. I tried putting him in my second bedroom and he scratched the hell out of the door. He doesn't chew anything other than his toys, but he will go apeshit on a door. It's classic separation anxiety. Any suggestions?

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

Yikes. He unfortunately sounds like a dog who has to be crated, at least for now. I've never dealt with an inside dog with separation anxiety, because we worked from the beginning to make sure Doc wasn't going to go apeshit when we left. Maybe these tricks will work for you?

• Tire him out when you're at home. We've got Doc on a schedule where he basically sleeps all day, and at night when we're asleep, as well. But that means we have to give him lots of exercise and attention when we are home and awake. Before Jeremy got hurt, Doc got a two mile walk in the morning and another in the evening. Now I'm just doing the evening walk, but Jeremy usually plays fetch with him in the morning. We've had some behavior problems recently because he's too energetic, so we're going to have to reinstate the second daily walk, I think.
  
  The point: a dog that's exhausted is less likely to whine in the crate or chew things up outside of the crate while you're gone.
  
  
• We have a ritual when we leave -- we always, always give Doc a treat at the door (or in the past, when we put him in his crate to leave). It's our signal that lets him know whether he's coming with us and whether we'll be gone for a while. If I'm just going outside for a minute, I don't give him a treat, and he sits at the door and frets until I come back. If I give him a treat, he takes it and goes to lie down, and doesn't wait by the door -- he knows I'm not coming home in a hurry. Sometimes when I'm home and Jeremy leaves for some reason, he forgets the treat, and it takes Doc forever to stop whining at the door.
  
  The treat is just a token; it could be kibble out of his bowl. He doesn't really care. But we have zero problems with separation anxiety, and I think our ritual is the reason.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

My Shepherd just recently got the run of the house and she's almost 2. It takes different amounts of time for different dogs. We tried a while back to confine her to a bathroom, not a great idea. She destroyed the door and chewed quite a bit of soap and toothpaste. We went back to crating her, but moved the crate so that she could see the front door. I think leaving her out in the main part of the house helped, so she could see when we got home. The other thing to do is wean slowly of the crate, leave her out of it for say 15 minutes the first time, and if she's been good praise her silly. The shorter breaks really help. Zuli used to have a problem being left in the car alone, she would cry and whine and make people leave nasty notes on my car. :( We started putting her in car and hiding just out of sight for a couple of seconds and coming right back. When she would whine, we'd give her a gentle reprimand like "why are you being so silly, huh" Eventually with lots of patience it worked. Good luck

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

How timely - this is a current question in my household. We have a 7 month old Beagle. She's the sweetest dog in the world, and if we catch her half-heartedly chewing on something she's not supposed to, we give her a toy and she happily starts chewing on it instead. She doesn't bark or howl at all when we are home, unless we are playing tug-o-war or rough housing. She sleeps with us in the bed all night, and has actually gone 10 hours (asleep the whole time) without having to be taken outside to go potty. She is a GREAT dog, but she does occasionally have awake accidents, so we can't leave her out of her crate when we're gone more than a half hour.

I have talked with a lot of people like those of you here whose dogs love their crates, and even find security in them. I wish I could say the same, but she absolutely HATES her crate, and has from Day 1. Maybe because she spent the first 8 weeks of her life in a cage? We thought we were doing her a favor by getting a giant crate for her to be able to move around in. Now I hear that might be part of the problem - too much room. She pees, yowls, wimpers and "digs" endlessly in her crate every single day. Sometimes she is wimpering so hard that even when I let her out, it takes her a good ten minutes to calm down enough to stop making the pitiful sounds. I feel like a horrible parent!

In the morning, she has learned our routine, and since I always leave first, my husband has to be the bad guy and put her up. When she smells his aftershave, she runs off to hide. He has found her under the comforter, under the pillows on the sofa, and under the bed - lying there with her eyes closed like, "See? I'm asleep! You can go on to work now, and I'll just be here sleeping!" but then she opens one eye to peek at us and see if we're falling for it. She curls up like a boiled shrimp whenever we have to put her in the crate, which breaks our hearts because we have never used it to punish her. She won't eat treats that we offer in her crate, and she doesn't eat, drink or chew her rawhide at all while we are at work. I picture her just sitting there crying all day long, with an occasional nap in between.

Has anyone had a dog that peed in their crate but was eventually able to hold it all day in the house unattended? Would a smaller crate make her feel better? We really want to be able to give her free run, but we only have so much carpet cleaner and elbow grease before the whole house starts to look like shit. Plus, without us there to gently guide her teeth from the sofa to her rubber bone, our furniture wouldn't last long. We are just hoping that by the time she's a year old, we will be able to give her more freedom when we're gone. Is this feasible, or have we already screwed her up beyond hope? I'm not sure if I can handle much more guilt.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

This is so helpful, keep the info coming! Paddy doesn't pee in his crate, but he does salivate profusely. I come home at noon to check on him and I need to change his bedding because it is saturated with saliva. I've seen him froth like this in the car, so I know it's not pee.

I am experiencing a lot of guilt also, but I just try to look ahead. I think that eventually Paddy can have free run of the house. His past history is a little sketch, and I suspect he may not have been treated very well in the past. Patience...

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

Maybe this makes me breedist, but I tend to think that Whippets are very much different than other dogs. There's a great whippet discussion group at the Whippet Resouce Center (http://whippet.org). Go to the Discussion Group and you'll find a pretty long string about separation anxiety & whippets.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

My Ginger will pee in her crate. She's done it from the beginning, even though she learned to love her crate. She stopped when I moved the crate from the bathroom to the kitchen, but just recently started again when I moved it to a different part of the kitchen. She's a little over a year old now. She will not go in the house if I'm with her, but she will still sometimes sneak off and pee somewhere. Happens rarely now, but still happens.

She doesn't mind going into the crate though, she knows the routine. Tell her 'go crate' and she does it. We give her toys and an old towel to lay on and she's good in there. She barks like a wild dog when we get home and she's happy to get out, but as far as I know she's doesn't bark all day in there.

If she's in there before we leave the house and she's fussing I tell her QUIET and if that doesn't work I say it louder or I get her with the water gun. I do use Beth's trick though, I try to get her good and tired before I'm going to leave her for a while. She's a puppy full of energy.

I want to work up to gating her into one room, but she'll still chew and she'll still jump the gate. The other dogs will not and I can leave them in the house. And she'll still have an acident if left unattended for too long a time.

My best advice? Teach them to love the crate. Ginger used to sleep in hers at night and that's when she learned to love it. Now if we go into the kitchen she'll go in there and lay down with the door open because she knows it's her place. Talk to your dog nice while it's in there -- you know all that baby talk to use!

Colleen

-- Anonymous, May 10, 2000

Yeah, I think all dogs are different. I liked the crating idea, and we used a crate till Jake was 4 months old. But the difference is that I didn't work and was home all day with him. As far as separation anxiety, like Beth, I have a routine: if I'm going somewhere without Jake (a rare occurrence) just before I leave I say, "No, you have to stay". He immediately starts to mope and goes and lies down in a corner. Otherwise he's glued to me till we get out the door.

I have heard of people who train the separation anxiety right out by starting with 5-minute trips and gradually extending them, over a period of time, till the dog thinks 8 hours is no big deal.This seems reasonable to me. The chewing and peeing and destructiveness comes from boredom and is their way of showing you how much they hate to be without you. If you come home to a trashed house, then I think a crate or one room where they're confined is the only way to go till they get grown up a little.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2000