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Originally Posted by soccbydo  Lovely post and loaded with advice, thanks. How do we know when it is time to stop the crate? This is the question I would like answered? |
I would say when he starts telling you that he has to go to the bathroom and doesn't have any more accidents. As he gets older and starts showing signs that he knows what to do (going to the door, etc) you can leave him out for longer periods of time until you're confident that he will tell you when he has to go. We never put Bella in her crate anymore (she's 8 months old now) except at night when we're sleeping or if we're leaving the house (sometimes in her crate, sometimes in the x-pen depending on how long we'll be gone). She's in the x-pen during the day when we're at work and she won't even go in that, she waits until my son gets home from school to let her out. Just be consistent. I eased up on Bella after about a month of crate training because she was doing so well and wasn't putting her in the crate very much during the day and she wasn't ready and started having some accidents and then I went back to the crate and had no more problems. I'd say by the time she was 6 months old we were able to stop using the crate. I still keep an eye on her and watch for signs and if it's been a couple of hours and she hasn't gone to the door I'll just take her out and tell her to go potty, she knows what that means and goes everytime. I still walk out with her to make sure she goes. Our Lab Lucee was a piece of cake she was potty trained in about 2-3 weeks of crate training. Bella definitely took longer.