You’ve committed to toilet training your puppy with a crate – but then comes the decision of where do you put the crate?
It’s a hard decision and a lot of things to weigh up, especially given this is supposed to be your puppy’s relaxation zone.
Why Is The Placement Of Your Puppy’s Crate Important?
Well, simply put because it’s their bed. They have to love their bed in order to want to stay in it, and you want to make sure that their disturbance is love enough that they’re going to sleep well and soundly, and get no (or minimal) weird disturbances – which would result in you getting weird disturbances, right?
Let’s try and find the right place for you, your family and that wonderful little floofy puppy! We’ll start with a little housekeeping!
What is a crate?
A Crate is usually a metal, plastic or sometimes wooden box that’s very well vented that can contain puppy whilst they nap, whilst you cannot watch them or have a little down time.
Crates are used as part of toilet training quite often, and then they can be used after this as a normal bed or den to keep puppy contained whilst you’re out of the house, or puppy’s learning to be responsible in your home without so much of your guidance overnight!
Crates take advantage of a dogs natural affinity for a den. It can create feelings of safety for your pup with a little proper training. Our favourite crate for the home you can find here on Amazon!
Now! The nuts & bolts, places to think about whilst finding the right spot for your puppy’s crate.
What Stimulates Your Puppy Outside
Think about them personally, and then consider their breed characteristics. For example, herding breeds like a border collie can be stimulated by sight, which means that a spot that might not be ideal would be beside window that’s close to a local path or footway. Hunting breeds may not be best settled by a window besides an open space which may have little field mice, or those devilish fields *whispers* c-a-t-s.
Oh! And then if your neighbour gets up at 3am, this could disturb puppy too, so just be aware that their hearing is more sensitive than yours and outside influences can make a substantial difference to how your puppy sleeps.
Consider that when you pick your locations, but let’s talk about a few things inside the house.
Throughways
Busy spots like hallways, landings and similar are not a great spot because they can be busy, noisy and not necessarily that snug, and sometimes echoey too. Because of this? If you can, try and avoid hallways, throughways, and landings.
Where Do You Spend Time, As A Family?
Your family room might be the hub of your home, or your kitchen! Either way, allowing puppy to be a part of the family, but not experiencing too much FOMO (fear of missing out) is a tentative balance, and this is about distance. If you find puppy can’t relax, it might be worth nudging the crate back or away just a little.
Puppy should feel close enough to feel included and not far enough to be excluded or feel like they’re missing out.
Not Sure What You Need
Before Puppy Comes Home?
Walls
It’s a pretty good idea to have at least one wall against your pup’s crate, preferably two! This gives a limited amount of sound transfer and ensure that puppy feels as safe as possible.They also tend to make the crate feel less intrusive.
Windows
Early morning sunlight is definitely a thing you want to look at. Because it’s something a lot of puppy parents miss! They wonder why when pup is getting to the stage where they can and should sleep through the night (information within our pupdates, by the way! They’re really awesome) – and they’re still waking up at the crack of dawn (this is okay in winter, but less so in summer!). So do consider the light and the window situation for your puppy’s crate when finding an appropriate spot.
Drafts
Whether these are warm or cold, it’s good to keep them away from a radiator, or in/out vents. Aim for a spot that has a nice, constant temperature. Drafts, hot or cold, can cause issues with joints in future life. So try and make sure there’s no doors that are letting through a breeze, or just that it’s in a drafty part of the room – a crate cover can really help with this!
Drafts, hot or cold, can cause issues with joints in future life.
Ali Smith
Do they have any issues?
Like the doorbell? Or a certain window where your puppy might get a little too overstimulated at? It would be a good idea to position a crate a little further from that. Or apply appropriate training like doorbell desensitisation! That’s always a good idea, but consider your family set up, so a door bell close to a baby’s room might not be your best idea.
What about at night?
It is a possibility to move puppy’s crate to your room, alternatively you can sleep closer to puppy’s crate on the night that puppy comes home (and around that period). You can move the crate, but I wouldn’t suggest having two crates, it wouldn’t be as much work as making a positive association with a crate again but it would still be trying to make two crates feel like home.
Lots to consider!
There’s a lot of thoughts there to go through, and a lot of rooms in your house to assess, think through and see if they’ll work – and remember! There is absolutely no harm in trying different locations until you find the one, or tweaking it until you get the exact right spot!
Each home is different, each puppy is different, each family is different.
There is somewhere that will work, especially when you apply proper crate training and our Golden Rules of Crate Training. You just have to figure it out.
Puppy’s are a puzzle waiting to be solved! But if you need help finding the key? Sign up for our pupdates. They will really help you power through puppy training and help you turn a rambunctious puppy into a fantastic dog, who will be the very best member of your family for years to come.
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