We are getting ready to crate train our new puppy when she comes home. We would like to have a crate on the first floor of our home for daytime use and another crate in our bedroom for night time. Will this confuse her? Once completely housebroken, she can sleep in a dog bed in our bedroom, but while she is little, we would rather have her in a crate at night.
2 Answers
You should simply use 2 different commands, one for the daytime crate and another one for sleep time.
In general, you should choose your commands according to the result you expect, not according to the things that might (or might not) yield the result. Some exaples are:
- You want your dog to go into the daytime crate, tell her "into the crate".
- You want her to go into the nighttime crate or her dog bed, tell her "sleep time".
- You want her to stay put and stop following you around, tell her "stay" instead of "sit"
- You want her to stop doing whatever she is doing, tell her "no" instead of "come here"
That way you avoid her confusing what you mean and ultimately stop responding when she doesn't seem to get it right.
I am presuming that you are going to bed at the same time as your puppy. The easiest way is to close the door. Continue to put the puppy in the proper pen with the door closed until it knows where it should be when you are in the room or not.My presumption hangs facts that you are in the bedroom when you want the puppy in the night pen and you are not in it when you want it in the day pen.Close the door with the puppy on the proper side of the door and continue to put it in the proper pen until it learns which pen to go in. How long it will take depends on the learning curve of the breed of dog.
