Crate training & feeding
 

My husband and I are getteing our first yorkie in a couples of weeks.

We are both confused with the crate training. :confused:

During the week, we are gone several hours a day for work.

Our breeder told us we must leave food for her at all times. However, crate training requires leaving only enough room for her to stand, turn around and lay down.
So does this mean also leaving food in the crate with her?

Thanks!

How many hours a day will you be leaving her. Usually putting the crate in an XPen works better, because then you can leave out the food, water, and wee wee pads.

She'll be alone for about 4 to 5 hours :(

I will tell you what I did and it was quite successful. In the very beginning we left Millie in her crate, while we were at work, with the crate blocked off to only create enough space to have her lay down and turn around in. We did not leave food or water in the crate while we were at work. As a matter of fact, anytime she was in the crate, she did not have access to food or water. (Day or night) We did leave a Kong in there with treats inside the kong, but she really did not play with it much or eat from it.

We fed her breakfast, took her out for a morning walk (and yes, we had to re-organize our morning to accomodate this new routine) and put her in her crate. She was only 12 wks and she could hold her pee and poo until we got home and took her out for another walk. We would feed her her second meal and give her plenty of water until 7pm and we would put the water and food up for the rest of the evening.

The walk in the morning was important, because she would do her poo then as well as her pee, plus it got her tired out before having to put her in the crate to sleep all day. The walk in the evening (as soon as we got home, we didn't even have time to change clothes or shoes) was important, because she would pee 2 -3 times, immediately and also do her poo. This gave her an opportunity to exert some energy after being cooped up in the crate. Then in the house we would go for our evening routine.

During the evening, she would have to go pee every hour on the hour, even though she was able to hold the whole time we were at work.

At some point, after she became reliable in holding it and we spent some time establishing the x-pen as the same as being in the crate and the routine was down, we put the crate in the x-pen and a bed and toys for her to have more room to roam in while we were gone. Still no food or water. And she did fine.

Thank you so much for sharing all that with us!
I'll be home with her for 10 days during my vacations.
After that she'll have to get into our schedule and we are also going to change ours schedule if we have to. Again thank you very much.

Lucky
 

I was lucky, Yogi only had to stay in his crate for a week. After that we moved him to a play pen with no crate. a bed, baby blankey, chew toys and water at all times. We also layed a pee pad in there next to his bed and he would poo and pee on it religiously. at the same time we would take him outside every hour that we were home and rewarded him alot when he went in the yard. now he refuses to use the pee pads and will whine when he needs taken out. If he would whine and not go poo or pee when we took him out we wouldnt reward him and make him lay in his crate for 10 minutes. after we let him out he would go straight to the door and whine and when he went out he would go pee right away.
i find that the less stress the yorkie has on him/her the more they are able to learn in a shorter amount of time.

total yogi potty training time: 2 weeks


it was easier to potty train yogi than it is to cook a hot pocket.

I think you should take this time to train him to the crate and work up to the 4-5 hours you will be away. Start at one hour and then 2 and then 3 hours and then 5-6 hours. You can achieve this in the 10 days you will be on vacation. Put him in the crate and leave the house, if you have too, so that the training can be effective. That way when you go back to work, the routine of leaving him in the crate has been established and will not be a shock to him.