"traveller" wrote

Hi everyone
I am looking for some advice . Hope I am in the correct group . We

You are.

will be getting a 2 year old male from a close friend . Due to a
change in our friends lifestyle they cannot spend the time with him
that he deserves .

That happens and bless him for passing his little one to another.

The dog is a very loving and friendly dog . He currently has the run
of the house and sleeps with our friends .
he is also trained to go outside . We would like to have him so he
sleeps in a kennel or crate at night . Also if we need to leave him
for a short time or if we travel somewhere we would like him to be
used to sleeping in a crate .

I'm not a real fan of crates but they aren't (when properly used) bad
things.

Will this be a problem to retrain him . also what size and type of
crate should we get . We are retired so during the day he will be with
us and be free around the house .

I don't know enough to address all the question but the size I can. He's
small so a small crate is what they say is right. Big enough to turn around
in comfortably but apparently not much bigger.

I had to check into that as my rescue dog was crate trained so we had to
follow suit at least at the start to make him comfortable. I googled 'crate
training' and used the rescue society (Humane society, SPCA etc) links.
Warning, there are a lot of crazy sites too so you may want to stick to the
more 'offical' ones.

we will not be getting the pooch until may1st . I thought we should
get a crate and take it to our friends house . They can start
introducing him to the crate for short periods of time . it may make
it easier for him .
thanks for any advice

Hehe as best as I recall, it was put the pooches favorite blanket in there
and leave the door *open* at the start. My gathered information in the end
of reading is the dog looks at it as their personal 'den of safety'. Kinda
like their own little personal home within yours? Total down time
relaxation as nothing can touch them without waking them first (once they
reach the closed door status).

The negatives had to do with never let them view it as a punishment. IE
never yell at them then put them in there.

Last part totally personal. My resistance to them is due to abuse of them
and that Don has never used them. It;s a sort of 'new idea' from his
viewpoint. He's the dog guy here in our house and I am learning still. He
resisted the cage strongly but i read him the web info and that we'd make
Cash uncomfortable if we just removed it right away. He agreed at last and
Cash had a cage/den for the first week or so, door open after 3 days and he
decided when *he* was ready to no longer use it. It's now on the porch
supporting several plants and has been for 2 years.

If your friends arent used to crates, they *may* object to you asking them
to bring one even over. I base that because I would have felt that way
before I learned more.